Roadside Beanie

I'm going to Shetland Wool Week at the end of September - the first time I've been to Wool Week, and the first time I've been to Shetland too.  It's especially exciting, because I'm part of the programme - I'm giving an evening talk on the Knitting & Crochet Guild and its collection.

Every year, there is a special Wool Week hat, with a free pattern, and the idea is to wear it then so that fellow knitters can recognise you.  This year's pattern (available here) is the Roadside Beanie, designed by the Wool Week patron Oliver Henry.  I started mine at the end of April, and finished the knitting months ago, but only blocked it and sewed in the ends last week.  I took it to the Huddersfield Guild meeting on Thursday for the show-and-tell session which we have at the start of every meeting, and a friend took a photo of it.

Here's another photo, posed on a mixing bowl, to show the band of sheep around it, and the corrugated rib:

Back in April, when I was planning my beanie, I looked through the suitable wool that I already had, and found these colours:

The three balls of Jamieson's Spindrift, in Chartreuse, Jade and Parma, I bought a few years ago, when a local yarn shop closed.  I didn't then have any plans for them, but they were a bargain. And now I have found a use for them.   The other five colours were left over from a pullover that I knitted for John more than 30 years ago.  He posed in it for the very first post in this blog, in 2010.

 The pullover is from Sarah Don's book, Fair Isle Knitting, which I bought in 1981.  I used the colours she suggested: moorit, cream, blue, rust, yellow and grey.  As far as I remember, I wrote to either Jamiesons or Jamieson and Smith, in Shetland, to order the wool.  (No online shopping back then, of course.)   When I was looking for wool for my beanie, I couldn't find any of the blue left over, and I didn't in the end use the rust.  Being a conventional sort of person, I did feel that the grass should be green(ish), the sky should be blue(ish), and the sheep should be a possible sheep colour.  I think it's worked out very well, and I particularly like the corrugated rib, with a moorit background and the ribs shading through parma, jade, chartreuse, yellow and cream.   I'm looking forward to wearing it for Wool Week.

A Teazle Wool Tam

In April, I wrote about a secret project that I was knitting in three colours of Rowan Felted Tweed. The pattern has now been published, in the November/December issue of Piecework magazine.  It's a special issue on collections, and Angharad and I wrote an article about the Knitting & Crochet Guild's collection for it.  The project was to accompany the article, and now that the magazine has appeared, I can show it to you.

Tam for Piecework November/December 2017

It is a tam, with two bands of stranded knitting, and a tassel.  (The magazine has a nicer photo of it - it was photographed on a model, who is much more attractive than my polystyrene head.)

Choosing a project to represent all the publications in the Guild's collection was quite tricky - I wanted something unusual, not too big or difficult to knit, and something that would look good now.  Just as I was wondering what to choose, a donation arrived for the collection, of booklets and patterns from the early 1920s, including a booklet of Hats, Caps & Tams, which was just what I was looking for.

Beehive Booklet 23: Hats, Caps & Tams

I had never seen a copy of the booklet before, and I think that not many have survived. It was published in the early 1920s - after J. & J. Baldwin of Halifax had merged with Paton's of Alloa in 1920, but while they were still acting as separate companies.

The booklet has an introduction which describes the teazle wool specified for the patterns in the booklet:

TEAZLE WOOL HATS, CAPS and TAMS, in Knitting and Crochet, are a need of the times for wear with the woollen Jumper, Scarf, or Sports Coat which form part of practically every Woman's wardrobe. They can be made at home to match the other garments and at but a quarter of the cost, or less, of the ready-made article. 

Moreover, at the taste of the individual, a Colour Scheme may be deliberately put together and an air of distinction given to the finished article, such as would be very difficult to obtain through Millinery channels. TEAZLE WOOL, from which the whole of the articles illustrated in this book were made, is supplied in a lovely range of shades from which to choose such a Colour Scheme.....

The facility with which the surface of fabric made from TEAZLE WOOL can be "raised," by means of the special "TEAZLE" Brush, makes it peculiarly suitable for Hats, Caps, and Tams. The process softens the colours and gives a very pleasant touch to the fabric, the freshness of which can be restored at any time, and even after washing, by a gentle application of the "Brush." 

