A Bluestocking Knits

Thoughts on the "Mittens Knitted on Two Needles"

Poring over the March/April issue of "Piecework", I was reading the article by Lesley O'Connell Edwards about two Midlands sisters who were writers of knitting "receipts" in the 1860s and 70s, and one of the photos was of a "mitten knitted on two needles" (mentioned in passing in the text) from one of the sisters' books.  It was an interesting little thing that piqued my curiosity, and it wasn't difficult to track down the book, scanned and available on the internet thanks to the wonderful folks in charge of the Richard Rutt Collection at the University of Southampton.  There was apparently an earlier edition of this particular book around 1866, but there doesn't seem to be a copy online, and my mittens are knitted from the 1876 ed. instructions.

Edwards notes the "radical construction" of this mitten, wondering what prompted the change from the usual welt-up versions.  It certainly crossed my mind while knitting, too -- the thumb gusset is a rather ingenious use of short rows, but what's wrong with working them in the round?  Maybe Miss Harriet was one of those who find four needles a bother, or -- like Elizabeth Zimmermann a few generations later -- exceedingly fond of garter stitch, much easier-worked flat?

But never mind!  The pattern is quite easy to follow, with no unfamiliar abbreviations and only a few things like "put your needle at liberty through the last stitch" which is very euphonious but just a little bit puzzling nowadays (I'm pretty sure I know what she means, but I don't know why the needle is "at liberty" -- is it not at other times? &c. &c. &c.)

I had no idea what this new-fangled "Laine de Vienne" wool is, but some leftover Regia 4-ply came up to gauge for me quite nicely.  The Kroy Sock is a bit heavier, but turned out all right as a border.

I used the lace cast-on (like the usual cable cast-on but instead of putting the needle between the last and next-to last stitches before making a new one, you put it into the last stitch) -- I figured this would make the later seam a bit softer.  I also decided to interpret the injunction to "observe the 1st stitch in each row must be slipped" more specifically as "slip 1st st purl-wise with yarn in front, and K every last st" as we often do now, so as to get the "chain" selvage (you must be sure on Row 5, though, to K the last st, not P as you have been merrily doing, or you will have a little "bump" in your handsome chain).

The original pattern has you work a "colored border" in K2, P2 ribbing before sewing up the mitten.  For once in my life, though, I decided that something I'm going to wear myself looked a little too plain, and that just a touch of pretty at the top would be quite appealing.  I didn't feel any qualms about not sticking to the source, as I think this would be quite in keeping with a period knitter if these were being made for a lady or girl, instead of the more sober 2x2 ribbing.

I did have to juggle the gauge and number of stitches more than a bit, but fair enough, and ended up working this picot crochet edging from the wrong side, as the picots tended to lean towards me, which would be outwards if on the RS.  I have found also that I quite like that little rope-like line that comes from working single-crochets through the front loop only, and liked the look of that here, so my edging turned out to be this:

Rnd 1 (RS): SC to end, turn.
Rnd 2 (WS): Ch 1, SC into front loop to end.
Rnd 3 (WS): Pico 1 (SC1, ch3, Sl into same SC), SC1, rep to end.

I wrote down what I did on the first mitten so that I could repeat it easily on the second one, but as you can clearly see in the above photo, I apparently did not use a US5 hook, as the second border turned out much bigger! and I had to rip it out and do it again, after I'd already washed and blocked them.

There is no method specified for sewing up, but since these are done horizontally, I used the duplicate-stitch method, stockinette for the rib section and garter for the hand. This turned out pretty well, and much of my wobbliness -- it was difficult to get the tension just right -- is happily disguised by the welt pulling in at just that spot!

I also sewed up each mitten before working the crochet border, as it seemed simpler to accomplish the latter that way.

Note that I did not have to make the last section on my mitt a little shorter than the pattern's as I usually do -- I like mitts to end just about at my knuckles -- so you could certainly add some stitches to the top end (slipping them with the pattern's "first 7" onto a stitch holder before making the thumb gusset) if you want the top longer.  You could also easily make the welt at the wrist a bit longer if desired.

(The fabric in the background is, by the way, a rather neo-William-Morris-y print I have bought for my Edwardian-apron-to-be ...)

Year or Period: 1876, though possibly earlier as the first ed. is ca.1866
Materials: Regia 4-fädig in color 1991 (grey heather) on US0 needles, and Paton's Kroy in "Muslin" with US3 hook
Hours to complete: Less than a week, including numerous false starts with the crochet edging
How historically accurate is it? Aside from the non-period wool, the body of the mitten is worked entirely to pattern, and the crochet edging is I feel a typical mid-Victorian modification
Sources/Documentation: The pattern is found in Miss H.P. Ryder's Winter Comforts and How to Knit Them (1876), available through the University of Southampton's "Victorian Knitting Manuals" page

Thoughts on the Two-End-Knitted Mittens

These have been sitting around for a while, ready to post about, but one thing and another -- you know.  To recap, these are Nancy Bush's pattern for two-ended or tvåändstickning mittens, based on the traditional style of mittens from Mora parish in the Dalarna area of Sweden -- these are in Bush's "house yarn," a Z-ply that comes in natural and grey shades (and by the way has a lovely sheepy smell!).  For the contrast color, I dyed a short length with one packet of black cherry Kool-Aid.

The learning curve was a bit steep for me, taking what seemed like ages to knit the first mitten, but the second was done in about a week, even after a long hiatus due to the summer heat and my not even wanting to think about wool, much less knit!

I was very pleased to find that the pattern fits my hands without any adjustment whatsoever, as usually "one size" is too small for me.  These mittens might even have a bit of extra room for shrinkage with wear -- which I fully expect them to do, with this kind of wool.

I had a 24g ball of wool left at the end!

I have to say, I really enjoy this technique, and of course its historical connections, but that twisting is a pain.  I do not understand why, when this Z-ply wool is touted as being the best for two-end knitting (it "allows for the threads to twist and not 'corkscrew' around each other"), it was worming and corkscrewing constantly for me.  I suppose I can't really complain that it took me less than one week to knit a mitten in a complex technique from start to finish, but goodness, I have a great respect now for those Dalarna knitters who made sleeves and whole garments in two-end knitting, especially at a much finer gauge!

