Virtue! A Fig! by Melissa Patton

Virtue! A Fig!

Knitting
May 2019
Worsted (9 wpi) ?
24 stitches and 40 rows = 4 inches
in stockinette
US 8 - 5.0 mm
150 - 200 yards (137 - 183 m)
English
This pattern is available as a free Ravelry download

This hat is encoded with a monologue from Act 1 Scene 3 of Shakespeare’s Othello.

All that is needed is 2 skeins of worsted weight yarn (one skein each of two different colors), and size 8 needles (either double pointed or circular).

“Virtue! a fig! ’tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus. Our bodies are our gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners: so that if we will plant nettles, or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up thyme, supply it with one gender of herbs, or distract it with many, either to have it sterile with idleness, or manured with industry, why, the power and corrigible authority of this lies in our wills. If the balance of our lives had not one scale of reason to poise another of sensuality, the blood and baseness of our natures would conduct us to most preposterous conclusions: but we have reason to cool our raging motions, our carnal stings, our unbitted lusts, whereof I take this that you call love to be a sect or scion.”