Fast Cap

My mother-in-law loved to knit. Mostly she knit for others--for her husband, for her thirteen children and for charity. Once she told me about a ski cap she used to make. She called them fast caps. In the 1950's she would knit these hats and sell them to the ski shops in Stowe, Vermont, not too far from where she lived. After she died, I came across a pattern for this hat. It was typed (most likely on a manual typewriter), brown with age and taped on the creases that long ago began to give way. In her handwriting on the front were the words "Fast Cap", and in the margin was a small drawing of the hat. I made a photocopy of it to have for myself and the other day I decided to try to knit one. I followed the typewritten directions for the most part, but soon realized that the hat I was making was not like the drawing. I think my mother-in-law may have used this pattern just as a guide to create a hat with fewer cable repeats and maybe that's why she called them fast caps. I'm not sure. The hat I made is sized to fit a child. I'm fairly certain she knit her's for adults. I did not knit the ear flaps (as I'm sure she did) because it was not possible to place them symetrically on a hat with five cables, although that's what the pattern called for. Instead I picked up the stitches around the bottom and knitted a ribbed cuff. It was fun to make this hat and to think of my mother-in-law knitting from the same pattern all those years ago. Next time I make it, I will knit it to more closely match the drawing.