And they called it Chiengora

In case you haven't already noticed, I'm just the tiniest bit insane.  Today, to illustrate this fact, I am preparing fur harvested from my dog, Max, to spin into yarn.  So far, I've soaked it in a small tub with nice-smelling shampoo and cold water, then rinsed and rinsed until the water ran clear.  Now I'm off to drain off the last bit of water and set the fur out in the sun to dry.  Tomorrow I will card the fluff using a pair of slicker brushes ($2 - $3 apiece, so not a huge investment if you would like to try your hand at carding fiber for spinning) and pre-draft it into pencil roving to spin at the earliest convenience.

I've also harvested fur from Nina, our Australian Shepherd.  Her undercoat is a blend of tan, grey and black, while Max's is a more uniform fawn color.  I may spin singles from both dogs and then ply the contrasting singles together.  I don't imagine I'll have enough yarn to make anything substantial, but to a spinner, sometimes a ball of unique yarn is its own reward.

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.

Catharsis

Mundane life of late has been a bit of a headache.  Thank goodness for fiber arts to give me a little distraction, stress relief, and a sense that I'm accomplishing something useful and tangible.  I finished my second pair of knee-high socks - I had a brain fart during the toe wedge and forgot how to m1 without creating a hole, but rather than rip back to the beginning, these are now a "ventilation feature".  I wore them during a visit home to celebrate my sister's graduation from university, and she and my mom accepted my offer to make them each a pair of crew socks.

In spinning news, I ordered some roving from Knit Picks and some old wooden textile-mill bobbins from an Etsy seller.  Funny story - I asked for my husband's input when deciding which colors I wanted to order.  I had already settled on blue, but was waffling between a mossy green and a rich magenta/purple.  He argued that purple was the better color "because it has more blue".  Whatever.  I ordered all three in the end.  After a few sessions with this roving I can already see an improvement in the uniformity of the singles I'm spinning with my top-whorl spindle.

Life-to-fiber comparison: Sometimes it's nice for things to be soft and loose and fluffy.  Other times you need a little stress and tension and pent-up energy.  Then, in the end, when you get your head wrapped around everything, it all becomes balanced (with the help of a dip in a hot bath).

New toys!

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.

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

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!

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.