A Bluestocking Knits

Knitting in the Movies: "The Hobbit"

Well, I seem to be in a bit of a house-keeping mood this week (blog-keeping?), tidying up old draft posts and putting them up.  When I wrote this in 2014 (!!) I said "I'm a bit behind with this, I know -- 'The Desolation of Smaug' came out nearly a year ago!" which sounds positively ancient by now.  These photos, though, especially the studio ones, are still pretty good, and worth posting for the knitwear and my theme, even though my opinion of the movies has tumbled considerably.

So -- these are from the first "Hobbit" movie, of course, "An Unexpected Party".  I think all of the dwarves have hand coverings of some sort, but not all are knitted.  Ori, on the far right here, has heavy garter-stitched fingerless gloves.

He also is the only one who has a knitted waistcoat, which gives him a sweet air of childlikeness in addition to Adam Brown's own, as though Ori's mother sent him off with extra warm clothing.

Sometimes he wears the waistcoat properly, and sometimes twisted and cast somehow about his neck like a cowl.  I must admit I can't quite figure out how this works, as the thing isn't circular!  Maybe he's just pulled out his arms and tucked up the hem around his shoulders.

Óin (John Callen) here has some pretty splendid knitted gloves, whose swirling cables echo that splendid beard.

Bofur (James Nesbitt) wears a multi-colored garter-stitch scarf.

Bombur (Stephen Hunter) has, perhaps not coincidentally, the thickest mitts, even with an extra moss-stitch patch sewn to the back of the hands.

Gandalf (Ian McKellen) has knitted mitts as well -- these are apparently folded back for extra warmth on the hands.  Unlike the dwarves' mitts, these don't appear to have a knitted thumb.  (The scarf is not knitted but woven, though I'm sure someone has come up with a knitted version by now!  Here's one, in fact.)

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

An Ytre Norskøya Cap, ca.1700 -- Part 1 (Researching)

While I was doing some online research about the Smeerenburg caps I wrote about a few weeks ago, I came across a pattern for one called a "Smeernberg" cap, which the author said was Swedish.  Well, of course I was intrigued, not only for the historical knitting and the connection to Smeerenburg, but to the fact that it was said to be Swedish.

The page was pretty old -- one version of it was in fact defunct -- but with the help of a member of the HistoricKnit list I'm on, I sent an e-mail off to the author, Maeve Kane, who responded, as we used to say, "by return of post" and generously provided me with no less than four PDFs of her sources.

Spitsbergen is the largest island in the Svalbard archipelago, some distance off the northwestern coast of mainland Norway.  It was first used as a whaling base in the 17th and 18th centuries by the Dutch and the Danes, then for coal mining by the Russians and as a fishing base for various northern countries.  For centuries, the whole archipelago was known as Spitsbergen (from the Dutch spits + bergen, "pointed mountains"), but after control was ceded to Norway in the 1920s, it was re-named Svalbard (sval + barð, an old Icelandic name for the place probably meaning "cold edge/coast") , and after 1969 the name Spitsbergen referred only to the largest island in the group.

Smeerenburg, the first and largest of the whaling settlements in the area, was on a point of Amsterdam Island, in the NNW corner of the archipelago.  It was founded by Danish and Dutch whalers in 1619 and in its heyday had sixteen or seventeen buildings, including a fort, with cobbled alleys so that the men could keep their feet dry -- an important consideration in a place where the summer temperatures average 4 to 6° Celsius (39-43° F) and polar winds with it.  This 1639 painting by Cornelis de Man, "The Whale-Oil Refinery near the Village of Smeerenburg", was not painted from life, but is supposed to give a representative if somewhat clean picture of the settlement in its prime.  Late-Victorian idealism gave the settlement a population in the tens of thousands, though the reality is more likely to have been at best about two hundred.

Here is another, closer map --

(Bree is Norwegian for glacier [breen = the glacier], and øya is "island".)

Another whaling settlement was about fifty km to the northwest on Ytre Norskøya, which settlement was founded around the same time as Smeerenburg by a rival whaling company.  By the time it was abandoned fifty years later, there were at least 165 whalers buried in its cemetery.

(Click on the speaker symbol in the Google Translate box here to hear how to pronounce "Ytre Norskøya"!)