Previously, I had found the Knit Buddies tutorial most helpful for the three-color cast-on, but for some reason when it came to cast on for the first of these mittens, I just couldn't seem to make it work, and so I used Anna H's video instead, in which you stand the single needle vertically (wedged between your knees, perhaps) and use both hands to wrap the wools around, I mean without using the needle tip to pick up strands as in most cast-on methods -- but this appeared to produce the same result.  After knitting a bit, though, it was clear that something was different as it didn't lie as flat as my sampler and wristwarmers had done.  I suspect now that my tension was much looser with the upright-needle method, so that although the wool strands are lying in the same manner as the horizontal-needle method, because there is simply more wool involved in the first one, it flares.  Unfortunately, this didn't occur to me until after I was well into the second mitten and wondering why the second one was lying flatter!  Oh well.

The thumb is a new-to-me construction, and very comfortable --

I puzzled for a long time over the cord at the wrist -- there is no mention of a cord in Nancy Bush's pattern, and indeed the ends are all woven in on her pair, although the photo on Ravelry shows a member-submitted pair with the ends in a simple braid.  But the historical examples at DigitaltMuseum, for example, almost all have the cord, so of course I wanted to do it that way -- and it just looks cool!  But the two colors clearly spiral, like a twisted cord, and for the life of me I couldn't figure out how to twist the ends into a cord that looked like those historical mittens.  I finally just decided to give up and do a four-strand braid and, Googling this to jog my memory about which way to arrange the strands, a number of the hits that came up with a search for "four strand braid" were for "four strand round braid" -- and yes, I now suspect that this might be what the historical mittens used, as my results, after only a few minutes' investigation and experimentation, produced a spiral-effect round cord.

I ended up using the instructions from T.J. Potter, though I must say the video from Tying It All Together was intriguing -- I just couldn't get my brain to quite follow that one when I was holding the colors in a different order.  (Amusingly, since the ends on the second mitten were hanging differently, I started the second one with the left-to-right movement first, instead of the other way round, and the result spirals in a different direction from the right-to-left-first braid!).  The trickiest part was remembering to twist the strands under, as I'm so used to the usual three-strand braid (on my hair, for example) and putting the strands over.

All in all, I'm delighted with the process and the results, and can hardly wait for some cold weather!

(The newspaper is a recent issue of Nordstjernan, "The Swedish Newspaper in America".)

Year or Period: 19th century
Materials: 1 skein Mora Z-ply wool by Wooly West in natural white, with a short length dyed red with Kool-Aid by me; 2.5mm needles
Hours to complete: I misplaced my notes, so I don't know now how long the first mitten took, but the second was about a week of not-particularly-obsessive knitting
How historically accurate is it? Being a Nancy Bush pattern, I assume that that is quite accurate! the Kool-Aid not so much ...
Sources/Documentation: This particular pattern is available in the January/February 2007 issue of "Piecework" and again in the Winter 2010 "Knitting Traditions" magazine.  (Note that the pattern in "Piecework" and on Ravelry is called "Northland Mittens", but in "Knitting Traditions" it is simply titled "Mittens with the Two-End Knitting Technique".)

Thoughts on the Winter Cuffs in Double Knitting

Here is my first historical knit of the year, and very timely it is, too, as the weather here can be quite cold at the moment (for southern California, mind), and in fact has gone all gloomy this morning, so a pair of warm cuffs is just the thing.  I wanted to make something with that lovely Blue-faced Leicester wool, though at DK weight it is considerably thicker than the original "four-thread Berlin wool" (The helpful article "Everyone His Own Knitting Needles" by Colleen Formby tells us that four-thread Berlin is equivalent to modern fingering weight) -- but the British Blue is a pleasure to knit with, from start to finish, and I don't mind compromising a bit now and then, especially since I am also being economical by using what is on hand!

The Godey's page shows how very basic old knitting patterns were -- I mean, yes, it's pretty obvious that you would have to bind off at some point (!), but it doesn't tell you how long to make the cuffs, to put the top border on, or to sew it up.  It's pretty generous of them, in fact, judging by a number of historical knitting patterns I've seen, just to tell the knitter what size needles to use.

The cuffs are fairly obviously knitted flat, by the double knitting instructions.  But I really don't much care for seams on my hands, so I worked my cuffs in the round, since of course this was well-known in 1861.  I can understand why this particular pattern isn't though, since double-knitting in the round nearly makes me tear out my hair.  Knitting the first attempts -- and I made numerous ones, trying to get the sizing right in this gauge -- I said, "Gaahhh!" more times working these things than in all my life up to this point, I guess.

Over an even number of sts:

• Round 1: *K1, sl 1 p-wise wyif, rep from * to end.
• Round 2: *Sl 1 k-wise wyib, P1, rep from * to end.

For a long time, my brain just did not want to slip a knit stitch and work a purl one.  This was not "mindless knitting," to be sure! I ended up having to stop murmuring to myself, "slip one, purl one, slip one purl one" since even though I was actually saying it, after a few minutes my fingers would just knit the stitch I was supposed to be slipping -- I had to stop thinking about the slipped stitches entirely, and just say "purl, [get the next one out of the way], purl, [get the next one out of the way]".  It's also surprisingly difficult to tell which round you are on, since once you have moved the working yarn around to wherever it's supposed to be for the next stitch, the just-worked stitches compress and you can't really tell unless you really interrogate it whether you just worked it or slipped it.

I couldn't help remembering Elizabeth Zimmermann saying in The Knitter's Almanac that double knitting always seemed to her "though fascinating, a great waste of time," because each stitch has to be handled twice, either knitting it or slipping it, then vice versa on the next row.  "The result is a rather charming tube of stocking-stitch, which occasionally sticks together where you made a mistake".  She does admit, though, that double knitting is light and fluffy, which she of course would have understood is because of the slipping process, since it stretches the stitch a little bit lengthwise -- this makes one's gauge a bit larger than regular stockinette would be even on the same needles, but does give the fabric that soft fluffiness.

To compensate for this difference in gauge, Elizabeth always casts on far fewer stitches for the edging and increases to size for the double-knitted section.  I suspect that the reason the Godey's pattern calls for such a large number of cast-on sts relative to the double-knitted section is because if you use a smaller number for the garter edges, you will have to work a more-than-usually stretchy cast-on and an exceptionally stretchy bind-off, otherwise you won't be able to get the cuffs over your hands!  But I like a snug cuff, and so having learned the lesson early from Elizabeth, I went with her suggestion to cast on half the number of sts required, so that the cuff fitted smoothly but not tightly.

