Simple knitjutsu

First of all, it's now November, and as much as I'd like to be saying: "Burrrr...it's cold!", I'm not. Today was about 85F, which is great...in July... For some reason, there was one week in October that wanted to fool us into thinking it was actually fall. But, seeing as how this isn't a blog centered around complaining about the weather...
The handsome man in the picture to the left is my husband, and he is modeling the manliest hat ever: The Wilson Hat, by Norah Gaughan, featured in her new book just for men, titled: Norah Gaughan: Men.
Knitting for Blake has been a struggle. He's never really been interested in anything more than a cozy pair of socks, or the occasional pair of fingerless gloves. I guess I understand, I mean, it's probably the same as him getting a video game for me.
For the last three years, Blake has pretty much resisted the idea of a knit something other than the aforementioned items. I finally decided to ask him about it. Part of me wondered if it had anything to do with the dread "sweater curse", or if he secretly thought my knitting was weird, I really wasn't sure.
The talk went really well. As it turned out, the main reason why he didn't want anything big was because his dad wore sweaters, and for some man mystery reason, it was taboo for him to wear sweaters too. He also seemed to think that sweaters made men look feminine. I couldn't quite argue that point, there were a lot of sweaters out there that didn't exactly make men look... well...manly. So the subject dropped.
So in August, with the weather being cold whenever it feels like it, I decided to make Blake a warm hat. I hopped on Ravelry, and started searching for an awesome pattern, which is how I stumbled across this amazing hat. Now, I'm a huge fan of Berroco, and an even bigger fan of their Peruvia yarn, which comes in a huge variety of heathered shades. But for some reason, while looking at the pattern, it didn't click. I overlooked the pattern, and kept searching. I didn't find a pattern I liked that time, but I still decided to order the pattern book, and then forgot about it.
Some time went by, September rolled around and we got married, (which, if I'm not mistaken nullifies the sweater curse), and the weather became more unpredictable. While on a walk, Blake commented on how he wished he had something to keep his head and ears warm.
When we got home and checked the mail, the new Holiday issue of Vogue Knitting had arrived, (and in my opinion, the best issue so far). In it was a small advertisement for the Norah's book and the Wilson Hat. I went ahead and pulled the book out and discovered that I had some extra Peruvia from a previous project. Things couldn't get better...right?
Blake decided to look through the book, and saw a picture that changed his view on men's knitted accesories forever. The model in the book had an axe, and was posed in pre-swing. Blake was amazed, and has requested that I knit almost everything out of the pattern book for him, with the Wilson hat being first.
So the point of this long winded blog? That this pattern book is amazing, especially if you knit for reluctant men, and all the patterns are guaranteed to look handsome beyong words on them.