Millinery: Five Hats in One Day: Gray

For Christmas my daughter gave me six straw parasisol hoods.

Awhile back I blocked five of them in one day.

This is the story of the fourth of the five hats that I blocked in one day.

Remember what the hoods looked like before they were blocked?

The gray one in the middle is the hood that this story is about.

When I first began to make all those hats that day, I took each of the hoods and dunked them one by one into a bath made from hot water and unflavored gelatin.

Here's the subject of today's post, the gray hood, lolling unsuspectingly in the tub (grin!)

In the cabinet below where the gray hood bathed sat a plain old wooded salad bowl.

It had been a wedding gift to me back in 1976 and it had seen a lot of salads, lots of potlucks and a whole lot of family dinners over the years.

Thirty years of same old, same old.

But on that hat making day, that salad bowl was about to have an adventure.

Swooping it up out of the lower kitchen cabinet, I tried the salad bowl on my head.

And it fit!

Sorta...more or less. Anyway, it was big enough I could stick my head inside of it.

Quickly I wrapped the salad bowl in saran wrap.
That really surprised the salad bowl. Usually saran wrap just went over the top, to cover the salad.

Saran wrap all over felt...well, a bit odd.

The saran wrap had to be done this way this time because I knew I was going to pull the gray hood out of the bath and pop it onto the salad bowl turned upside down, and I wanted to make sure that they wouldn't stick to each other as the hood dried.

Now if you are sensitive, you might want to avert your eyes at this point. The next thing that happened to the hood and the salad bowl was a little bit painful.

I'm sure the salad bowl didn't mind too much that I stuck him on his bottom with tacks.

He is a very brave salad bowl. He's had toddlers roll him around, and people knock inside him with salad tongs.

This was probably the hardest thing he has ever had to face.
At least the little holes won't show when he goes back to his regular job.

Knowing how much it must have confused the straw hood to be pulled from a nice warm bath and then suddenly be stretched over a wooden salad bowl, I didn't fuss with the edge of the hood; I just rolled it back in a loose fold.

Then I left the bowl and hood alone for awhile while the hood dried. It's always hard to tell when a hood is dry just by looking, the best way to tell is to feel it. If it feels cool, it is still damp.

After awhile, when the hood was no longer wet, or cool, I took the dried straw hood off that big old salad bowl.

Then I folded that gray hood a bit, added a piece of lace from Switzerland and an old button from my grandmother's button box, and suddenly, with just a few stitches, I had made a hat.

This hat looks different from every angle, a "Robin Hood" style from the back, a cloche look from the side, and a touch of riding cap from the front.

The lace from Switzerland, and the button from Grandma.

I think the top view of a hat is important too, because often you are sitting while you wear a hat, and the first view a person approaching you might get is from the top.

So there you have it, the story of a hood, a salad bowl, a piece of lace and a button.

Stay tuned for the last hat in the series, coming soon!