I ended up casting on 30 sts in crochet cast-on with the white wool, working 6 rnds of garter st (not 4, it just looked better with another ridge), with purple Kfb on every st, then 50 rnds of double knitting, then with white dec'd every other st (with an SSK because it looked better, disguising the decrease rnd), then 5 more rnds garter, and finally a suspended bind-off to match the crochet cast-on.  (It's curious that although the British Blue must be considerably heavier than a fingering-weight "four-thread Berlin", my double-knitted section is only 6 sts fewer than the original larger size!)  And as it happened, I set this down for a few weeks, and then when I picked it up again my fingers seemed to suddenly get the hang of double-knitting in the round, and I managed to whip out each cuff in merely hours.

I was tempted, though in the end I did not, to make a vertical buttonhole a few rounds from the top of the double knitting section, so that the cuffs could be worn as muffatees if so desired -- I think this would also be an appropriate period variation, and I might make another pair later and incorporate the idea.

(Double knitting in the round with one strand of yarn, by the way, produces a tube except at the beg/end of the round.  Because the wool must be moved from one side to the other, it will necessarily have to go across the inside of the "tube" at this point.  There is also a slight ladder here, so I would advise taking these into consideration also, when deciding whether or not to work it in the round.)

The new badge is a painting called "Old Woman Knitting" (ca.1882) by Thomas Eakins.  I don't find anything more about it online -- I wonder if it was an oil sketch for a proposed, more finished, painting, hence the grid.  I like it very much the way it is.

The Project: "Winter Cuffs in Double Knitting"
Year or Period: 1861
Materials: 2 skeins British Blue Wool (pure Blue-faced Leicester) in Milk (white) and French (greyish purple), 2.5mm needles
Hours to complete: 29 January and 31 January 2017 (a day for each cuff!)
How historically accurate is it? I think my modifications are quite within the bounds of what a period knitter might do with the wool she had in hand, except for the gauge of the British Blue and possibly the suspended bind-off
Sources/Documentation: Godey's Lady's Book and Magazine, no.62-63 (1861), p.164 (the pattern is reproduced in full in the image in this post)

"Mora Vantar"

The description of this lovely pair of twined-knitted mittens says that they were given to the museum by a Dr. Hazelius in 1873, who "got them many years ago from a Mora girl" -- a Morakulla, which is the same word used to describe many of the young women in Anders Zorn's paintings, as well as this one by Emelie von Walterstorff --

Ever since my first steps in two-end knitting, I've been dreaming about the Mora wool from Nancy Bush at The Wooly West, and so with my Christmas money I splurged on two skeins. This is Swedish Z-ply wool -- apparently especially suited to two-end knitting because of the way the twist lies -- so I'm looking forward to making Nancy's pattern from the Winter 2010 issue of "Knitting Traditions", with enough left over for the Ormsta wristwarmers!

Plain mittens in sheep's wool (fårull), from the village of Vinäs in Mora parish.  This well-used pair was acquired by the museum in 1891.  (I wonder what the hook-and-eye are for ...?)

The museum gives surprisingly little information about this pair in beautiful condition, except that they were acquired in 1879 as part of an ethnographic collection.  These are halvvantar, half-mittens.

This elegant pair of Mora vantar were given to the museum in 1877 by the committee for Sweden's participation in the World Exposition -- it doesn't specify which one, but I'm assuming the one in Philadelphia the year before.

Clearly two-end-knitted, but wildly different from the others.  According to a post by Lars ("Baritono") of Lappone, this kind of mitten was probably knitted to sell as souvenirs.  (I think that not only because the Dalarna region, having kept their traditional costumes as everyday wear longer than most Swedish regions, was especially picturesque, but also because of Carl Larsson, Dalarna was particularly popular with tourists.)

These images of Mora vantar -- mittens from Mora parish in Dalarna -- are all from DigitaltMuseum.se.

Thoughts on Some Man's 17th-Century Stockings and the "Cheapside" Foot

These stockings have been finished for some time, awaiting the photographs, for which it has been a sort of ready/not-ready comedy -- David is out of the country, David's home but I'm sick, it's just too hot to even think about wool, the bathroom tap exploded, etc. etc. etc. -- so at last here they are!

After some internal debate about wools back in January, I chose Regia 4-ply, since I've used it before (on my Spey Valley socks) and those have pilled a little at the heels but are still in very good shape after over six years!  This color is Grey Heather (no.1991), which seemed to be a good "natural wool" shade, and goes well with the rest of David's Faire clothes.  I like the grey-sheepy homespun look of it, and the color is lovely.

These stockings took ages to knit as not only are David's legs quite impressive, but I miscalculated any number of times and had to rip the first stocking back (and occasionally out) in annoyance, and he was away on multiple business trips for so long that I didn't want to risk "hoping it would fit".  But of course once the first one was done and I knew it was all right, all I had to do was make the second one exactly like it!  (As it turned out, one was still a bit longer than the other when he put them on, but this must be due to the wool -- humor me, here -- since there really are exactly the same number of rows in each stocking.)

I liked the welt on the Carnamoyle re-creation by Lady Angharad Rhos ferch Rhain (Allison Sarnoff) so I started with that, although as it turned out the finished welt contracts so much that you can hardly tell that it isn't just reverse stockinette.  Because my math skills are mortifyingly bad, I depended heavily for the leg shaping on basic advice about stockings from Elizabeth Zimmerman's The Knitter's Almanac with specific math from the calculator at Let's Get Knitting.

 

I was very taken with this stocking foot now in the Museum of London (no.A13833), which I mentioned when I was planning these stockings at the beginning of the year.  I had already decided on the so-called "Barnim" foot, with its inverted gusset on the sole and then thought that it wouldn't be much of a step from the Barnim foot to this one, so I decided to follow the Cheapside lead, as it were.  The Museum writes that this foot is "the only example of its kind in England" and I can believe that, for I've not seen anything like it on historical-costume blogs, so I'm tentatively dating it, as the Museum does, "mid-16th century" with the stricture that it is "unusual" and therefore probably expensive (i.e. upper-class if not higher), though my version is considerably rougher than the original.

So in keeping with the idea that knitters in the past would probably have borrowed ideas from the finished garments of other knitters and not from patterns as such, and therefore could also have stood in front of a Cheapside stocking-maker's window and said to themselves, "Fifteen shillings!  Marry, I can make something much the same for a pittance, and from good English wool!" -- here is the Cheapside foot.

I am putting my first version of this foot pattern on a separate page, for other historical knitters to make suggestions on and, if I'm lucky, possibly knit and make suggestions for improvements.  I will admit up front, though, that the at-the-same-time shapings for sole gusset and instep gusset really defeated me, what with balancing different rates of converging increases and decreases, which occasionally came together with a whacking great clump.  As it turned out, I had to write down the instructions in a Word table with separate columns for the two gussets, so that I could keep them straight, and check rounds off one by one -- I did manage to get this into a fairly logical pattern-style format, but it was a lot to keep track of, so knitter beware.  The bright side was that I am positive that both stockings are knit exactly the same!

