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Lots of Charlotte Hats and a Turquoise Love Affair

October 10, 2020 by HatJunkie

Hello from beautiful Lunenburg. Today I offer you world respite in the form of a turquoise hat. Before I begin my turquoise tale, I will let you know that I have a batch of Charlotte hats ready to meet their heads and if listening to me wax eloquent about turquoise is not your cup of tea, feel free to jump ahead. I won’t take it personally. And if you have decided to stay, I love you very much.

So, a lady walked into my studio (a noteworthy event these days) and we had a lot of fun together. She came on a mission. On her head was a very functional straw hat that served her well. She loved the depth, the size of the brim and the way it turned up and she wanted me to make a winter hat with the same specifications. With great fake confidence I assured her that I could do this. Actually, these kinds of requests always mildly freak me out. My preferred method of hat creation is to first make the hat and then find the head to go with it, but sometimes you gotta be a grown up and step outside your comfort zone. We played hat shop for quite a while and it was so fun to watch her enjoy the experience. When she tried on this beret….

Turquoise knitted and felted beret

….she knew that her hat needed to be turquoise. She also decided that she would like a hand felted hat. Music to my ears. I hate to play favourites but my felt hats are my favourite. The process of taking wool and turning it into fabric is just too much fun and with wet felting the possibilities are endless. There was a tiny obstacle in her request, namely that I didn’t have turquoise wool, but it didn’t take a whole lot of arm twisting to get me to place an order and also throw in several more colours while I’m at it. And so, a turquoise hat was born. Would you like to see what it looks like at the beginning of the process? Yes? Oh, good.

Wet felting a hat

Is that not the coolest thing in the world? Wool, soap, water and a lot of friction…that’s it. I’m not done yet with turquoise. I was so wanting to make red flowers, but the request was for black flowers. There will simply have to be more turquoise hats in my future.

Thanks for sitting patiently through my turquoise tale. Now we can chat about Charlotte hats. All of the following hats are available in my web shop. Just click on the photo.

Scrappy Charlotte in Denim

My Scrappy Charlotte hats are one of my efforts to work with fabric scraps that would otherwise end up in landfill. This one fits a larger than average head size. It will fit between a 23″-23.5″ head size. There is no stretch, so make sure you have measured your head before ordering. The inside of the hat is lined with the most luxurious silk/cotton blend. You will feel like scrappy royalty with this hat on your head.

Another Scrappy Charlotte hat in wool

Oh, I’m sorry for this tease, but literally as I was pressing send to my email list, a lady in Alaska bought this hat. The good news is, now I will make another one in different colours. This Scrappy Charlotte was made from an old wool coat and scraps of locally handwoven wool. It is lined with a cotton and hemp fleece. Super cozy and soft, not to mention very warm. It will fit a medium to slightly above medium head size. It’s a wonderful hat to wear in the most inclement weather. Wool is naturally water repellent and the thick lining will make it very wind resistant.

And next up we have some cozy polar fleece Charlotte hats. These ones do have stretch to them. I’d say they work best for a 22″-23″ head size. If you have a smaller or larger head size I am happy to make a special one for you. These are just the ones that I had time to make. Have you noticed that everything takes longer these days?

Charlotte in Salmon and Forest Green

What can I possibly say about this hat other than cozy? I will mention that the band is not black. It is a dark forest green. It looks a bit darker in the photo.

Charlotte in Turquoise and paprika

If you have been following my blog for a while you’ll know that I am using up the polar fleece that I have, but not buying more. I have plenty of some colours, but the turquoise is now officially gone. This is the last turquoise fleece hat I have. (but there’s always felt)

Charlotte in Brown and Black

I always think brown and black are so beautiful together.

Purple and Green Charlotte

Purple and green is another recurring colour combination in my life. Did you know that they were the official suffragette colours, along with white? Oh, fine, since I mentioned Suffragettes I’ll show you my Margaret Suffragette hat that I just shipped out to Virginia. A voting hat if there ever was one.

I almost forgot…my finished sweater! I’m calling it Pocket Full of Posies. During the Middle Ages people put flowers in their pockets to ward off plagues, so I thought it couldn’t hurt.

…and with that, I wish you peace and love and health. I will chat with you all again, soon.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Canadian fashion, hat shop, nova scotia, Nova Scotia crafts, zero waste fashion

Looking Backwards, Looking Forwards

September 14, 2019 by HatJunkie

Yes, I knit this beautiful Skymning shawl by Sophia Kammeborn

And just like that, it’s over. I blinked and summer went away. I’m not sure that I swam enough or spent enough time in the garden, but I gave it my best shot.

The older I get, the more I am aware that sometimes you just gotta hang up the closed sign and go for coffee with your husband at the Point General Store in Blue rocks, because life doesn’t wait for anyone.

If you live remotely close or plan to visit then you really need to make Blue Rocks a destination. Tony and I even went on a kayak tour. Would you believe I had never been on a kayak? For shame! Paddling around Blue Rocks is a bit like paddling into prehistoric times. I highly recommend this mode of time travel.

The view from The Point General store in Blue Rocks, Nova Scotia
A picnic at The Annapolis Basin Conference Centre

Mostly we stuck around the Lunenburg area, but our son Dustin, who has been bit by the the theatre bug, spent two weeks at a musical theatre camp outside of Annapolis Royal. To be honest, two weeks without adolescent (and he’s actually an easy one) is on par with any tropical vacation. The most relaxing aspect of theses two weeks was how easy it was to keep the fridge stocked. Seriously, I can hardly remember a time when a freshly baked batch of granola lasted more than a few hours.

When it was time to retrieve our young and extremely tall food inhaler, our dear friend , the beyond talented, extremely generous and adorable Cynthia Myers asked if she could tag along to watch the closing show.

