On hats

Since the subject of hats is doing the rounds in Gopherspace[1,2,3],

here is my contribution.

When I was, I guess, a very young teenager, I habitually wore

baseball caps all the time, primarily because I believed this

completely excused me from the societal obligation to ever comb or

brush my hair, and of course my time was far too important to waste on

nonsense like that. Thankfully I grew out of this idea at some stage.

As an adult, I only ever wear hats for functional purposes, which

basically means protection from weather. If it is not very sunny or

very cold, I won't wear anything on my head. Doing so would just be a

hassle to me, it's one more item of clothing to buy and then worry

about losing or getting dirty or whatever. Of course my time is far

too important to waste on nonsense like that (perhaps I have not

changed as much as I thought?).

Now that I live in Finland, for the first time in my life the primary

purpose of headwear is not to prevent sunburn but instead to combat

extreme cold. Here in South Western Finland things do not get too bad

and I usually just wear a generic beanie on cold days (I bought it

from a Japanese convenience store for about ¥1500 somewhere near

Morioka when travelling through Tohoku in early winter, after

realising I had left my other beanie in the seatback pocket of the

Shinkansen I had just got off).

But next week I am heading further up North for work and there is the

possibility of Genuine Cold. I ordered a wonderfully hideous Swiss

army surplus fur hat[4] online (because if you are going to sacrifice

all sense of fashion for the sake of practicality, you may as well go

hard or go home). Sadly, it's just a little bit too small for me to

comfortably wear. So my wife, who is quite the avid home sewer and

makes a lot of our clothes, quickly made me something similar out of

some cheap fur-lined leather material she found at a local store. It

more closely resembles a North American "trapper hat" than a Russian

"ushanka". It is very warm, and comes it at about 8 or 9 on the Dorky

Headware Scale. Hopefully it serves me well. My wife will come along

and wear the Swiss hat because it fits her well enough.

[1] gopher://sdf.org:70/0/users/pet84rik/BLOG/JAN18/Jan15-hats-on-heads

[2] gopher://sdf.org:70//users/jirka/Phlog/2018_01_08.txt

[3] gopher://sdf.org:70//users/pet84rik/BLOG/JAN18/Jan17-Hats-striking-back

[4] https://www.varusteleka.com/en/product/swiss-fur-hat-surplus/18096