Counting Stitches

This is Army SPC Joseph Armstrong. He is stationed at Ft. Benning, GA. Yes, he is my baby boy. He really would give me a look if I said that considering he is an adult and the fact that his mother put his picture on her blog with him standing in of all places the bathroom. Well, he sent me the picture and I said it might go on the blog. But, it is a good picture. I just sent him the knitted hat last week. I adapted my standard pattern to make it fit how I thought he would like it, covering his ears pretty good. It is a nice blue/green color and is very soft. Mother's get misty about their children anyway but for some reason I have had the need to make him something. When I saw on my computer weather link that it had been about 37 degrees at Ft. Benning last week I decided to knit him a hat. Some people just do not understand knitting. Why do it when you can run to the discount store and get socks, hats, mittens, shawls,afghans, well anything cheaper? I knit because I love it. I knit because it is calming. I knit because every stitch I knit means something. When I knit a hat or a sweater or anything for someone a part of me is in every stitch. I have never counted the stitches in most of my projects. Of course if it is lace or cable you have to count or you count the rows but I never actually counted the number of stitches. My sister did count stitches on one project she did. When my twin grandboys were born prematurely she made them each a hat on tiny needles with tiny yarn. There were something like 6,000 stitches in those two hats each one a prayer for the boys health and safety. Sadly those hats got lost in the mail, how we have never known. I told her and I still believe that one day they will appear in the mail. It might be on their first birthday and we will all be in awe of how big the boys have gotten and how much they have grown in that year. The hats may have gotten lost but the prayers were still there. So I was knitting on Joseph's hat and thinking I wished I could hug him. The idea popped into my head, you are. Count the stitches. Count the stitches? Count the stitches. There were 3,177 stitches in that hat. Before I put the hat in the mail I wrote him a note and at the end I added, "There are 3,177 stitches in this hat, every one is a hug from me to you." I don't think some people, non-knitters, understand how much of our lives that we put into the pieces we knit. Yeah I could buy a hat, mail it and get a picture of the person wearing it. But everytime I look at this picture I see a hat that my hands knit, warming the head of someone I love very dearly. There are 3,177 hugs in that picture.