Cynthia is Dustin’s theatre teacher, a talented actor, musician and playwright. She’s every parent’s dream. That educator that truly cares about each kid as though they were her own. I can’t tell you how many times we say, “Thank Heavens for Cynthia”. If your child has the slightest interest in acting and you live on the south shore of Nova Scotia then sign ’em up quick! Click here

So, “tag along” she did and she just happened to bring along this little picnic. You know, the kind where you have a cooler and a beautiful picnic basket with enamel ware and then you pull out the homemade chicken and 3 kinds of salads and a homemade pie and a bottle of wine and a thermos of coffee…

Hand Felted Merino Wool Cloche

I’ll share some more backward glances at summer later, but I don’t want you to think that I am anything less than ecstatic at the prospect of autumn. I love autumn! Give me crisp, cool mornings, oranges, reds, brown and yellows with sparkly skies for 200 days of the year, please.

In hat land what I currently most love making are my hand felted hats. I know that in the name of feeding that tall child I need to also make my best seller hats, but these ones are my babies. My plan is to create a separate online shop for my one of a kind creations. I’ll, of course, keep you posted, but feel free to enquire if the hat is calling your name.

Hand Felted Merino wool dangling flower cloche

This is the sister hat. Wait, I have to show you the top…

Pretty cute, eh? I do love a classic hat, but I also love a slightly askew version of a classic hat. You know, like an elegant 1920s style cloche with a flower growing out of the top. Just a wee bit nutty.

hand woven cloche

I am also trying to make more of my Maisie hats. These are made from fabric that was woven for me by Marrie of Double Whale Handwoven, here in Lunenburg. She, unfortunately, won’t be weaving me any more fabric because she said it took too many beers for her to get through weaving so many metres of these tightly woven fabrics. I get it, I really do, but I am heartbroken. The fabrics are just so beautiful. I still have a good amount of several colours, but once they are gone they are gone.

This beautiful lady walked into my studio and walked away with this orange version. Actually, I own the same one. Orange lovers unite! (Dyslexics of the world untie!) Sorry, that just popped into my head.

Handwoven wool cloche

But if I could own another one (no, I can’t take them all) it would be this one. Aren’t those greens beautiful? And the sweater…Did you notice the sweater???

I designed this! Really, I did. How crazy is that? Next month will be my two year kniteversary. I’m sorry to brag, but I’m proud of myself. I have gone through my whole life believing that I am completely hopeless at math, but turns out that I just needed to put it all into the context of knitting. Who knew? Designing is really not rocket science. I could show you. It’s very basic math and just deciding what stitch patterns you want to put together. O.K. I’m simplifying it a little bit, but it’s just like anything else, it seems impossible until you take the first step. I won’t be writing out the pattern anytime soon because I learned that pattern writing is really time consuming, but I am working on writing out some other, simpler designs.

I actually planned to quit trying to write out patterns because of time and because it’s hard to get a pattern seen. But I have since come to the conclusion that it’s good for my chaotic mind to go through the exercise of writing these things down even without financial gain. I’m not, by nature, a writer downer. By nature I am a keep everything stored in some remote crevice of my brain kind of person. If, in time, I figure out a way to sell some patterns, that will be a bonus.

Speaking of writing things down…I am currently reading Bird by Bird, by Anne Lamott. My friend Devorah came for a visit and gave me this book. Like everything that Anne Lamott writes, it’s wonderful. The timing of receiving this book was also pretty perfect.

One of my reasons for quitting social media was because I felt like every paragraph I wrote on Facebook took me one step further away from writing a book. Writing is just one more of those things that I enjoy doing, but don’t do enough of. ( It’s hanging out with my gardening, dancing, hiking, biking, swimming and cooking.)

Facebook, for me, was a quick and easy way to tell stories. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I felt like the constant sharing of anecdotes was taking away my motivation to write my thoughts out in long form. Not sure I’ll get that book written, but this book is pretty inspirational.

She talks about how when her brother was a child he had a book report to write on birds. He had, before him, encyclopedias and library books on many different birds and he was freaking out at the enormity of the task before him. His father said, take it one bird at a time, son. One bird at a time. Seems like advice that can be applied to most things in life.

I will leave you with one last little tale and then a few more summer photos.

This is Brian Davis. He bought this hat from me. He is my neighbour and friend and I love him. Less than two years ago he could be seen running the streets of Lunenburg. Brian has ALS. Brian is dying. I know that’s not the most tactful way of putting it, but I think it’s the most appropriate.

You see, Brian is dying the same way he has lived, with passion and curiosity, intensity and openness. He wheels up to my door regularly and shares his excitement for having been approved as an organ donor and shares his excitement for his green burial and the wonders of his wheel chair and he tells me how much he loves every last little thing he is still able to do and how he is grateful for the wonderful life he has had. He’s not pretending that he’s not dying. He tried every treatment out there and he felt they helped, but he knows that he has to go. Death is his final adventure and he’s living every moment of it. Of course I want him to stay, but he is leaving me and anyone else who is close to him with the most incredible gift. He is sharing his courage with us.

I apologize if I choked you up there. Here are a few more summer customer photos. Thanks for spending some time with me.

nemesis socks by Ambrose Smithhttps://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/nemesis-socks-2

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: American musical theatre academy, Anna shoub, blue rocks, Cynthia myers, eco fahsion, hand felted hats, handmade hats canada, handmade hats Nova Scotia, handwoven hats, hat maker, hat shop, hats Halifax, knitting, knitting design, ladies hats, lunenburg, milliner, nemesis socks, Nova Scotia crafts, Nova Scotia handmade, nova sotia, pleasant paddling, skymning shawl, the hat junkie, the point general, wet felting

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