Broad Brimmed 'Monmouth' Caps

There has been a fair bit of debate in recent years as to whether the broad brimmed, heavy knitted cap popular from the late sixteenth century through early eighteenth century is more accurately described as a Monmouth Cap than the cap we are all familiar with. Not that there is anything wrong with the cap on display in the Neslon Museum in Monmouth, its accepted to be of the right date and to reflect a widespread style, and the excellent article about it by Kirstie Buckland remains one of the best articles about capping practices available-, its just getting it to match up with the written descriptions of Monmouth caps does show up a couple of possible issues, chief of which is that Monmouth Caps mentioned in the literature are typically about a pound in weight, something thats nigh on impossible to achieve when replicating the one from the museum.

As a result, there seems to be some good reasons to think that the broad brimmed version might be a challenger for this name, and the museum one might be better renamed the Monmouth Labourer's Cap. There is a very handy booklet available that goes into the current arguments for and against in the form of Monmouths and Monteroes. A confusion of caps. by Robert Morris available from Stuart Press.

Even more confusingly, for years, I and many other re-enactors and 'historic knitters' have tended to refer to this broad brimmed style as a 'Peter the Great' hat, after a famous surviving example in the Hermitage collection. Muddling, isnt it?

Whatever we end up calling it, and its entirely possible it will take a while for a generic name to settle on it, I've been working on different ways to reconstruct a plausible pattern of this very warm and useful hat, and here's the result that I feel gives the best result:

This is it before fulling, and here it is after fulling and modelled by my trusty (and long suffering, this photo was taken when the hat was still wet on a rather chilly afternoon) stunt head, Gareth:

its now available as part of my range of historic hat patterns, all of which come with a brief discussion of the style and footnotes to provide references to supporting information, either in hardcopy through the shop at www.sallypointer.com/shop (£2.50) or as a Ravelry Download ($4).

Acorn Purse and a Sally-Cosy

I've been away for a week on the annual family holiday, which in this case means me, himself, my parents, my brother and his wife, himself's mum and her dog, all in a cottage in Devon indulging in far too much food and plonk, interspersed with long walks and a bit of knitting.

Whilst we were away, I finished writing up the pattern for my Acorn Purse, which is now available through Ravelry like most of my patterns. (link goes to the 'buy' page, its $3 should anyone fancy trying it out)

I also finished a little handspun shawl that I'd been working on, this started off as one ply of assorted green shades, and one ply of a brown and white undyed 'humbug' fleece, the finished shawl is just big enough to cover my back and shoulders without trailing over my arms, and has already proven useful on a couple of cool evenings.

The green is a bit more saturated in real life, I think my camera is starting to show its age and it isnt capturing colour very well these days.

Came home to a handful of hat orders and a nagging awareness that its only a couple of weeks until the International Living History Fair, at which I trade and for which I really need to crack on and make some stock, then a few weeks later we're taking the Plague Rat stall to the Supreme Show. All this and a banquet and a bit of media work to fit in as well, plus the day job. Oh well, better to be busy than bored, whatever the occasion.

Dutch Sailor's Cap

In my last post I was working on the Machault cap, and I've been continuing my research by working up another double cap based on extant examples, this time a rather wonderfully variagated blue and white cap in the collection of the Rijksmuseum, dated to between 1650-1800.

The original is a relatively rare example of early variagated yarn, I’m quite pleased that my yarn mimics the original reasonably well. The Rijksmuseum has a fantastic collection of historic knitted caps, many of them from the whaler's graves at Spitsbergen, and I'm pleased with how this came out. I'm now itching to work on several other striped hats from the same source.

I've just about got this pattern ready now, it will be available any moment now over on Ravelry and in due course as a hard copy booklet in the shop, like all my historic range of patterns well supported with references and a discussion of this style of cap.

Machault Cap/Voyageur Tuque

I was recently asked to do some research into the construction of double knit sailors caps/voyageur caps/tuques (lots of names depending on who you are and what you are representing), and this is the result. It combines information from extant caps both in Holland and in Canada, with most of the detailing in this instance being from the Machault cap, right down to the little 'ear dents' that are a feature of this cap but which rarely show up in reconstructed versions..

It starts out as a very long seamlessly knitted 'flat rugby ball' shape, which is then heavily fulled to give this result:

I'm not entirely sure yet if these will make it into my regular 'off the peg' range for the simple reason that being double caps thay take an absolute age to knit, but I think I will be writing up the pattern, with extensive notes and reference material for my range of historic patterns.

I'm pleased with it, and will be continuing the research with a reconstruction of the tie dyed indigo and white double knit Whalers Cap from the Rijksmuseum.

Tudor Caps and Pixie Hats

I was convinced I had already blogged about this, but clearly my mind is going mushy and I hadn't. Anyway, after several people very gently prodding me over quite a few years, I've finally put my method for making a Tudor Cap down into pattern format. All my historic patterns come with a short overview of the style to allow for informed costuming choices, and its available either in hardcopy from my shop at www.sallypointer.com/shop, or as a Ravelry Download for $4.00.


My other recent pattern is a reworking of an old favourite. For a number of years now I've sold full kits for my Pixie Hats, but its now also available just as a pattern, again via Ravelry. This one priced $3, its a very quick knit in aran weight yarn on 5mm needles and is fulled for a perfect fit.


And it doesn't stop there, I'm currently finalising some research into Voyageur caps, tuques and double knit sailors caps, and hope to have the next addition to my historic pattern range out soon, that should be accompanied by a similarly documentations supported pattern for Thrum caps.

Dyeing at the Celtic Village

Last weekend I spent a couple of days at the Celtic Village at St Fagans National History Museum just outside Cardiff. The occasion was the Festival of Archaeology, and I was there demonstrating the basics of natural dyes during the Romano British period, and Gareth was working on reconstructions of a couple of bone flutes in the museum's collections.

As is often the case with such events, I only managed to get one general picture, of a very rainy village, but there are a few more pictures of us and the results of the day's experiments on the museum blog here.

A hat for a forest setting

Every now and then I get a commission that is nothing less than a joy from start to finish. Recently, I was sent this picture, and asked to interpret it in a pointy hat:This looks very much like a place near here that Gareth and I camp in occasionally, so much so that I can smell the woods just looking at this image, and I knew just how I wanted to make the hat, graduated from deepest mottled green to the lightest sunkissed pale new leaf shades, my only concern was whether I could do justice to the image in my mind.

I started out by laying several layers of the darkest green, its not far off black, really deep, rich, leafmould shades, that would form the inside of the hat and help make the brighter greens contrast well. Overlaying that, I staggered many different shades of green, this picture is of the final layer before I started felting and shaping:
After several hours of felting and a quick swim in the washing machine to harden up the felt, it was ready to block, and around an hour of bullying it into shape gave me this:and I've just done the final steam blocking- this is the result, and I have to say I'm really really pleased with it.The shades look a little acid in this photo- my camera isnt very good on colours sadly, you need to imagine this a bit richer and deeper all over- the splodges in the brim are much more subtle in reality, but hopefully it gives the idea. Just hope the recipent is pleased with it.