In this photo, seen from the south --

the settlement and burial sites are at the foot of the steep rise.  As much of the area is now national parkland, visitors can still go to Ytre Norskøya and here is another photo, from the Norwegian Polar Institute --

facing the south (towards Indre or "inner" Norskøya) with the gravesite area outlined in yellow.  Tourists are asked, I hope needless to say, to not land or walk in that particular spot because of the fragility of the graves, nor to remove anything.

From 1979 to 1981, archaeological excavations were carried out at Smeerenburg and Ytre Norskøya, where about a hundred and 150 graves respectively were found, those on Ytre Norskøya at least in danger of being eroded by the sea.  Due to the polar conditions, much of the clothing in the graves was very well-preserved, and in one of the Ytre Norskøya graves, numbered 579, was found a man wearing these clothes --

Many of the whalers' garments were remarkable for the sheer number of patches and repairs made to them, and this particular jacket is singled out by more than one researcher for that very reason.  It's a poignant reminder of not only the ingenuity and tidiness of the whalers, but also of their distance from home.

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

The deceased 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.

Presumably the brim is turned down in this photo, as the reverse side of the knitting is clearly visible, whereas when worn it would have been turned up as Vons Comis describes.  (Note, by the way, that the drawing of the cap and the photograph of it show rather different proportions.)

Lars Vig Jensen dates the jacket found in grave 579 as ca.1700, so presumably the wearer’s cap would be the same. Jensen also notes that “No specific nationality can be assigned to any of the three cemeteries discussed [Likneset, on the Vasahalvøya peninsula of Albert I Land, Ytre Norskøya, and Jensenvatnet on Danskøya]; however, the graves must represent a majority of whalers from the Dutch and German provinces together with a minority of personnel from England and Scandinavia…. The textile finds should be generally characterised as being Northwest European” (p.52, emphasis in original).

Maeve also mentioned that Vons-Comis describes the 579 cap as single-knit, but at the time of her research she’d also found a similar cap with a double-knit brim in the Skokloster Castle collection, though the image doesn’t seem to be online now (http://emuseumplus.lsh.se/eMuseumPlus). I suspect that Maeve’s 2006 pattern was a mash-up of a number of descriptions of whalers’ caps, and that perhaps the “Swedish” description was simply a mistake. (Presumably there may have been a Swede or two among the whalers at some time or another, but there is apparently no surviving identification on any of the hundreds of burials except I think two, so really no way of knowing the nationality of any of the burials anyway.) Maeve’s version of the cap has the purled brim on the outside, where Vons-Comis clearly says of the 579 cap that the turned-up brim had the “plain” stitches on the outside – in other words, the stockinette stitch was reversed at the turn-up point. It also looks, from the drawing of the cap in Vons-Comis 1987, that Maeve’s version has a different proportion of brim-to-crown, as hers is about one-to-one and the drawing has the upper crown about 2-3 times the height of the brim. I did find a report from a “Smeerenburg Seminar” (Rapportserie, Norsk Polarinstitut, no.38, Oslo 1987) -- containing, among other things, another paper by Vons-Comis, titled “Workman’s clothing or burial garments? Seventeenth and eighteenth century clothing remains from Spitsbergen”, and “Textiles from Danskøya” by Ingrid Lütken in a similar vein. But unfortunately, as I said, it doesn’t seem that the Ytre Norskøya clothing has been discussed since 1990 or so.

So, reluctantly, I must venture that the "Smeernberg" cap is unlikely to be Swedish at all, and that while the construction of the reconstruction (!) is interesting and thoroughly attractive, and certainly produces a cap that could have been worn in the period, it does not actually look like the cap from grave 579 or even any of the other Smeerenburg/Ytre Norskøya finds -- this may very well be why the webpage with the more extensive version of the pattern does no longer exist.

It may be possible at a later date to learn more about this particular cap.  It isn't at all clear from the research papers where the cap from grave 579 is now, but the Norwegian Polar Institute writes, "Any preserved whalers' outfits and other textiles from the [Smeerenburg and Ytre Norskøya] graves were taken to the Netherlands and are today a part of the Smeerenburg Collection, large parts of which were returned to Svalbard in 2005. Today parts of the collection are on display at the Svalbard Museum," so presumably it is either at the Rijksmuseum or back at Svalbard.

