Wednesday 21 August 2013

A Tale of Four Hats


It started out so innocently. Violet had always loved hats and wanted little Rose to wear hats, especially in the winter, and pixie hats were in for little girls in the 1940s, they really were. And little girls looked cute in almost everything.





Then, ten years later, because Violet was the kind of mother who would say, "I'm cold just looking at you!", she made her daughter something special for a formal at school, the Sequin Earmuffs pattern from McCall’s Needlework & Crafts Annual, 1952. Violet also made Rose a matching clutch and pumps.





For one Christmas present ten years later Violet made Rose the Pixie Loop Stitch Hat from Bangle Hats, published in 1962. She thought it would evoke all Rose's fond memories of the cones of yarn that always sat in her mother's craft room, and also be the perfect career girl hat.





But then it all seemed to go sour. Rose began to insist on making her own hats, and by the early seventies was sporting numbers like this one. Violet really could not understand where she had gone wrong in teaching her daughter to appreciate fine millinery, and prayed for death so that she might never see what her daughter was wearing on her head by the eighties.

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