Tomato Hats - Lindasusan Ulrich

Tomato Hats

I’ve been knitting tomato hats lately. Maybe you’ve seen them – cute little red things, rolled up on the bottom, green leaf design on top, even a stem sticking up. The pattern is really for babies, but I wanted one for myself. It would be sassy.

So I bought some cheap yarn – I mean, really cheap, the kind that squeaks when you touch it – figuring I was just trying this out anyway. I’d never made a hat before. Many people do them right after the canonical scarf/potholder/“test pattern” starter project. But I learned while I was an exchange student in Germany during my junior year of high school. I had to fit an entire lifetime into a single year, so we went from scarf directly to sweater, followed up with socks, even worked in a cable or two. I didn’t learn the stitches as “knit” and “purl,” didn’t even know which was which until years later. It’s strange to acquire a skill in another language and not know how to translate back. Then again, the only German I knew before I left came from one adult ed class. When I first got there, I didn’t know how to translate any of my experience.

That first day with my host family, we sat in the dining room for afternoon coffee. The table was loaded with homemade cakes, beautiful creations with berries fresh from the backyard garden. They thought it odd that I didn’t drink coffee; at first, they thought I must not have understood what they were offering. I tried it, to be polite, and added enough condensed milk to make it the color my mom always drank it. There was an audible gasp. I spooned in some sugar for good measure. But even with all my doctoring, the first sip confirmed that, yes, it did still taste like coffee. At some point, I left the table to use the downstairs bathroom, a small toilet-and-sink affair by the hall closet. As I sat in there, I thought, “I’m alone in this – I don’t know anyone else in this entire country. I have to make this work.”

But knitting hats is a recent development. Germany is just where I began moving hands and yarn and sticks to create something from nothing.

I tried making a tomato hat for myself, but my initial attempt was too big, and that was okay, because I discovered I couldn’t possibly wear yarn that cheap on my head. The tops of my ears itch just thinking about it. Plus, the finished piece fit the top of my conga, so I made covers for all of my drums. I’d be a laughable punk rocker with cute little tomato/chili pepper tops for my percussion instruments. Or, maybe I’d be so far ahead of the curve, I could just sneer and throw attitude at anyone who dared heckle me. The next year, every blown-dry band in Rolling Stone would be sporting these drum covers, in a host of colors: eggplant, raspberry, blackberry, pumpkin. Some guy in LA would take credit for the trend at cocktail parties, but my friends and I would know the truth.

I did knit a hat for a friend’s baby. I’m one of his unofficial Aunties – and that’s with a “U”, because even though I only got to see the little guy twice before his first birthday, when the family moved back east, I really don’t have anything against him. To assuage my otherwise poor performance as an Auntie, I knit him a genuine, hand-made, high quality, non-squeaky tomato hat. It’s almost adorable enough to make a devotee of the childless lifestyle reconsider that position. Almost.

I still haven’t made a hat for myself that I can wear around the Mission and feel oh-so-cool and trendy. I will, though. It’s going to sit comfortably snug on my head, the red bringing out my lively complexion as I toss my dark hair. Who knows? I could start a revolution in urban hat couture. Of course, first I need the hat.

I’m reminded of this unfinished knitting project every time I water the tomato plants growing in the back room of our flat. Taking over, really. It’s supposed to be my sweetie’s “art project room,“ but hey, they got there first. We’d gotten the plants as sprouts, as part of some Craig’s List trade (I don’t even remember what for), along with baby basil and the promise of dill. The dill never came up, and the whiteflies finished off the poor basil. But the tomato plants are flourishing.

The thing that surprised me the most about them was the smell. Growing up in suburban New Jersey, I grew tomatoes twice in our back yard. I loved starting with just seeds, and seeing them grow into something beautiful and useful. And the first time I watered the plants in our back room, I recognized their fresh, sharp, distinctive smell. And I thought, Who knew that even after all this time, they’d still smell like tomatoes?

I watch the yellow flowers pop up, marveling that each will somehow transform itself into a gorgeous red cherry tomato. And maybe it’s not so much that I love plants or knitting or Germany, or that I have a thing for tomatoes. Maybe it’s just that I like starting with nothing, and growing it into something useful and beautiful.