The reason, by the way, that these clothes are so interesting to researchers is that very few actual garments of ordinary people survive from this period.  Paintings are all very well and good for seeing how clothing looked, but they are no substitute for seeing how the seams are constructed, or what kind of fabric was used, or how something was mended!

 

Sources

Map of Albert I Land.

"The history of place names in the Arctic" by Oddveig Øien Ørvoll, at the Norwegian Polar Institute.

"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).

"Spitsbergen" at Wikipedia.

Map of Spitsbergen from Trichinella.org.

"The train oil cookery of the Amsterdam chamber of the Northern Company at Smeerenburg" painting (1639) by Cornelis de Man (1639), based on a painting of a "Dansk hvalfangststation" (Danish whaling station) by ABR Speeck (1634), via Wikipedia.

"Whalers's [sic] clothing from a 17th-18th century cemetery at Likneset, Northwest Svalbard" by Lars Vig Jensen (pp.36-55 in “Acta Borealia” 7:2, 1990).

"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.

"Ytre Norskøya" (English) and "Ytre Norskøya" (Norwegian), at Wikipedia.

"Ytre Norskøya" and "Smeerenburg" by Øystein Overrein (ed.), Jørn Henriksen, Bjørn Fossli Johansen, and Kristin Prestvold, at the Cruise Handbook for Svalbard from the Norwegian Polar Institute.

Photo of "Ytre Norskøya seen from the south" by Erlend Bjørtvedt, at Wikipedia.no.  (The caption says that the settlement and burial sites are scattered across the coastal plain nearest the viewer, with the lookout point to the right.  It is not clear to me why the so-called look-out point would be on a much lower place than most of the rest of the island, as well as facing the other islands instead of the sea, but there it is.)

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

Woollen Caps ("Muts") Worn by Dutch Whalers at Smeerenburg, 17th century

From 1979-1981, an archaeological expedition at Smeerenburg, on Svalbard in the Arctic Ocean, uncovered the remains of a nearly-mythological Dutch whaling station in operation from 1619 to about 1657.  The expedition was apparently somewhat deflated to find that the station was no larger than about sixteen houses and eight blubber-boiling stations, not the bustling metropolis of 10,000 residents with shops, churches, and (of course) brothels they had been led to expect (Nansen apparently had much to do with the exaggerated claims of Smeerenburg's size) -- but there was, poignantly, a cemetery with a hundred or so graves, and I suppose due to the conditions so far north, much of the clothing of the occupants was very well-preserved.  Here are ten knitted caps from Smeerenburg graves, which caps are all on view in the Rijksmuseum today.

Above, NG-2006-110-2, ca.1650-1700, about 61 cm x 30 cm h.  Knitted cap, double, in striped wool with ear flaps and a folded edge.

"The Whale-Oil Refinery near the Village of Smeerenburg" (1639) by Cornelis de Man (accession no. SK-A-235).  De Man did not actually travel much farther north than Denmark, but created this painting of Smeerenburg (literally "blubber-town") in his studio at home from a Danish painting of a Svalbard whaling station and from other images.  (Here, a whale is being carved into smaller pieces and rendered in vats on the beach at left, and the men's barracks can be seen at right in the background.)  Perhaps tellingly in light of the fact that de Man was never at Spitsbergen, few if any of the men in his painting are wearing caps like the ones found in the graveyard --

-- but there is certainly a wide variety here as well, from black burgher's hats to the rather-Mongolian one on the portly fellow in the foreground at right.

I can't seem to find much readily-available on the archaeological finds at Smeerenburg, only a brief mention in the Wikipedia article on the archaeology of Svalbard as a whole, except for a distractingly-interesting article from ScienceNordic, and another from the Basement Geographer.  But knitted caps, that's what I was talking about.

