Brown Monmouth - FINISHED

Knitting the latest Monmouth went fairly quickly ... at least, until the time came for the three-needle-bind-off.  There's a lesson in this.  I took my very-nearly-finished hat to the event where my apprenticeship was announced,* but I failed to pack along a set of one-size-smaller DPNs to do the bind-off.  Trying to do this thing with all the needles the same size is a MAJOR PAIN and I do not recommend it.

So I got frustrated and put it back in the basket.  And it sat in the basket for two months while I happily cranked out socks and perused mundane sweater patterns and did everything in my power to avoid making eye contact with that frustrating little wad of wool.  But I finally shamed myself into picking up the right needle.  And whaddayaknow, I practically flew through the last bit of bind-off and the icord loop.  All that was left was to felt and block it.  I don't know if I got the agitation motions down faster this time, or if the wool was simply more enthusiastic about the process than the oatmeal-colored stuff, but it seemed to take no time at all for the material to firm up.

Right!  ...  So now I get to jimmy around with my documentation ...  Woo?

* If you read my sewing blog, this is no surprise.  I'm belted to Mistress Margot du Bois, who is awesome.  This was back in April.

ALSO, since this is a hat-related post, the Museum of London has uploaded SEVENTY-THREE sixteenth-century caps, cap linings, and fragments to their online collection.  You can follow the link here ... and if it doesn't automatically give you 73 knitted caps, just type "cap" in the searchy box.  I was tickled pink by the lovely earflap caps, particularly because that's one of the next items on my to-do list.

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!

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.