(Teazle wool was named for the heads of the teasel plant, shown in the trademark, that were used in the woollen industry to raise the nap on woven cloth.)

I didn't want to choose a pattern that was designed to be brushed, but fortunately many of the patterns in the booklet were not, and I chose this design from the front cover, which isn't brushed:

   
Even though I didn't intend the finished tam to be brushed, in order to imitate Teazle wool I couldn't choose a smooth yarn  - it would have to be a wool that could conceivably be brushed.  The pattern specified the colours, too, so I wanted to be able to match them if possible.  And of course I needed to be able to match the stated gauge.

My friend Ann Kingstone suggested using Rowan Felted Tweed, which she used for her Stranded Knits book, and assured me that it would knit to the right gauge.  And Rowan very kindly supplied me with Felted Tweed in Bilberry, Watery and Ginger, to stand in for Violet Blue, Jade Green and Orange Teazle Wool.  The result looks very close to the illustration in the booklet, and has the 'jewelled effect' described in the pattern - I am very pleased with how it turned out. 

Having chosen the pattern and the yarn, I still had to modify the pattern quite a lot.  The knitted tams in the booklet were intended to be made in four or five separate sections and then sewn together.  Here's a chart for one of the sections in a similar tam from the booklet - each section in the tam pattern I chose is the same shape, apart from the final decreases. 

Chart for a 4-section tam

The booklet has a preamble that suggests knitting in the round as an alternative - I thought that most knitters now would prefer that.

The tam I chose was intended to be knitted in 4 sections, and I knit a trial tam (in other colours of Felted Tweed) following the pattern closely, apart from knitting it in the round.

I didn't like it - it was too square.  And the decreasing in the centre of the crown didn't work well (for me anyway) - it didn't lie flat.  So I changed to five sections and changed the decreasing in the middle.  I also had to re-jig the bands of stranded knitting, so that they sat symmetrically within each section, and carried on smoothly from one section to the next - not a consideration in the 1920s, it seems.

The final hurdle was the tassel.  All the pattern says about that is "sew together neatly, finishing with a length of chain and tassel from the centre of the crown."  Some instructions would have been nice, but in the absence of any help, I had to make it up, and fortunately, I could see roughly how long the chain and tassel should be from the illustrations in the booklet.     Here's the finished tam, showing the crown with the five converging sets of decreases, and the chain and tassel.  I am very proud of it - my first published pattern.

A Feather in your Cap

In yesterday's post, I said that although most of the patterns in the collection just donated are from the 1970s or later, there are a few much older ones.  The oldest is a Patons & Baldwins leaflet from the 1930s for three knitted hats and a scarf, in very good condition.  The designs are called Nina, Norma and Nesta - P&B liked to stick to the same initials for the designs in a leaflet.

 

Patons & Baldwins Helps to Knitters 3157

The hats are all very simple knits, on two needles.  The 'Nina' beret, which has the most complicated shaping, is in garter stitch, 'Norma' (on the cover) is in fisherman's rib, or something like that, and 'Nesta' is in moss stitch.  (The scarf in the 'Nesta' design is in a loose lacy stitch.)  The most complicated part is folding the Norma and Nesta hats so that they look like the illustrations, and the leaflet gives instructions for that, and for placing the feather in all three.   Evidently, P&B wanted to show, or to claim at least, that even in a simple woolly hat you could look smart and fashionable if you were sufficiently well-groomed and made up, and wore your hat with panache.  (I had a vague feeling that "with panache" literally means something like "with a feather". And I was right, so there you are.  Just stick a feather in your hat, pluck your eyebrows severely, and you too might look like a 1930s lady.)

My 1914 Hat

Here's a hat I knitted last month, and already mentioned here. (I'm still trying to catch up with myself.  It won't happen.)   The idea came from all the knitting and crochet patterns from the First World War that I was collecting together to send to the costumier of the "Tell Them Of Us" film.   One of the sources I used was a  Weldon's Practical Knitter magazine, issued in 1914, with patterns for a lady's knitted coat and hat. I really liked the look of the hat (after mentally adjusting the picture - in 1914, women had lots of hair and hats were worn very big so that they wouldn't crush the hair-style).  