"Muts" is specifically a knitted or crocheted cap in Dutch.  Many of these Smeerenburg caps are knitted in two layers -- obviously for warmth, although the Dutch whalers only rarely wintered there, and apparently not in great numbers even then.  It is pretty cold in Svalbard, with average high-summer temperatures of 3 to 7° C (37.4 to 44.6° F) -- the Rijksmuseum writes in each of their captions that the men were bundled up so tightly against the cold that "[they] recognized one another only by the pattern of stripes on the caps".  It isn't clear, though, from the descriptions, if the caps are double-knitted or simply knitted and then doubled.  Most of the caps are fulled to some extent, which certainly would make them thicker and warmer.  The variety even among these ten is impressive, though there is definitely a "family resemblance" among some.

By the way, a number of these ten caps are noted as having "earflaps" but not a single photo shows what I would call earflaps, so it isn't clear what is meant, and images from various travelers' blogs of the caps on display, on short hat-stands, show nothing more than what is in the photos here, so if anyone can elaborate, I would be grateful!  Presumably they are something like the ones on a cap at the V&A (acc. no.1570-1901) ca.1500-1550, which could be folded up inside the cap.

NG-2006-110-10 ca.1650-1800, about 58 cm x 23 cm h.  Knitted cap, dark blue with horizontal stripes, in chunky wool.  At the bottom edge, the stitches are reversed, so that the right-side of the stitches shows when the brim is folded (bij de rand is de procedure omgedraaid en zitten de tricot-steken aan de binnenkant).

NG-2006-110-5, ca.1650-1800, about 60 cm x 25 cm h.  Knitted cap with double ear-flaps (sic) and folded brim, in fine dark-brown wool, with a small "tail" at the top.

NG-2006-110-12, ca.1600-1800, about 48 cm x 24 cm h.  Knitted cap in green wool with horizontal stripes and blocks in dark and light brown, with ear flaps.  The turned-up edge is about 5 cm deep.

NG-2006-110-3, ca.1700-1800, about 60 cm x 28 cm h.  Knitted cap in fine wool, with ear flaps, striped in red, blue, green, black and light brown, with an inner cap also striped.  "Each part [i.e. the outer and inner caps] has been cut at the top and sewn together" (elk deel is aan de bovenkant ingeknipt en vastgenaaid).  The gauge is 45 rows per 10 cm, presumably after fulling.

NG-2006-110-6, ca.1650-1800, about 60 cm x 24 cm h.  Knitted cap, double, with ear-flaps, in a chunky ikat-striping wool.

NG-2006-110-8, ca.1740-1760, about 64 cm x 33 cm h x 29 cm d.  Knitted cap in fine wool with horizontal stripes in red, green, blue, yellow, and white, lined with a (much thicker) light brown knitted cap.  The inner cap is apparently much smaller than the finer outer one, so that the top of the outer one falls to one side "and the whole therefore looks a bit like a nightcap" (en het geheel lijkt daarom een beetje op een slaapmuts).  The gauge of the outer cap is 55 sts and 100 rows per ten cm, and it was cut and sewn from a piece of flat knitting.

It isn't clear if the Rijksmuseum dates these from other evidence in the burials or from the caps themselves; this one is obviously a step above some of the rougher of these caps, but I don't know if that can be assigned to improved manufacturing techniques or fashion changes, or simply because this one was brought from home where, say, the ikat-striped one above was knitted perhaps by the whaler himself.  (Nor does the museum explain how a whaling station that was abandoned by 1657 could have a grave with goods dated a full century later, though other sources admit that some of the Rijksmuseum caps may have come from another Dutch station.)

NG-2006-110-14, ca.1642-1800 [sic], about 65 cm x 23 cm h.  Knitted cap in fine light-brown wool, double, with ear-flaps and a folded brim.  The brim is about 4 cm, 2 cm when folded, and has two blue stripes on the inside.

NG-2006-110-1, ca.1650-1700, about 52 cm x 22 cm h.  Knitted cap in light, fine wool with a folded hem and a small "button" at the top. 

NG-2006-110-4, ca.1700-1800, about 30 cm x 26 cm h.  Knitted cap with earflaps, knitted in fine multi-colored self-striping wool.  Much repaired.  The inner cap is knitted in light brown, and the two parts are sewn together.

I find it really charming that each of these caps has a unique character, and yet poignant at the same time to think that the caps were buried with their wearers, who must have each had as unique a character as his cap.