The decreases at the side of the heel flap, which are fairly clear in the Museum's photograph, are very elegant, so this variation has been incorporated here along with the garter edging, into the shaped common heel.  Unfortunately, the original heel of the Museum of London stocking seems to have disintegrated at the back, so it's impossible to tell, from the photograph at least, if it was straight or shaped, but certainly the shaped one is more comfortable and handsome.

I did err on the side of caution with the length of the sole gusset, and it is obviously considerably shorter than the original, but I'm not sure if I could have done it reasonably at this much-larger gauge anyway -- mine is 28 sts to 10cm, vs. an amazing 72 on the original (!!).  I started the "first draft" with the decreases further apart, but it just didn't look good.  The original sole gusset clearly continues pretty much all of the way to the point of the toe, whereas mine peters out about two-thirds of the way there -- this could certainly be "corrected" for a shorter foot, by simply using the same rates of shaping on the sole gusset, which would go farther on a shorter foot.

The garters are simply 7-stitch strips of garter stitch, about 34 in. long unstretched.  They stretch quite a lot, even when wrapped not especially tightly.

The details --

The Project: a pair of man's stockings, with garters
Year or Period: 17th century, possibly mid-16th
Materials: most of 5 balls of Regia 4-fädig Uni in color 1991 (Grey Heather)
Hours to complete: about two months
How historically accurate is it? the modern sock yarn is obviously not period, and I suspect that the shaping is more towards the end of the century than the beginning, but for that it is fairly accurate
Sources/Documentation: the extant silk stocking foot at the Museum of London thought to be from Cheapside (museum no.A13833), with modifications of the shaped common heel per Nancy Bush in Folk Socks, and of the "Barnim foot" as outlined by Anne DesMoines in her “Barnim-Style Stockings” in Knitting Traditions magazine, Spring 2014 issue

Knitting instructions for the Cheapside foot are here.

An Ytre Norskøya Hat, ca.1700 -- Part 2 (Knitting)

Without having the original Ytre Norskøya hat in hand, or at least a first-generation photo, it's difficult to do much more than improvise the shaping, and so this isn't really a pattern so much as a guideline.  You will need to adjust the shaping both to accommodate your yarn gauge and to fit the wearer, anyway.

A little less than 40 sts are visible in the photograph of the original hat, so there would be about twice that in the knitting. A circumference of 50cm at "1.6-1.8 stitches per cm" works out to 80-90 sts total, but remember that this measurement is after fulling.

As for shaping, Vons-Comis says that the stitches are "decreased regularly at two points in the cap which lie directly opposite one another", which is certainly how it looks in the photograph, where there are no decreases visible at all, even when by the shape of the crown they must surely be there!  It might be wishful thinking on my part, but it looks to me as though in the last few cm there really are some decreases spread (evenly?) across a decrease round, so for my reconstruction, I've used a slight modification of the round-toe shaping I used on my blue Smeerenburg hat.  There certainly might also be some shaping in the now-damaged parts.

I am a bit puzzled, I admit, by this description of only two shaping points lying directly opposite each other, since in my mind's eye this makes something more like a garrison cap, though perhaps the fulling and subsequent wearing of the Norskøya one makes it more rounded.  I decided to shape my version more according to the general shape in the photograph, than to the description --

In full, Vons-Comis’s paragraphs about the cap are as follows (all question marks in the original):

The deceased [in grave 579] wore a woollen cap on his head (fig. 20.3). This is a single thickness (red?) brown cap with a turned-up brim, with light brown (originally white?) and dark blue stripes. The cap is 26 cm long including the 5cm turned-up brim. The circumference of the cap at the junction from crown to brim is 50cm, with the greatest circumference, 60cm, reached at the lower end of the brim.

Knitting probably began at the lower edge, by casting on stitches with (red?) brown wool and knitting one row in plain stitch. After this, two rows in purl stitch were knitted alternately light brown (white?) and dark blue. There are 1.5 sts per cm, and 4 rows per cm (table 1) [which is a chart of the various twists, plies, thread counts, and colors of the Grave 579 textiles]. As the brim is felted it is not entirely certain whether the yarns are (Z-?) plied or not. The number of stitches is decreased regularly at two points in the cap which lie directly opposite one another.

After 5cm, one round was knitted in purl with (red?) brown, thinner wool. Then the cap was continued in the same colour using plain stitch, so that when the brim was turned up only plain stitch would be visible on the outside. Yarn composed of two 8-twisted threads which were not plied, or hardly plied, was used for the crown. The count also differs: 1.6-1.8 stitches per cm and 3 rows per cm. The cap is slightly felted inside. Some damage seems to have occurred in the coffin as a result of either the effects of the decay of the corpse or soil conditions. No patches or darns were discovered.

I have used Paton's Classic Wool because it was to hand and is 100% wool, so fulls easily.  After over 250 years in the ground, the colors of the original cap have apparently browned considerably, and Vons-Comis suspects though is not quite sure that its original main color is red, with dark blue and probably white (now light brown) rounds on the brim -- Classic Wool's "Cognac Heather" is a brownish red, which may at least roughly substitute.  I chose "New Denim" as a mid-range blue, and "Natural Mix" as a compromise between the original "white?" and the aged light brown.  At 20 sts per 10 cm, the gauge is finer, though, than the 15-18 sts of the original wools.  I have not tried to use two different weights of wool, as in the original cap.

You will probably want to work a swatch in your chosen yarn and full it, to get an idea of how much the knitting will shrink, though I did not.

By the way, I seem to be using "hat" and "cap" interchangeably.  Technically there is a difference, but it still isn't a simple matter to place the Smeerenburg/Ytre Norskøya ones on one side of the divide or the other.  "A hat has a brim, a cap doesn't, or only a bill" = this is a hat (though some of the other Rijksmuseum ones are therefore caps).  "A cap is usually made of [some] soft material, whereas a hat is grander" = this is a cap.  "A cap fits closely to the head" = this is a hat.  I don't know!

Ytre Norskøya Cap 1

The finished dimensions of the original cap -- after fulling, mind -- are 5cm for the height of the brim, then 21cm from there to the top of the crown, 26cm total, and 60 cm circumference at the cast-on edge, narrowing to 50 cm at the join between the brim and the beginning of the crown, though it is not clear if this is through shaping of the knitting or stretching of the fulled cap.