  
When I read the pattern,  I found that it's a very simple idea.  The preamble to the pattern says: "This cap is knitted in "bag-shape", which is at present the most fashionable wear for ladies and children.  It is very easy to make, being simply a piece of knitting, about 28 inches wide and 24 inches long, and sewn up in the form of a bag.  The brim is folded in place, the top corners are brought down and lightly stitched over the edge of the brim on each side of the cap, and a fancy button is sewn on each point."  That's the essence of the pattern, although it then goes into more detail - and I think there is a mistake in the measurements quoted, because a piece 24 inches long would give a circumference of 48 inches, which even for 1914 hairstyles is much too big.  The detailed instructions say to knit 112 rows, which is more like 12 inches.  

The brim in the illustration is a garter stitch border at each edge of the 28 inch wide piece, and the seams are at the sides, underneath the buttons.  I decided that although I liked the overall idea, I didn't want to have the seams at the sides.  The brim would be neater without a seam, so I knitted a tube instead of  a rectangle, starting at the brim.  The seam is instead across the top, from point to point.  I used a 3-needle bind-off and it is quite inconspicuous.   

I kept to the "dice" stitch pattern from the original pattern, i.e. alternating squares of stocking stitch and reverse stocking stitch, 4 stitches by 4 rows.  I used Wendy Merino DK in dark grey and cast on 120 stitches to fit the circumference of my head.  (It had to be a multiple of 8 stitches, so that the dice pattern would line up exactly along the seam.) 

The buttons are a key part, of course, and here's an opportunity to  use some really special ones.  I chose some Fimo buttons made by my friend Steph  - she sells similar things on Etsy here and also in the Spun shop in the Byram Arcade in Huddersfield, which is where I bought these.  

You can see that I wasn't trying to achieve an authentic 1914 look - I would hardly have chosen Fimo buttons if so. 

The Weldon's pattern said that this was a fashionable shape for hats in 1914, and I did in fact find several similar hats in my search for WW1 patterns.   There is even a doll's crocheted coat and hat which is very cute.  

Doll's crochet coat and hat

 The crocheted golfing outfit (below) features a similar hat, but it's a cone shape rather than a rectangle, with only one point fastened to the brim rather than two.  

Crochet coat and useful cap

And you could buy similar hats ready-made - the Pryce-Jones ad from the Girl's Own Paper of March 1914 that I showed here offers a cap to match the sports coat, for 10½d  (about 4p).   

Pryce-Jones ad, Girl's Own Paper, March 1914.

I made my 1914 hat because it is a beautifully simple idea that I thought would look good (and it does).  I wore it a couple of times last month while it was still cold enough for a woolly hat, and it will come out again next winter.  And although it is not entirely authentic, I love the fact that it is essentially a 100 year old idea.

A Host of Hats

Last week, we had the monthly meeting of the Huddersfield branch of the Knitting & Crochet Guild.  Everyone was invited to bring along one or more hats and talk about them (or bring no hats and hear the stories).  It was fascinating to see the huge variety of hats that were brought  - old hats, new hats, designer hats, make-it-up-as-you-go-along hats.   Hats that turned out well, and one that didn't. 

I took photos of some of them - unfortunately, the lighting in the cafe was not very good for photography, and the colours in particular are sometimes a bit weird.

First, the vintage knits. Pamela brought along two Fair Isle tams that she knitted many years ago, and the booklet that the patterns came from. 

Patons SC104

I brought the Aran bobble that that my mother knitted for my sister in the late 60s, which I wrote about here.

I also brought my latest project, which was inspired by a 1914 pattern, so it is a sort of vintage knit, but also new.   More on that later.

  
Then the designer hats.  There were three designs by Woolly Wormhead.  Margaret has made her Meret beret more than once - here are photos of two, one much slouchier than the other. 

Sarah and Marie both brought their Encircle hat, which was Woolly Wormhead's mystery hat design in 2012.  I knitted it too, and wrote about it here.  