Thoughts on Minty and Some More Norwegian Mitts

Here is Julia's hat-and-mitts set for her Washington DC 8th-grade trip, which is coming up quickly at the end of the month.  I made a set for Laura two years ago, and used the same yarns again -- Lorna's Laces Shepherd Worsted and Shepherd Sock -- in Julia's choice of blue.

The hat is Minty by Erica Jackofsky from Knitty a few years back, which works up very quickly and satisfyingly -- this is the striped version without the stripes (the solid version has a different crown shaping).  Julia wanted something that wasn't close-shaped, so I chose this one because the shaping gives it a little squareness at the top of the head.  The scrunch at the side is accomplished with a column of double eyelets with the i-cord laced through -- simple but effective.  The yarn is (of course!) very pleasant in itself, and suits this hat well, too.

The mitts are my own standard Norwegiany mitts, with a ribbed thumb.  As I mentioned previously, I tried something new with this pair, working them "inside out" so as to keep the floats from pulling too tightly.  It turns out that they are quite loose, not quite too loose, but nearly -- but I think this will be all right in the long run, as Laura's have pulled in a little bit with wear and washing, so I expect this pair will be no different.  The places where it is a little too loose are along the edges of the thumb gusset, where I think there would have been problems anyway, with the long floats across the gusset, so I'm still pleased with the method and will certainly avail myself of it in future.

The star is a sort of impromptu one, not from any pattern -- I simply graphed out the initials and date in a block about the right size, and filled in a star pattern.  These initials are a bit larger than Laura's, so I had less space to work with for the star, wh. ended up looking as much Navajo as Norwegian, but I don't think that's a problem per se!

I still haven't worked out to my satisfaction a method of securing the floats behind 2x2 ribbing, but the flashes of white underneath the china blue here are not unpleasing, as it happens --

I think that Julia is actually beginning to come round to the idea that not all wool is scratchy, but I'm not going to tell her I've noticed that she likes wearing these!  We had a cold snap yesterday -- with hail -- after a few weeks of mid-springlike weather, so hurriedly got out the sweaters and scarves we'd discarded, and Julia wore the mitts to school yesterday and today both!

Got Tension?

I had to move my Shirvan-in-progress from a mat frame to my big wooden one, as the opening in the mat was really too big -- I admitted to myself with great reluctance -- and the canvas was distorting dreadfully.  The frame is much heavier and rather awkward for working in my lap, wh. I really have to do because most of the time I work it without my glasses, so have to hold it two or three inches from my face in order to get the benefit of my Super Microscopic Up-Close Vision^TM.  I worked the smaller carpets on a smaller mat, which was perfect for holding up close, and fit into a regular 8 1/2x11 page protector or a zip bag when I wasn't working on it.  Oh, well.  The Shirvan is definitely happier in the frame, I could see at once, though it still has a bit of a list to port.

I am pretty sure that the wobbliness of the stitches is going to come out in the blocking, so I'm not alarmed at present.

You can see the built-in abrash, the color variations often found in Oriental carpets due to time and different dye lots, in the border greens, where there is a darker one along the bottom and a little bit up the side, then a mid-range green continuing.  I learned this word from Cooper, in fact, who remarked on it in the description of another of his charts, that he'd run out of wool and had to match it somewhat imperfectly.  This carpet actually has the color variation charted in a couple of places, so presumably the abrash is in the antique original.

But you can also see the differences in tension, either where I was working up-and-down or side-to-side, or where the wool varied in thickness.  The cream is especially prone to the thick/thin issue -- it's especially obvious to me in the little dashed lines along the bottom edge here, where the outer one is super-thick and the inner one is teeny-tiny.  I'm tempted to work over the teeny-tiny one with another thin strand.

I am really enjoying this carpet, though! the colors are lovely.

Here is another tension issue, though with a much happier initial outcome.  This is the first of Julia's mitts for her DC trip next month.  I got halfway up the stranded part, and wasn't very happy with my tension, so thought I'd try the inside-out trick.  You simply turn the piece inside out and knit it looking at the center -- down the inside of the "tube" -- and the floats are just a little more generous from traveling on the outside of the tube instead of the inside as usual.  I was really amazed at the difference between the two methods, which was obvious after just a few inches.