Use slightly larger needles than usual for the yarn, to allow for shrinkage later.

Cast on 80-90 sts plus 10, or desired number (also plus 10, to allow for slight shaping on the brim) using either the long-tail or Old Norwegian cast-on, in red wool.  Join for working in the round.

Work 1 round in red.

Work 2 rounds in natural in reverse st st, then work 2 rounds in blue in reverse st st.  Rep these 4 rnds 3 times more, or until brim measures about 5 cm; at the same time, dec 5 sts evenly on 5th rnd and 10th rnd.  Cut natural and blue yarns, and work on in red.

In red, work either 2 rnds reverse st st or 4 rnds garter st.  This completes the brim.

Work in st st.  The decreases in the original are apparently made at beg of rnd and at midpoint of rnd.  Work for about 16 or 17 cm, decreasing occasionally as desired at first, then more rapidly, to make a pleasing shape, until the piece will be about 24 cm after fulling.

In order to have the shaping start rather gradually, before starting the crown shaping proper, I worked [dec 4 evenly around circumference, work 4 rnds st st] twice, with the second dec round offset, so that the second set of decreases came roughly centered between the first set.

I used the following crown decrease:

Rnd 1: K5, K2tog, rep to end [substituting K1 for K2tog 4 times because I had 74 sts total].
K 5 rnds.
Next rnd: K4, K2tog, rep to end.
K 4 rnds.
Next rnd: K3, K2tog, rep to end.
K 3 rnds.

and on in this manner until there were 11 sts rem, the previous rnd being all K2tog -- then K2 tog twice, K3tog (why? I don't know!), K2tog twice, then cut the yarn and draw through the rem 5 sts.

This made a fairly similar crown shaping, though as I said, without having the original in hand or photographs from different angles, I'm a bit puzzled as to its shaping.

I fulled mine in the sink, since the stitches in the original cap are quite visible, and it is easier to stop when the fulling is "done" if you can see it.  I did decide to safety-pin the brim to the body of the cap to keep it from rolling during this process, though, not having enough experience with it to know if it would lie flat -- this worked pretty well, and it stayed flat without markedly-obvious "waves" at the pin placement points (though these are a little more visible on the purl side of the brim, as in the photo just above!).  My version did shrink a bit more -- to the point of obscuring the stitches, I mean -- on the crown than on the brim.  Interestingly, the brim shrank only a fraction of an inch -- I noticed this as I was fulling it and worked at it a bit more than the crown, though as to whether this slow shrinkage is because of the different dyes in the wool, or because I'd pinned it up, or some other reason, I've no idea.

Dimensions before fulling: brim 3", total height 17", width 12".  Dimensions after fulling: brim 2.75", total height 10" (with brim folded), width (just above brim) 9.75". 

Let me add my praises, by the way, to the numerous ones already being sung in favor of Classic Wool's feltability!  It has a lovely, rather velvety texture after this mild fulling, and would have a bit more body (which this particular hat does need) after a bit more time in the hot bath, perhaps, but the ease of the process and the resulting hand of the fabric make up for that.

On the whole, I think this a fairly reasonable reproduction, though obviously not a strict one, of the original Grave 579 cap, with the caveats I've mentioned above.  Taking into account the differences in wool and in the unpredictable results from fulling -- mine is definitely more splayed towards the bottom than the original! -- I'm quite pleased. 

 

The Project: an Ytre Norskøya hat, based on the knitted hat from Grave 579 on that island in the Svalbard archipelago
Year or Period: ca.1700
Materials: 1 skein Paton's Classic Wool worsted (100g/3.5 oz.; approx. 192m/210 yds.) in "Cognac Heather" (MC), with less than 15g each in "Natural Mix" (CC1) and "New Denim" (CC2); US8 needles
Hours to complete: about a month of not-particularly-dedicated knitting, plus a few days for fulling/drying time (18 May-27 June 2016)
How historically accurate is it? fairly accurate considering the modern materials, but the lack of better photos of the original garment is a handicap
Sources/Documentation: "Kleren maken de man: zeventiende- en achttiende-eeuwse kleding van Spitsbergen" by S.Y. Vons-Comis (pp.97-118 in the book Walvisvaart in de gouden eeuw: opgravingen in Spitsbergen, ed. by Louwrens Hacquebord and Wim Vroom, De Bataafsche Leeuw, 1988); "Seventeenth century garments from grave 579, Zeeuwse Uitkijk, Spitsbergen" by Sandra Vons-Comis (pp.175-186 in “Textiles in Northern Archaeology”, NESAT III : Textile Symposium in York, 6-9 May, 1987); "Workman’s clothing or burial garments? Seventeenth and eighteenth century clothing remains from Spitsbergen" by Sondra Vons-Comis in "Smeerenburg Seminar" (Rapportserie, Norsk Polarinstitut, no.38, Oslo 1987), also containing the paper "Textiles from Danskøya" by Ingrid Lütken, plus others noted in the previous post

Thoughts on the Smeerenburg New Hat

Ever since I saw the Smeerenburg hats, I've rather wanted to make one.  I have a stash of deep-purple alpaca which I already I know that I can't wear because it makes my nose itch, so I wondered if I could felt it (or more properly, full it), but after working a few samples I realized that even the fulled swatch is probably too soft for this kind of hat.  Poking around in the remotest of my yarn cubbies, I found a bag of DMC Laine Colbert wool "pour tapisserie" which I'd inherited and completely forgotten about -- no less than eighteen skeins (360g!) -- which I couldn't really see myself doing needlepoint with, but it's about DK weight, and certainly knittable.

The wool is moth-proofed, and I wasn't sure how it would behave with either fulling or dyeing, so after I knitted up a swatch I dyed it with a packet of Blue Raspberry Lemonade Kool-Aid, which produced this striking but not very 17th-century turquoise --

so per the helpful and inspiring folks at Dye Your Yarn, I bought a small pot of Wilton food dye in Royal Blue -- I was aiming for a quintessentially-period woad blue, but luckily for me woad-dyed fabric comes in a wide variety of shades.  Dyeing with Kool-Aid couldn't be simpler, as the citric acid in it means that you needn't mess around with mordants etc., but the Wilton on its own does require that, so I decided that I would use the two together, and just darken the Blue Raspberry as much as I could.

