hats and knitting

So I've been ruminating on hats a bit. I'm really quite fond of the silly little bowler-esque hat that spoon guy is wearing (previous post). And that particular hat seems to wander through a number of period paintings. Mostly, I'd like to know what it's made of. I'm guessing wool? Perhaps felted wool? Hat-making, you see, is one of those slightly intimidating parts of the costuming process. I have a thought though, which is that I could knit this thing. I went through a phase a couple of years ago wherein I would knit giant shapeless things and then felt them into smaller, also rather shapeless things (like handbags mostly), then block them into shape and foist them onto people since goodness knows I don't actually use anything I make. The key point is that if you knit them huge enough, necessitating that you felt them a lot (thereby filling your washing machine with scary little drowned mouse looking bits of wool and your house with the stench of wet sheep), the stitch definition just about disappears, particularly if the yarn has a bit of a halo, as in one with a touch of mohair. As in, Lambs Pride. Which reminds me, Anita, do you have any black wool? (Shopping at Anita's house is the very best way to acquire yarn.)

Speaking of knitting...I wonder whether their stockings (netherstocks?) are knitted or linen or wool or what. I could do any of those, provided I have enough time. And the knitting could wander about with me, unlike the rest of the costuming stuff. Maybe I should also be looking for natural wool in a gauge larger than sock yarn.

Ok that was astoundingly boring, but I'll leave it anyway. So that later I may have the pleasure of looking back and saying "I thought I would do what???"

peer pressure

Hello. Long time no post. That would be because of the whole "long time no sew" thing. Which would probably in turn relate to the perennial "long time no faire to go to" issue of winter. However, the illustrious Julie has been poking at me (read: e-mailing me interesting pictures of attire) to get moving for this year's faire season. She's switched gears from the planned fancy-pants menswear to a theoretically shorter project. She's doing a Flemish working man to compliment her peasanty goodness. As I have a bit of peasanty goodness myself, as well as a known susceptibility to peer pressure when applied by Julie, I'll be following suit. There's a deadline of course. Conveniently left a bit nebulous at the moment, but sometime in May we're going to hit the Virginia faire in Spotsylvania. We don't really accomplish anything without a deadline.

So then, true to form, Julie put together an informative post wherein she describes how she and Adam carefully chose from different varieties of pants, doublets, hats, etc. It's really nice; take a look.

I looked at every picture from the time period that I could find that featured peasants being their lusty little selves. Did everyone just wander about with some guy's hand casually draped over their bodice? Or casually on their bum? Or something? Seems like it would be hard to get ones marketing/cooking/other peasanty tasks done that way. On a side note, the dress engineer seems to like that feature of this costume. Someone better tell him that this is not so much included with the clothing. Um, sorry, I digress.

And I was where? Oh yes, the patented "research" that goes into every costume...reading Julie's blog, daydreaming over paintings, and writing none of it down. To sum up, for the pants she found that one can have either hose, big baggy pants, or sort of medium baggy pants. The medium baggy pants are the most acceptable from the modern perspective, so she and Adam cleverly chose those. I'm not so big on the remaining options: the huge baggy pants because they would be hot and not so body-conscious, and the hose because they would be a wee bit too body-conscious. However, I think that this guy (from Pieter Bruegel's "Peasant Dance") is a good option:

 


He's got hose on, yes. But he also has what I shall dub "peasanty short shorts." I shall also call Aaron "Rather Dashing" the entire time he wears this costume and say "Haldo!" a lot, but that's quite another matter. Are these not the cutest short shorts ever? I love the soccer shorts over upper-stocks with cuffed nether-stocks look (yes, "soccer shorts" is the period term, why do you ask?). I have not so much seen this style worn out and about, although in all fairness I may have just overlooked it.

So yes, I pretty much picked out this outfit, THEN showed it to Aaron, who liked it (I'm getting better at this game). He only vetoed the hat, which is fine. Myself, I think he's going to get a spoon on his hat, like the other guy in the picture.

 


I already have the fabrics for this I think. I had a lucky streak at the local (terrible) fabric stores. First I found several yards of lightweight cream-colored wool in a plain weave for 40% off. I have a whole rainbow of fiber-reactive dyes in my kitchen from dyeing wool roving for spinning, so I should be able to make the wool pretty much any color I want (famous last words no doubt). I subsequently found half a bolt of medium-weight white linen marked down to $5 a yard, which was kind of weird. I suspect that was an accident on Joann's part, but who am I to argue? That I'll need to get some dye for, but I think it'll work out. I believe I'm going to more or less to the color scheme in the picture. I was originally going to do one of the almost-red colors that were so prevalent, but I really like the ugly green and yellow combo. I might change the doublet to something a little brighter. We shall see.