This still needs a bit of blocking, to be sure, but is noticeably smoother already than the right-side-out method, especially at the needle joins --

The spotted three-stitch stripe up the middle here would have been much wobblier than it is if I'd worked it right-side out.  The white is still a bit looser than it should be, but I'm hoping that a good blocking will fix that right up; I've noticed that Laura's pair, two years old now and much-worn, has tightened up noticeably (to me), so a little looseness at first shouldn't be a problem.  Bit of a mental adjustment, working inside-out, but worth a try!

Knitting in the Movies: "Testament of Youth"

I found out only yesterday that there is a new movie of Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth, her memoir of her experiences as a VAD in the Great War, and the devastating repercussions of that war on women's lives.  I was one of those who was deeply moved by the 1979 television serial with Cheryl Campbell as Brittain, so that I was interested to learn more about the new film. 

It was a pleasant surprise, and rather a relief after writing so recently about the "Outlander" knitwear, to see immediately -- since the above still was the very first thing I saw when I Googled the film -- that there are a number of historically-accurate knitted garments worn by Brittain (played by Alicia Vikander) in the film.  Perhaps the designer's task was made a bit easier, since there is much more available in the way of fashion plates, photographs, and actual patterns, but there it is.  Brittain herself was very interested in clothing, despite her bluestocking air, so it is good to see that the costumes for the film reflect this -- in fact, the blue outfit below is apparently intentionally rather like her description of what she wore when arriving at Oxford, “a flimsy lace frock under a pale blue and grey reversible satin cloak, and an unsubstantial little pair of high-heeled white suede shoes.”

A lovely ensemble, with the high-waisted skirt and the Edwardian-but-not-too-much-so details.  This cardigan would hardly be out-of-place in any period in the subsequent century.

I think that Vera should perhaps be wearing some, er, undergarments here, but this silky jumper is lovely.  (Curious, that Roland's trousers have buttons for his braces, and yet he has none ... but he is apparently going for the louche Rupert-Brooke effect.)

Two more images of the garter-stitch beret, though rather less of that fancifully-embroidered slipover:

Harper's Bazaar has an interesting article about the film's costumes, including many photos.  I must admit that I rather lust after that black velvet hat ...

We Now Return To Our Regularly-Scheduled Knitting

Well, it's a new year, a clean slate and a fresh start and whatnot, and as I started to clear out drawers I haven't opened since Hector was a pup, I saw the corner of something under a bag of those little balls left over from socks through the years.  "Oh my goodness, it's that Setesdal scarf!"  Right, I thought, it's time to do something about those unfinished projects still sitting around.  Yes, they have come bubbling up to the surface of my conscience with uncomfortable regularity -- it's just that until now I haven't had the nerve to publicly out myself.  So, snagging the idea from Rose Red, I am instigating my own WIP-apalooza for this year.  With a button, of course.

Nine works-in-progress to finish in twelve months -- I can do this!  Here they are, I think in order of ancient-ness ...

Setesdal-style scarf, in fine black and white wools.  I bought this wool at Super Yarn Mart, which tells you how long I've had it.  The WIP isn't quite that old, but nearly.  In my own defense, I misplaced it for quite some time, but I had set it aside in the first place because although I like knitting at a fine gauge, I had got to the "dull" lice section, and the idea of another mile and a half of it was starting to get me down.  This -- I will get my confession out of the way up front -- is by far my oldest UFO, probably twenty years, maybe 25.  Shameful -- especially because I still like it.  I'll photograph the ball band next time, for those of you who remember Super Yarn Mart with affection.

Mother-in-law socks, the Blueberry Waffles, in Shepherd Sock's "Purple Club" colorway.  I chose this pattern partly because it was touted elsewhere as being good for avoiding the pool-and-flash problem, and partly -- I admit -- because Purple Club in this pattern looks just like mashed blueberries and cream.  I got distracted by something else, can't remember now what, and put these away out of trouble, and forgot where they were.

Cousin socks in Shepherd Sock's "Pink Blossom".  I had grand plans of cables and patterned legs to make a splendid pair of knee socks, and gradually realized that all of the already-written patterns wouldn't fit M.'s shapely legs, so gradually got plainer and plainer, and more and more disappointed with the results.  If they had been for me, I wouldn't have minded -- I like vanilla, after all -- but when you've got a reputation to uphold, well.  Of course, now my reputation is as a dawdler!  Part of the trouble is that I was also beginning to suspect that I do not have enough yarn....

