Grand, very grand, pompoms
Monday reading #18
Monday Reading is my weekly recommendation of something I’ve found thought-provoking or fascinating. Sometimes it is about something I have read. Sometimes it is about television or food or music or projects I care about supporting. Sometimes I do not send it on Monday. Please share with anyone who might like the vibes!!
Good people, today I recommend this Icelandic wool hat with a beautiful and ludicrous pompom as big as my fist.
I should tell you that I do not like hats, except for beanies. I just do not like them.1 It’s irrational and it’s not fair, but when I am on Tinder or whatever and find someone cute, I PRAY that there isn’t a picture of them in a hat. If we’re not potentially dating, you and your hats are fine. But if could be luv, I’m like, Please don’t be a hat person. I wear winter hats and, for very very sunny days and rowing, I own one (1) baseball cap.
Anyway. I went to Iceland for my 40th birthday, which, again, financially regrettable from a credit card debt perspective, but I had had two cancer diagnoses in 2022 and YOLO? “Icelandic wool” is both expensive if it’s ethically made by Icelandic fiber artists and also not really to my taste style-wise. But I found a shop in Reykjavik that makes a whole range of beanies, and one style in particular is a modern knit on a heritage pattern found in the National Museum of Iceland.
However. The hats at this shop all have ludicrously large pompoms and I’m maybe not a pompom person? I cruised around the store looking for a hat without a pompom and could not find one. I did this for at least ten minutes. The woman at the register intuited my struggle and said, “The pompoms are all removable!” They are threaded on a thin ribbon and very cunningly tied to the top of the hat. So I bought the hat with the pompom and decided to consult with my friends before removing it.
Turns out I’m a pompom person. Perhaps that is the first resolved crisis of my midlife.
On Friday I sent out a Wendell Berry poem. You can read it and/or listen to a recording of me reading it.
it will be your light
I have been thinking lately about a poem I first heard when my dear friend Jennifer Walters read it to a packed chapel at Smith College in September 2001. It is worth remarking that I haven’t seen anyone revisit it in the fall of 2023, when we need its words just as much.
I hope your head stays warm this week!!
See you soon.
If this were a creative nonfiction essay I would admit that it’s because I once was a hat person, when I was 10 and too fat to wear cute clothes. However, this is not a creative nonfiction essay.
As a knitter, I adore your hat. And there's no point in an effete pompom. Go big or go home.
I love the pompom!