David liked the shape of this hat --

with the smart little brim, so for a pattern, I bashed together the brim from the "Gagiana" barret (flat cap) by Mistress Mairghead de Chesholme and the crown partly from the "acorn" hat by Cecilia Rosa de Sancta Maria (Dani Lawson), (whose PDF with the actual pattern has since disappeared), and partly just with the same shaping as a "round" sock toe, cribbed from Nancy Bush, and all adjusted to accommodate the size and shape I needed.

(I did appreciate Dani Lawson's comment that "based upon [the fact that there are no extant knitting patterns pre-17th century and] the generalisations used in period cooking recipes, it is suggested that period knitters either passed their patterns to one another verbally, following the oral/practice tradition of other craftspeople, or crafted items without a pattern, merely adding and subtracting stitches as needed to shape garments," and that this is why she decided to improvise her own pattern instead of simply knitting one of the patterns given by other historical re-enactors, since surely this is what knitters all through history have done, adapting a pattern to fit their own needs and materials.  There is much to be said for historical accuracy, but when you are making something that a real person will be wearing, you want it to fit them!)

I was a bit puzzled by the dimensions of the hats given by the Rijksmuseum, which average about 60cm "width" (presumably circumference, as the average man's head size is said by Google to be 57 cm around) and range from 22cm to 30cm, so I decided to aim for around 25cm, not wanting it to be more Seussian than anything else. 

My gauge on US7 needles was about 18 sts and 24 rows to 4 in./10cm, and the swatch shrank by an astonishing 45% in height, and about 20% in width.  So the instructions are basically to calculate how many stitches you'd need to fit your wearer, multiply that by at least 45, and add 67 for good measure -- and I am almost serious.  That thing was huge.  I could have hidden a baby in it, easily -- could probably have carried my laundry in it. 

The brim is started on waste yarn, shaped, then folded and knitted together before continuing up the crown.  I suspect this is not strictly period, but the original Smeerenburg hat has no obvious join or seam at that point on the outside, so it's difficult to tell from the photos.

I was charmed, by the way, to find that the Laine Colbert had on every skein a très utile metal clamp holding the two ends together -- no tangles here!  I've never seen this in knitting yarn.

I did offset the shaping on the brim on alternate increase/decrease rounds, since I wanted a nice, smooth curve to the brim, not the "octagon" effect of stacked shaping -- you can see this staggered shaping most obviously in the "before" photos.  I suspect that the smoother edge is more historically accurate also.  Most of the reconstructions I've seen just stack the shaping without comment.

The top of the crown is basically a round toe, with the decreases starting at every 10 sts (K8, K2tog, with a couple of K3tog to get the stitch count even), and with the decreases staggered as on the brim.  The last sts are drawn together with the end of the wool -- I did pull them down a bit as I wove in the end, since I didn't want that little nipple that sometimes shows up, but more of a sugarloaf effect.

This is three packets of Blue Raspberry Lemonade Kool-Aid on the left, and on the right that mixed with about a teaspoon of Wilton Icing Color in Royal Blue (which I added in 1/8-teaspoon increments until I thought it was about dark enough).  The streaks are just reflections on the surface of the water.  The color wasn't as dark as I would have liked, but I wasn't sure how much I could add in without changing the chemical properties of the stuff, and I had a hard time getting the gel to dissolve as well, so I decided to stop at "acceptable"!  It took off most of the artificiality, at least.

The Wilton Royal did "break" a little -- which is when the component colors separate -- and this was apparent early on in the dye bath, with faintly purple splotches on the fabric where the red had come out.  Luckily the results were fairly gentle, and I think the fulling tended to integrate it a little more, though you can see in the finished hat that the color is not completely uniform.  It is, on the whole, much more woad-like than the Blue Raspberry Lemonade on its own, though, as I said, so I am pleased.

The texture is on the bouclé side, to be sure, but I wanted to full it pretty thoroughly, not knowing how much body the finished hat would need -- it has to be fairly sturdy to hold itself up, I suspect, the taller it is -- and I'm not experienced enough with fulling to know how much is "enough".  This is after one cycle on a front-loader washing-machine, regular setting, before it got to the spin stage.  It is obviously fulled considerably more than the original hats, most of which still have the stitch shapes clearly visible -- but there it is.  In future I might try knitting at an even looser gauge, and maybe it won't spaz quite so much.  I stretched the lower part of the crown a bit before drying, as it seemed a little small on my head, which is why the crown does not rise straight up from the brim.

The finished size is about 8 in. (20cm) high and 9 in. (23cm) in diameter.  I'm actually glad it shrank so much, as it's already teetering on the edge of silly-hat territory! and this way it's merely amusing.  I might try blocking the brim again to get that snappy tilt to it, though I'm pretty sure that a hidden pin would also do the trick.

To my pleasant surprise, David is so delighted with the hat that he spontaneously showed it off to visitors the other day!

Details (with a nod in the direction of The Dreamstress' "Historical Sew Monthly") --

The Project: a "Smeerenburg New Hat"
Year or Period: ca.1650-1700
Materials: about 220g DMC Laine Colbert tapestry wool (approx. DK weight), not counting swatches
Hours to complete: about 3 days of knitting and fulling, plus another for dyeing with blocking/drying time before and after (5-10 May 2016)
How historically accurate is it? points off for using stash moth-proofed tapestry wool (!) instead of something more appropriate, and possibly a point off for the brim being knitted-together instead of sewn, and points off for using Kool-Aid instead of woad (!!), but on the whole I think it's a fairly accurate reconstruction
Sources/Documentation: extant whalers' hats from Smeerenburg (which I posted about here), plus tips from reconstructions of the "Gagiana" barret and the "acorn" hat as mentioned above

"When One is Interested in Everything, Distractions Come Easily...."

Progress on the Faire stockings.  I started these over when after a few inches I admitted to myself that my attempt to use dpns for their "historical accuracy" was more trouble than it was worth -- because although at eight inches apiece my steel 2mm set is long enough for all of these stitches, it is also long enough to poke my hands at regular intervals, get caught in my sleeves, require frequent juggling of stitches to avoid a wobbly line between needles, and just be generally cumbersome -- so I gave in and got out my 20th-century circulars. 

I consoled myself by making this button for my historical-knitting projects this year, since apparently I have a weakness for blog buttons and Girl Scout patches.  On the bright side, the circulars increased my knitting speed by as much as 75%!

I found this on my pincushion the other day -- Julia, I suspect.  A cynical child, but with much more sensitivity than she lets on.

