If you should write a time-travel and your hero is, hypothetically, a young man belonging to the French militia during the French & Indian War, he’ll probably be wearing a funny hat. A funny linen hat that may have been lovingly and painstakingly hand-stitched by his grandmother. It might look like this:
Then, let’s say your hero time-travels (with his funny linen hat) into the future. Let’s say to 2011. If your hero’s funny, lovingly-and-painstakingly-hand-stitched linen hat gets thrown into a modern washing machine, it might hypothetically then look like this:
Oops. At least, in this story, the hero’s mother is innocent of hat-slaughtering and it was the grandmother who did the loving and painstaking hand-stitching that threw the funny linen hat in with the rest of the laundry and she’s laughing about it, which means we can laugh, too.
And the outer shell was salvageable, so the Tall Kid sat around the campfire every night, taking the entire weekend to hem the outer shell into a new funny hat all by himself with what he calls his “heart-rate monitor stitch”. It’s probably gone from funny hat to goofy hat, but he’s all the more proud of it now.
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Thanks be to God that Grandmother did that to her own hat — and can laugh about it. Oh, my! TK’s stitching looks about like mine does when I just want to get the job done. When I want it to last forever, it looks like that, but much closer together with a “lock stitch” on the back side that essentially makes every stitch a knot to keep it from unraveling. Seamstress stuff is not my strong point, but I can use thread to put something back together if it must be done.
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So lucky that grandma did that and not you… (And how awesome that he sewed it himself!)
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I am so, so, so very glad I didn’t do it. I would have guilt forever. For them, it’s just a funny campfire story.
I just finished knitting him a really funny looking hat, which he’ll probably appreciate having this weekend. It’s supposed to be down in the thirties tomorrow night and all he’s got is a canvas tent.