Stocking Cap Redux

Thanks to the comments on the first post (http://historyknits.blogspot.com/2012/08/19th-century-knitting-from-painting.html)  about this project, I finished this as a double stocking cap, one that is folded inside of itself.  The first half, when I was not sure exactly what I was knitting, measured 29 ½” long, with a width of 16” around. I doubled the length, knitting the second part in the natural/undyed yarn as in the original painting.

 

The cap was knit on 5.5mm/US 9 sized needles using Brown Sheep Nature Spun Worsted in Winter Blue, Natural, Red Fox, Charcoal, and Lullaby. I put it through two laundry cycles with bed sheets in the washing machine on hot water, and dried it by air over a rack. The cap fulled in terms of width but not all that much in length, losing only 9” (down to 20 ½”) and  only 4 ½” (down to 11 ½”) around.

I based my original measurements on a comparison with the body of the young girl knitting in the painting, using a child of a similar age as a model. Shrinking the cap down by hand might have produced a cap that would fit a child but I think I really needed to have twice the width, and have worked on larger needles. As it is, my cap would fit a baby’s head but then I am not going to re-knit the whole cap to make it about twice its size to allow for fulling. It was just fun to reproduce knitting from a painting.

{Apologies for the two sizes of font. I cannot seem to correct it.}