Sarah's Encircle

Marie also brought in Erica, which was WW's 2013 mystery hat. 

Marie's Erica

  

And Lorien by Ann Kingstone.  (She also brought Ann's Ilkley Moor design - the hat to go with the Baht 'At fingerless mitts.  It is beautiful, in the limited edition blue version of Baa Ram Ewe's Titus yarn called Boothroyd - but I didn't manage to get a good enough photo of it  to show the delicate cables.)    

Marie's Lorien

There were several hats that people had knitted to their own designs.  Angharad brought a navy and mauve hat she made to use up wool left over from a pair of mittens - the photo really doesn't do justice to the colours. 

And Marie brought a design of her own in feather-and-fan stitch to show off some yarn she spun herself.  

Marie really likes knitting hats, especially blue ones.  She also brought in the funniest hat of the evening - one that didn't quite work.   Beautifully knitted, though.  And blue.

Marie's disaster

Apologies to those who brought hats that aren't featured (either because I didn't get a photo, or it didn't turn out well), and to anyone whose hat is wrongly attributed or described - let me know if so.    

It was a very entertaining evening.  I feel inspired to knit more hats.

Not-Quite-A-Mystery Hat

For those who haven't heard of her, Woolly Wormhead is a well-known designer of knitted and crocheted hats.  In November, she ran a Mystery Hat Knit-Along;  she introduced a new hat pattern in three stages, starting with the brim.  The idea was that no-one knitting it would know what the finished hat was going to look like until the last part of the pattern was released.  I didn't hear about the Knit-Along until two parts of the pattern had already been released, when I saw the hat being knitted at Tuesday Knit Night.  It looked intriguing, and I joined in at that point.  I finished the hat a while ago, and have been wearing it in the cold weather that we are having at the moment. 

So, no more mystery - this is what my finished hat looks like: 

  
The construction is really clever.  You start by knitting a long stocking stitch tube to make the brim, and then join it together to make a circle.  If you've got the row tension right (which I did), you then need to pick up one stitch for the body of the hat for every row of the brim.  So you're picking up each strand of yarn in turn between two columns of stitches in the brim - that's very straightforward, and makes a very neat join. 

 

 
The body of the hat is reverse stocking stitch with little circles made of cables all over.  The cables give it a nice texture.  Then on the crown, you decrease the stitches very rapidly, so that the top of the hat is gathered in to the central point. 

And finally, you sew a button on to the brim, to hold down the tab where the ends of the brim overlap.  I found  a nice button at the Harrogate Knitting & Stitching Show. 

Now that it is no longer a mystery hat, the pattern is called Encircle - you'll find it on Ravelry or here.

(By the way, the hat is not magically levitating - I put it onto a souffle dish, and then perched that on a jar.  The combination made quite a good hatstand.)  

Crepe Paper Crochet

I said last week that there are fewer treasures being found at Lee Mills now.  This leaflet isn't really a treasure, but it was an unexpected find - it had been mis-sorted into a box of Coats pattern leaflets.  It isn't clear from the cover, but the Dennison Manufacturing Company made crepe paper, so the leaflet gives you instructions for crocheting a hat out of paper.  From the cover design, I imagine that it dates from the late 1920s, when cloche hats were very popular.

The leaflet describes a laborious process.  First you have to cut the crepe paper into strips.  The instructions say "The paper may be cut in various widths from ½ in to 1½ in. [1 cm to 3.5 cm, approx.]  The wider papers naturally make a heavier straw and are more suitable for Winter Hats than the lighter ones."  Are they crazy?  Who wants to wear a hat made of paper in the winter?

Anyway, then you "Stretch and draw the strip through the lightly closed hand."   That seems a bit under-specified to me, but I guess that after stretching there should still be some give left in the crepe paper.

So then you are ready to start to crochet, and make the hat on the cover, which frankly is not worth the effort.  The woman is clearly not a supermodel, but I don't think the hat does her any favours either.  As well as all the folderol with crepe paper, there is a veil across the face;  you could evidently buy veiling at the time, and it is to have a strip of metallic ribbon sewn around the bottom.  And finally, "It is a great improvement to add a small ornament to the front of the hat."

