I now own a pair of drop spindles: one top whorl, the other bottom whorl. And the seller included a bit of roving to ensure that I'd get hooked.
It worked.
Pardon me while I part Mr. Max from his undercoat.
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Well, duh.
I finished the outer shell of Monmouth #3 this morning and am now in the process of picking up a row of purl stitches inside the brim. I'm cheating a bit by picking up a few stitches on a DPN and transferring them to a circular needle, but it's still not a fun process.
(To be fair, my DPN set isn't long enough to accommodate all 120 stitches.)
The extant piece is knit at a larger gauge, so fewer stitches, fewer rows, and fewer pick-ups means much faster, less tedious work. The ability to quickly produce this in-demand item means more money for the local cappers' guild. I've found a chunky natural wool I'd like to order in the very near future. It knits at a slightly finer gauge than the wool used to produce the Nelson Museum's cap, but it's a heckuva lot closer than the worsted weight I'm using at present. When I get my hands on that yarn and some DPNs in the right size, I plan on doing a speed challenge, just to see how long it takes me to construct the hat from start to finish. Fulling not included :P
(To be fair, my DPN set isn't long enough to accommodate all 120 stitches.)
The extant piece is knit at a larger gauge, so fewer stitches, fewer rows, and fewer pick-ups means much faster, less tedious work. The ability to quickly produce this in-demand item means more money for the local cappers' guild. I've found a chunky natural wool I'd like to order in the very near future. It knits at a slightly finer gauge than the wool used to produce the Nelson Museum's cap, but it's a heckuva lot closer than the worsted weight I'm using at present. When I get my hands on that yarn and some DPNs in the right size, I plan on doing a speed challenge, just to see how long it takes me to construct the hat from start to finish. Fulling not included :P
Saturday, April 7, 2012
Period source: Monmouth for women, too?
January Labors, from an early-16th century Flemish Book of Hours, attributed to Simon Bening. The woman in the lower right-hand corner appears to be wearing something rather like a dark grey Monmouth cap.
Let's zoom in for a closer look, shall we?
Perhaps!
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Eureka?
Within the past ten minutes I've had a Thought, regarding the 3-needle bind-off at the brim edge of the extant Monmouth cap. I think the bind off would "point" in the opposite direction if the inner brim layer is the one being picked up ...
This calls for some experimentation.
This calls for some experimentation.
Back-tracking
I'm wracking my brain, trying to remember what triggered this obsession with medieval and northern renaissance hats. And I'm drawing a blank. I know that it happened late October / early November of last year, and shortly thereafter I took the all-important first step into knitting in-the-round (an essential step for anyone desiring to replicate period knitwear). Don't know how I first stumbled across the Monmouth cap, but that's all the bait I needed to get absolutely hooked.
For those of you who haven't had to endure my process of exploresearch (heylookshiny), the only extant example of a sixteenth-century Monmouth cap is housed at the Nelson Museum in Monmouthshire, Wales. It is knit from a rather chunky wool, requiring less than sixty stitches to reach all the way around a 22" circumference head, and shows signs of fulling or felting, a process that makes the final product more water-repellant. It is somewhat like a modern beanie with a double-layered brim. The cap also features a loop at the bottom edge of the brim (perhaps used to hang the hat from a peg or a belt) and period text sources describe a "button" at the crown. There's some debate whether this was a functional button or just a bit of material that got bunched together when the final few stitches at the crown were gathered shut. This style of cap is documented from the late medieval period through the colonial period as a most useful item, commonly ordered in mass quantities to outfit soldiers, sailors, and settlers. Peasant laborers and nobles alike appreciated the cap's utility, and Shakespeare even included a blurb about Welshmen wearing leeks in their Monmouth caps on St. David's day.
Hm ... Maybe this just seemed like a really good idea, since winter was bearing down on us and my only knit cap was missing ...
For my first attempt at period capping, I used a mustard yellow, worsted weight wool-dominant blend (3% polyamide) yarn and size 7 knitting needles. It's not all that authentic. I double-knit the brim, then joined the two layers into a single layer for the crown. The "button" for this one was a short chain stitch loop, and I used the tail from the cast-on edge for another chain loop at the brim. I didn't full this cap, so it became a jumping-off point for later patterns.
For round two I referenced Jennifer Carlson's construction method. Since I didn't have any chunky wool yarn on hand, I used LB Fisherman's Wool worsted-weight yarn. After knitting and felting a test swatch of my wool, I determined that the felting process for that particular gauge has a negligible effect on the width, but shortens the length by about 20%. I did some quick calculations to determine how many extra rows I needed to add to my existing crown pattern to get a proper fit. I also added a few extra knit rows to make a round button on top. Oh, and I cheated to get the bottom edge to mimic the extant piece. Used a crochet hook to chain through the purl edge and make the loop.