I had a bit of a lost weekend, when I discovered last Friday afternoon that FamilySearch has the Pennsylvania probate records microfilm available online.  It took me a bit of time to figure out the indexing system, and I'm still baffled by the page numbers that run not in a single sequence but a series of them with no apparent reason or -- more importantly -- no note at the beginning of the book to tell the searcher where each sequence starts and stops.  ("So is that the first page 1501, or the fourth??")  But, yeah, I looked up and it was Sunday.  I did not, alas, break down a single brick wall, of which I have a number in Pennsylvania, but I found some interesting things.

Here is a dry-fitting of the kitchen dresser for No.16.  The top section is not glued to the bottom yet, as I haven't done the drawers.  To be honest, I think I'm just going to glue the drawer fronts in place, and not fiddle with working drawers -- I can certainly understand the appeal of working drawers, and I'm not ruling them out in future, it's just that I found myself vexingly klutzy gluing the rest of this thing together, and I would rather just have a pleasing finished piece, and I only want to put stuff on the shelves anyway!  David has been in Shanghai for three weeks, so instruction has perforce been by e-mail, which isn't terribly convenient.

I got a very generous gift card from my in-laws for Christmas, and still had enough on it last week to buy these on Ebay --

The candle-stand and fire-screen came in a single lot, minimum bid $3.99.  I was the only bidder, as it happened, but I still hate Ebay auctions.  I can understand the thrill some people get from it, but it's just not for me: my heart started pounding anxiously even as I was only logging in.  (The first auction I lost, I discovered that they send you an e-mail afterwards with the subject line "Got Away!" and the pictures of what you didn't get, like "what a loser you are!")  The Connecticut table was a "buy it now" and although at $13.99 wasn't as triumphal a bargain, it was a much less stressful purchase!

(How can the 1980s be "vintage"?  This is not possible.)

I made a pair of "portraits" -- not for anything, really, just to figure out how it works.  I found images of a husband-and-wife pair from some online auction house, reduced them to about the right size and layered a cutting circle on top to save myself some fiddling, printed, and stuck them on to these purchased charms.  Perhaps I didn't wait long enough for the glue to dry after this photo -- they seemed stuck to the metal fairly well, but although Mister's "glass" went on perfectly, the one for Mrs. slipped a little and of course the picture stuck to the adhesive on the underside, so that now there is a noticeable sliver of silver showing near her hands.  If I can find another set of the charms, I might take the trouble to do them again, as I've got rather fond of the faces -- unknown sitters, unfortunately.

The D.E. Stevenson list is reading Listening Valley, a story that begins in the early 1930s and follows Tonia, a shy girl with a sparkling older sister and indifferent parents, through the next fifteen years or so of her life.  It is not really a major part of the story, but Tonia has some undiagnosed problem with her hands, making her "butter-fingered", by which her parents are uninterestedly mystified but her sister and Nannie make generous allowance for her clumsiness.  A number of Stevenson characters in other books are seen knitting, but I suppose that this problem with her hands would mean that Tonia doesn't knit herself, but surely Nannie would make this jumper for her, because the quiet and withdrawn Tonia wouldn't have chosen zigzags down the front for herself but Nannie would think they add a little sparkle to her cheeks.  This late-thirties tuppenny Stitchcraft pattern leaflet is a scan from the British Library collection, generously available free from The Sunny Stitcher.

Talking of Yahoo lists, I joined the Petitpointers list the other day, which as you might tell from the name, is for needlepointers in smaller gauges.  The carpet above is my first from Frank Cooper's book Oriental Carpets in Miniature, which I got for a song from a used-book seller.  This is the Shirvan 1 -- even though I am reducing it a bit from Cooper's 18-gauge canvas to 22, it's still going to be easily twice the size of any miniature carpet I've done before, but the picture is really lovely, so I'm looking forward to it.  These are Paternayan wools, wh. I haven't used in an age.

I'm also taking another FutureLearn course, entitled "Literature and Mental Health".  Jonathan Bate and Paula Byrne are teaming up to explore "how poems, plays and novels can help us understand and cope with deep emotional strain".  I enjoyed immensely Bate's "Shakespeare and His World" course -- he's an engaging and level-headed instructor -- and there are already lots of interesting discussions going on in the comments, plus with this first-run course the instructors are commenting and responding to comments as well, which makes it even more appealing.  There was a sort of attempt at the beginning to maintain an air of academic neutrality about the subject, but of course anyone who reads a lot will already feel, fairly strongly I suspect, that literature is a balm in times of stress or depression, so the outcome is already a foregone conclusion.  I didn't know beforehand that the professors would be talking to such luminaries as Ian McKellen and Stephen Fry, among numerous others, so that's a bonus!  I had to rush through another course, finishing six weeks' worth in less than three, in order to clear my slate for the Mental Health one, but I'm glad I did, as it is rather intense and deeply thoughtful at times, even in the first week.

 

Adlestrop

Yes. I remember Adlestrop --
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop -- only the name

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

-- Edward Thomas, 1917

Some More 16th-century Stockings

The Renaissance Faire is coming up in April and May, which sounds a long way off unless you need to make some more garb, in which case it's uncomfortably close.  I am the only one who has a complete outfit that still fits -- Julia grew out of hers and into Laura's, and is now edging her way out of that one, and David never has had period nether garments (no, he just wore some old Dockers!), so since knitting I think will take me the most time, I am going to start on a pair of knitted stockings for him, to go under a new pair of Venetians.

David doesn't really have a "persona" since we aren't deeply enough into Faire-going for that, though I did originally start his garb thinking "Swedish soldier" (since he wants a sword!), but as his green jerkin is a little snug in the arms, I am thinking of re-fashioning it -- so I don't have a definite style in mind for the ensemble, but luckily for me there are only minor regional variations in stockings, if indeed there are many at all.

There are in fact a number of good and excellent reconstructions of 16th-century stockings available, and one could either recreate a known stocking or cobble together bits from different ones.  This, I suspect, would be the best route since of course a stocking knitted for a particular person would have to be adjusted anyway.

Being not only of natural fibers, generally wool (and therefore vulnerable to time and the elements), but everyday (and thus not "worth" saving), extant 16th century common stockings are fairly rare, but here are two from the Museum of London --

One of a pair of stockings (nos. A26851 and 2), found at an archaeological site in Worship Street, Finsbury, EC2.  The stockings are described by the Museum as "knee-length wool" with a vague date of "1501-1599".  This is obviously a very basic stocking, with little or perhaps even no shaping until about halfway down the foot, where there are a couple of decreases, presumably preparatory to narrowing the toe.  It isn't clear in the photograph, and perhaps the stocking is too damaged now, to tell whether there is a round toe or a wedge, but apparently both were known at this time.  I suspect that the strange angle of stitches at the heel is a darn, not shaping, but it would be interesting to see the other of the pair to be sure; unfortunately an image is not posted on the Museum website.