Another pattern in the leaflet is for a hat with a brim, which looks slightly more attractive.

Finally, there's another helpful hint:  "Hats may be waterproofed by painting with Dennison Wax dissolved in methylated spirit."   And the leaflet goes on to give detailed instructions.  Even so, would you expect a hat made of paper to protect you from the rain?  Maybe the waterproofing was intended just to protect it from damp - you would expect crepe paper to absorb moisture and lose its shape,  without a protective coating.

Just reading the leaflet made me feel tired - such a lot of effort to make something so insubstantial and  flimsy, and not very attractive.  I wonder how many women made themselves hats following these instructions.  It sounds like genteel poverty - I think you would only do it if you couldn't afford to buy a hat, or anything but cheap materials, yet felt that you had to wear one.

A Jaunty Little Hat

I usually find 1930s knitting patterns for jumpers and cardigans quite attractive - many of them could be adapted for today without much difficulty, except that they are usually in a small size and often stop at the waist.  But one thing about 1930s fashion that I don't like is that women were not properly dressed out of doors without a hat.  I never wear a hat except to keep the weather off, so I would have found that hard to cope with.  And proper hats from a milliner seem to have been very expensive (I have vague memories from books and films of indulgent husbands suggesting that their wives should buy a hat to cheer themselves up, or wives guiltily spending the housekeeping on a new hat.)  So if you had to have a hat but hadn't got the money, what did you do?  Obviously, you made one. 

This pattern leaflet for two hats in Chenille yarn is from the Lee Mills collection - one is crocheted and the other knitted.  The description of "Marian", the crocheted model, is a period piece in itself: "On the side of the head, over the right eye, over the face, or off the face, this model lends itself to any wearing angle.  The brim is most accommodating, it stays put in the "line" most suitable for the head it is to grace. A cheeky bow at the front gives just that required finishing touch for such a jaunty little hat."    

The other model, "Christine" is knitted in the same yarn: "This is perhaps the newest hat of the season.  It has height which strikes quite a new note.  A plain bar chromium pin fastened at the side is the only decoration.  The original of this model was carried out in Royal Blue."

I can't help feeling that "Christine" would be quite difficult to carry off successfully.  (It's a knitted hat with sticking up pointy bits!  It's ridiculous!)   If you were aiming at looking fashionable and ladylike,  the rest of the outfit, and your hair and make-up, would have to be immaculate.  Not one to be revived, I think. 

An Aran Bobble Hat

In all the mass of material that we have been sorting in the Knitting and Crochet Guild's collections, some items turn up over and over again. The one that I have seen most often, probably, is a Patons pattern book, The Aran Book, published about 1968.  I have seen so many copies of it that I almost believe that every knitter in the country must have had one.

Why did it sell so well?  Most of the patterns are fairly standard Aran jumpers and cardigans.  But when knitting Aran jumpers first became popular, you were supposed to use oiled wool (in the natural white/cream, of course) - the first Aran jumper I knitted was in oiled wool.  And most of the early Aran pattern leaflets were illustrated in black and white - why would you need colour?  So I think this would have been a very attractive booklet. You don't need special oiled wool, you can use Patons Capstan, a regular wool yarn in Aran weight.  And you can knit in red, blue, green - any colour you want.  (I was knitting at the time, and knitting Aran jumpers too, so I ought to know why it appealed to knitters so much, but I don't.)

I know that we had a copy of The Aran Book in my family, because I have a bobble hat that my sister knitted from it (although I don't remember the booklet itself).  I have been wearing the hat at Lee Mills recently when I have been working downstairs in the magazine collection, where it is very cold.

It is definitely the same hat because the Aran motifs match, although it was never as roomy as the one shown in the booklet.

Hat and mittens from The Aran Book

I think it would look better without the bobble on top, but for historical accuracy I shall leave it on.

PS  My sister says that actually the hat was knitted for her by our mother.  She thinks that Mother might have been using up some yarn and that was why she made it a bit smaller than shown - although I'm not sure how.  Maybe it was finer yarn or smaller needles.   She also thinks that there might have been matching mittens as well, but we don't know what happened to them.