Garter Heel Socks, from the Vogue sock book, started in May 2009.  This is Chameleon Colorworks Bambino superwash merino/bamboo/nylon blend, in Viridian.  These didn't quite speak to me at the time, so I felt little compunction in pulling out the needles when I wanted them for something else, and here they still are.  I don't know why I felt so indifferent about them, as I like the color, and the pattern goes well with the yarn.

Klaralund, for a friend, who has either shown enormous patience or has completely forgotten I ever offered to knit her one with this yarn, which is the fabulous Noro Silk Garden #39.  I had got pretty far along with a Rosedale cardigan and decided that I looked like a blimp wearing a Noro cardy, so I frogged it and the yarn sat in the drawer for a long time until I'd made a Klaralund for myself, and thought, "hey! that stash of #39! --"

Muriwai Bath Mat, by Mel Clark in her Knit 2 Together book.  Another rather dull project, miles of garter stitch in the round.  I set this aside for two reasons, actually, one because I was knitting it at a purposely tight gauge so that it would make a thick, absorbent bath mat, and it made my hands ache if I worked on it for very long, and also because it was getting so big that I needed yet another circular needle to hold all of the stitches, and I'd already incorporated all of both mine and my mom's.  (Sorry, mom, I still have your needles!)

Selbu mittens, also -- coincidentally -- in that same Super Yarn Mart wool.  I was working on these in January 2011, I see.  Love these, but because I loved everything about them so very much -- the colors, the feel, the Norwegianness -- wanted nothing less than perfection, which because I was making it up as I went along, kept eluding me.

This is number 6 of a set of felted place mats in Araucania Nature Wool, in a funky random stripe.  Mats 1-5 have been in use on the dining-room table for some months, and I like them a lot.  I've started to run out of colors, though, so I wasn't sure if I should just carry on in the narrow-stripes manner, make them considerably wider, or just go for broke and make a solid -- I have lots of green wool left.

Yoga socks, not strictly a UFO since it's only been about a month since I started them -- but technically, yes, they are still unfinished.  This is my former Invercargill scarf, which rolled mercilessly.  I don't like the yarn that much, as it has a weird squishy feel to it, and I don't especially want acrylic on my feet -- and then I had the brilliant idea of yoga-style socks, which I could wear over regular cotton ones.  I still haven't got to the halfway point of the ball yet, and it's nearing knee-height ...

Swatching

This is that lovely Blue-faced Leicester wool that I got for a song at Tuesday Morning a month or so ago.  I decided that it wants to be some Fair Isle mitts, so I'm currently swatching.  These are all on 3mm needles, so a bit less than the 4mm/US6 the ball band recommends -- gauge about 6.5 sts per inch.

The wool is very pleasant to knit with -- smooth and soft, with just a bit of sheen.  The colorwork looks great even without blocking.  The first time I put my hand in the swatch, I said "Oh!" out loud, it felt so good.

Swatch one is a riff on a riff of the colorwork of the Muckle Mitts, a simple zig-zag with crosses -- I used the blue and the mouse as background colors, and the cream and the beige for the pattern.  I like the way this turned out -- and first one out of the gate, too! -- though it's a little blue-heavy, using about twice as much as any of the other colors.

Swatch 2 is less successful.  I wanted to do a simple OXO Fair Isle, but it doesn't really read at this scale, I guess.  Three rows of the second background color didn't work at all, so I changed the first chart, at the bottom, to just one row of the second background color, at the top -- it works a bit better, but still not really.  On the whole, it does have a slighly more balanced use of the four colors.  To my eye, though, the band of the mouse-brown across the very middle probably should be the cream, too.

Swatch 3 is not much of a winner, either.  I like the pattern itself, which is cribbed from some Lion Brand scarf that keeps popping up when I Google "free fair isle chart", but these colors don't have enough contrast to bring it out.  I'm afraid I wasn't very careful with the tension, either, which the longer floats definitely require.  I added in some single stitches in the bottom third, to get the floats shorter, but it doesn't really speak to me that way. 

So No.1 it is!