(Cap #2, straight off the needles, with the brim folded down.)
(Same cap after felting.)
Wool needs a few things in order to felt: moisture, heat, alkalinity and agitation. I used a bathroom sink basin filled with hot water and a squirt of dish soap, a plastic slotted spoon and my hands. I added the hat to the hot, soapy water and stirred with the spoon until everything cooled off just enough that I wouldn't scald my hands. Then I rubbed the wool between my palms, alternating back-and-forth and circular motions over the entire surface area, re-wetting now and again. When the water got too cool, I emptied the sink, re-filled it and repeated the process. Once I felt the material was thickening up to my liking, I rolled a bath towel into a rough head-shape and put the cap over it to dry.
Since completing the second cap I've done some more reading in the Historic Knitter's group on Ravelry, and I've joined the Historic Knits Yahoo! list. I'm starting another cap, again using my worsted gauge, so I'll be following the general directions, not any stitch-for-stitch pattern. This involves picking up a row of stitches inside the brim for the inner layer after finishing the basic cap. Once the inner brim layer is the same length as the outer layer, I'll join them together using a three-needle bind-off for the edge treatment.
For those of you who haven't had to endure my process of exploresearch (heylookshiny), the only extant example of a sixteenth-century Monmouth cap is housed at the Nelson Museum in Monmouthshire, Wales. It is knit from a rather chunky wool, requiring less than sixty stitches to reach all the way around a 22" circumference head, and shows signs of fulling or felting, a process that makes the final product more water-repellant. It is somewhat like a modern beanie with a double-layered brim. The cap also features a loop at the bottom edge of the brim (perhaps used to hang the hat from a peg or a belt) and period text sources describe a "button" at the crown. There's some debate whether this was a functional button or just a bit of material that got bunched together when the final few stitches at the crown were gathered shut. This style of cap is documented from the late medieval period through the colonial period as a most useful item, commonly ordered in mass quantities to outfit soldiers, sailors, and settlers. Peasant laborers and nobles alike appreciated the cap's utility, and Shakespeare even included a blurb about Welshmen wearing leeks in their Monmouth caps on St. David's day.
Hm ... Maybe this just seemed like a really good idea, since winter was bearing down on us and my only knit cap was missing ...
For my first attempt at period capping, I used a mustard yellow, worsted weight wool-dominant blend (3% polyamide) yarn and size 7 knitting needles. It's not all that authentic. I double-knit the brim, then joined the two layers into a single layer for the crown. The "button" for this one was a short chain stitch loop, and I used the tail from the cast-on edge for another chain loop at the brim. I didn't full this cap, so it became a jumping-off point for later patterns.
For round two I referenced Jennifer Carlson's construction method. Since I didn't have any chunky wool yarn on hand, I used LB Fisherman's Wool worsted-weight yarn. After knitting and felting a test swatch of my wool, I determined that the felting process for that particular gauge has a negligible effect on the width, but shortens the length by about 20%. I did some quick calculations to determine how many extra rows I needed to add to my existing crown pattern to get a proper fit. I also added a few extra knit rows to make a round button on top. Oh, and I cheated to get the bottom edge to mimic the extant piece. Used a crochet hook to chain through the purl edge and make the loop.
(Cap #2, straight off the needles, with the brim folded down.)
(Same cap after felting.)
Wool needs a few things in order to felt: moisture, heat, alkalinity and agitation. I used a bathroom sink basin filled with hot water and a squirt of dish soap, a plastic slotted spoon and my hands. I added the hat to the hot, soapy water and stirred with the spoon until everything cooled off just enough that I wouldn't scald my hands. Then I rubbed the wool between my palms, alternating back-and-forth and circular motions over the entire surface area, re-wetting now and again. When the water got too cool, I emptied the sink, re-filled it and repeated the process. Once I felt the material was thickening up to my liking, I rolled a bath towel into a rough head-shape and put the cap over it to dry.
Since completing the second cap I've done some more reading in the Historic Knitter's group on Ravelry, and I've joined the Historic Knits Yahoo! list. I'm starting another cap, again using my worsted gauge, so I'll be following the general directions, not any stitch-for-stitch pattern. This involves picking up a row of stitches inside the brim for the inner layer after finishing the basic cap. Once the inner brim layer is the same length as the outer layer, I'll join them together using a three-needle bind-off for the edge treatment.
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