Friday, October 26, 2007

Civil War Knitting

He's crocheted and not knitted, but this guy popped up on ebay today. For only $500 he can be yours. Well, you'd get him, his "diary" (which actually seems to be some letters), and some stamps.

He's a great opportunity to study nineteenth-century material culture, and I've never seen a hat like this one before. Never say never. It looks like it's worked in some kind of crochet stitch, and my vocabulary is pretty limited there.

I also have some questions about the pompom. If I squint really hard, it actually looks like it's also crocheted around some kind of light-weight form, but I can't imagine such a thing.

Regardless, this hat would be fun to reproduce.


Which brings me to ...



Tomorrow, I'll be presenting a talk on Civil War knitted and crocheted purses, miser's purses, reticules, and more. There will be plenty of slides of originals items, original photographs, original patterns, and more. I'll also have several reproductions available for fondling.



When: Saturday, October 27; 11 am
Where: Knitorious
Cost: Free

Bonus: You get a free modern translation of a period pattern for this knitted purse. It's very cute if I do say so myself.

3 comments:

Annie said...

How did everything go?!

Um. I don't need that hat... **grin***

7-letter Deborah, never a Deb said...

It went fine. Some people came in from a guild in Springfield, IL. Big, big thanks go out to Tammy for getting the projector, Chris for setting it up, Fiona for testing the pattern, and Rachel for setting it up. They rock!

Anonymous said...

Nice hat. What's in his mouth? Reminds me of a hookah...