Whaler's Cap

It took nearly a year, but I finally finished my knit cap inspired by the 17th century whaler's caps in the Rijksmuseum.  The cap traveled with me to California to visit family and to Amsterdam for a summer vacation.  I had intended it as something to keep me busy, so was not in a rush to finish.

 

But, having now seen one of the actual items I was inspired by, I started to notice certain details.

The first thing is how the brim was turned.  I was following a pattern which said to use a perl row for the turn of the brim.  But, after looking at the caps in the Rijksmuseum, I agree with Mathew Gnagy who blogged about how this doesn't seem to be the case for many historical examples.  The example he uses is a knit tall hat where the edge of the brim is a cast off row.

Unfortunately, I had this realization well after I had knit the brim, and I decided not to go back and start over (again).  For the whaler cap that is my inspiration, it appears that the brim was simply turned, no perl or cast edge can be seen.

The other big difference was that I started to run out of yarn, so the hat should be about an inch taller.  It still has a decent shape and height to it.

Clearly, the whaler's cap has some shaping to the brim that the Red Bay hat does not have.  I'd actually like to try another one that it truer to the shape of the whaler's cap, but I doubt my knitting patterning skills.  Perhaps some day.

I made no attempt to full or raise the nap on my hat.  I don't have any pictures of the Red Bay hat, but the whaler's cap certainly looks like some of the nap has been worn off.

Here is an article about the collection of whaler's caps, and a direct link to the collection at Rijksmuseum.