Late Period Garb Set

Intro

I swore I'd never do this, that I'd never do late period.  I'm early period, through and through!  And then my body started to grumble with age, I felt less and less a part of the heavy community, more and more a part of the fencing community, and drawn to Destreza Iberian fencing.  How plans change :D  I still primarily do early period Irish, but my eye wanders towards some late (technically post) period Spanish male garb.  A regularly reoccuring type of fencing tournament is the By the Book tournament, where you are to fight as close as possible to a particular style.  I figure this is also a good excuse to make a set of later period garb, or at least a hat, pants, and jacket.  The hat because I've always loved the hats with the feathers in them.  The jacket because "reduced armor" may not be allowed in any given tourney, and I would like to have at least some gear to match these rules available.  And pants because if I don't have a leg-covering leine available, I need something to cover my legs and butt. 

As this is not my primary time period, I do not feel obliged to do the deep dive on all the exacting research I normally would.  The patterns are good according to a person who Knows These Things - Sara Bailey. 

Hat

These are pretty much lifted straight from my Facebook posts.  I'm dealing with a good deal of arm pain at this time, and typing exacerbates this.  

6/21
Today: Time to learn dpns! (Slowly. I don't know how much this will piss off my shoulder. But I have the makings for three hats here, so slowly is fine)  The pattern is Sally Pointer's "Knit a Tudor Hat", in which she has done all of the magical research for me!  The yarn source was recommended for me by a person who has knit these hats before!

And with the new magic InstaYarn technology, I could go from Kitty to Knitty! 

6/22 Day 2 of DPN/hat knitting - 10 more rows in, 15 out of 86 in total completed. This is the second most stitches that'll be on the DPNs, and I think I've gotten the grasp of not dropping them.....as long as I work on a table or this little project cutting board. I can't just hold the knitting in my hands like I would a usual knitting project.

6/24 Day 4 of the hat! Today had the trickiest line of the entire pattern - the very first row, the cast on row, had to be combined to the current active row on the needles so the brim would be double thickness. After seeking some expert advice, and with the help of my stitch gauges, I think I mostly managed! The final product will be felted anyway, so slight variances will, literally, smooth out in the wash. If I continue the same amount as I have been, and my body doesn't protest too much, I think the knitting part will probably be done in another 2-3 days!

6/25 Hat day 5! Completed the most number of stitches that will be on the needles at any given time in the project, not that the effect of that is visible at this stage. It's all decreases from here! And then felting 

6/26 Hat Day 6! There's less than 500 stitches left, but my hands are done for the day. We have now entered the Yarn Chicken zone. Also, have a picture from last night of the very silly end-of-Day-5 test fit, when the crown of the hat wasn't yet developed enough to lay right at all 

6/27
Part 1: Hat Day 7! Knitting is done!! I won Yarn Chicken! Felting will be done probably tomorrow using the washing machine method, although it might end up being Monday since I have a good bit of weekend laundry to get through. Future decorations will involve feathers and maybe a wooden bat token. Now I just need to find the case for the dpns so I don't lose them..... I have yarn for 2 more hats in the future!

Part 2: Slight change of plans. In googling instructions on washing machine felting, I would need to be able to control when hot and cold water is hitting the piece. The problem is that my newfangled modern topload washer does not really do this. You just select the load type and you can't really stop/start in the middle of them - interruptions to a cycle just cause it to start a normal cycle from the top.

Manual felting is Not An Option with this arm right now.

Enter This Thing from my apartment days. It has been living in the garage, with all the spiders, since I moved here. So the next step will be de-spidering the manual washing machine so I can run the hat through it for felting. Should be able to start felting tomorrow or Monday still.... provided I can get over the copious former spiders that crawled in here to expire

6/28
Hat: final steps!

One de-spider-corpsing later, and the old apartment washing machine did indeed serve VERY well as a felting vector! In fact, it took me longer to clean it than it did for it to felt the hat - it only took one 15 minute cycle with some old towels. In period, this would be done with manual agitation of the knit item in hot water, followed by using cold water to stop the felting progress.  A test fit found that it still goes on my head nicely, so now it's just up to time to let it dry!

7/2
Haaaaattttttttttttttttttt. It works! (Don't mind the painter's tape, shhhhhh, it doesn't exist. The feather'll be sewn in place when I find the other feathers I want) But it's finally dry! I'm going to be Wise and wear it for awhile at relevant events before using the other two colors of yarn to make the other possible 2