Stocking foot (no.A13833).  The Museum writes, "This skilfully knitted silk stocking-foot is the only example of its kind in England. A highly fashionable garment, it was probably imported from Italy or Spain. It may have been sold in one of the luxury drapery shops in Cheapside," and gives the gauge as a very fine 18 sts and 30 rows per inch.  They date this "mid-16th century" but allow that stockings began to appear in England during the reign of Henry VIII, though they were rare and expensive at that time.

This particular stocking foot is clearly related to the "Barnim foot" with its inverted gusset opening from the center bottom of the heel outwards to the toe along the bottom of the foot.  This knitter has neatly edged both the instep gusset and the foot gusset with garter stitches, making a very elegant foot indeed.  The heel appears to be a common heel, possibly even unshaped, much like the Exenterata stocking of 1655.  Interestingly, there appear to be decreases narrowing the heel flap towards the bottom ---- would these be meant to pull the heel flap more snugly against the wearer's foot?  I'm puzzled by the other line of what appear to be holes, running just about parallel to the bottom edge of the foot in this photo -- they seem unusually tidy for damage, but I can't explain them otherwise.

So I have thought and thought and changed my mind any number of times -- Carnamoyle?  Gunnister?  Johan III?  Barnim?  English?  Swedish?  Anglo-Scandinavian? Scottish-Anglo-Irish-Scandinavian?? -- but David is off on another long trip at the end of the week, and I'd like to have a good bit of the first stocking knitted before he leaves, to make sure I'm on the right track shaping-wise, so I'm going to cast on right now ....

Sontags, in Three Original Patterns and a Collection of Period Photographs

I've gathered here numerous period photos of sontags and maybe-sontags, and some not-quite-sontags, as part of my research as I knit one for myself.  I remember some historical costumers sighing over the fact that all of the sontags they saw at re-enactments were knitted to the same pattern, again and again, but it's pretty obvious from these photographs that there must have been as many different versions as there were knitters, so that unless the modern knitter is actually re-creating a period pattern, there is no reason why you need to stick to the basketweave one from Godey's.

The version worn by the lady above might be knitted in a honeycomb stitch, to which she has added a two-color crochet edging.  She also appears to be wearing fluffy netted sleeves.

Here are three original patterns --

the earliest one from the 1860 Godey's,

 another one from the next year's Godey's (1861),  (A "habit-shirt" was a sort of dickey, or as Chambers' dictionary has it, "a thin muslin or lace under-garment worn by women on the neck and shoulders, under the dress", which sort of makes sense but not quite here, as of course the sontag is worn over one's dress.)

and a third by Mrs. Weaver, in Peterson's Magazine of 1862.  The two Godey's patterns are very similar in effect, especially with the faux ermine trim (!), but the first one will result in a definite U-shaped piece, while the second will give you a V-shaped piece, since you not only start with only five sts but you also don't cast off any sts at the back neck.  There is no mention at all in the second one of closures, whether ties or button.

Mrs. Weaver's is different yet again, as while she does use the U-shape (which would certainly sit better on the wearer's neck), her front points appear to be a little squared off, and at least in the illustration don't wrap around the wearer's body.  She is unfortunately rather non-committal about how one secures it, which might explain the solution of these two ladies --

which appears to be to simply to tie it together with a cord over the wings at one's waist.

The photographer has with his highlighting unfortunately obscured the details of this lady's sontag, but it has a very similar crocheted border to that of the lady in the top photograph, though here the shell stitch is in a single color.

This one appears to be entirely crocheted, but is not perhaps strictly a sontag either, since the ends don't seem to go all of the way around the wearer's waist and attach to the back of the garment.

This lady's sontag has a deeper and frillier border than most, which make it come further down the upper arm than the previous ones.  Her ties are also longer than the others, but also end in pom-poms.

 

This lady has chosen a very striking three-toned stripe for her sontag.  It's too bad that her arms are in the way, as it looks like the points of the sontag end in the front, presumably with ties that wrap all of the way around and back to the front.

This is I think the most "famous" example of a sontag now, as it's the one you see most often if you Google "sontag bosom friend".  It appears to be entirely crocheted, and unlike the 1860 Godey's pattern, has ties that wrap all of the way around and back to the front.

This lady's is quite vivid with its checked two-color pattern!

This is the only one I have seen that does not have a contrasting border.  It's too bad the image isn't bigger, as it looks like she might have used a ripple or feather-and-fan edging.

This lady shows up in a collection of sontag photographs, but I don't think it really can be called that, as while it is clearly related, it doesn't wrap around the wearer, who has instead attached it at the neck, perhaps with a chain, and left the points to hang free like a short tippet.

I am not sure that this can really be called a sontag, either, as it doesn't wrap around in the same manner.  This looks to me like she heard about a sontag and thought it was a good idea, but hadn't seen the illustration.  (Or perhaps made it according to the pattern in the book and found out, like so many of us do, that it was too small, and just made do.)  I do like the lacy border, though!

Oh, I wish this image was bigger!  It looks very like the Godey's basketweave.  The "wings" on this one are rather short, perhaps not even making it to the wearer's side -- which is just what the 1861 Godey's one does, where "the ends cross over the bosom".

In summary, the definition of a sontag or "bosom friend" seems to be a U- or V-shaped piece which lays over the wearer's shoulders, with the wings being long enough to either just meet at the waist (with straight ends) or, far more usually, to wrap around the waist, sometimes to the extent of meeting at the center back.  Strings or cord of some sort are usually used to secure the wings, with those that are long enough being secured also with a button where the points meet at the back.  There is always some sort of edging, often crocheted but sometimes knitted (perhaps also with a narrow crochet edging); the edging is usually in a contrasting color.  The crucial element of a sontag, if you want to be a stickler (and don't we?!) seems to be its U- or V-shape, otherwise it is a variant of a hap or similar shawl (triangular or square folded cross-wise) that wraps around the waist and ties at the back.

(I doubt, by the way, that it was ever called a "bosom buddy", which I have seen lately.  The word "buddy" first appears in print, according to Merriam-Webster, in 1850, just a little earlier than the sontag shows up, but I suspect that it would have been thought too slangy for ladylike use.  The phrase "bosom buddy" first appears, according to Dictionary.com, in the 1920s, much too late for the sontag.)