Hats - December 27, 2011

Yep, it turned colder overnight. They'd predicted 20°F, but it was 30 when I got up and walked Anya. But it was bright sun, and the breeze took severl blocks to make me really regret not wearing a hat. Even when we went out to the dog park after dark at 5:30 for a little "geocaching party," it was perfectly pleasant with a hat on.

Hats. It isn't true that you lose half your body heat through your head, but on a cold day it can feel like it. All the extremities tend to lose heat faster than the body's core: just more surface area per volume. Your ears, nose, and chin, being up on top of your body, are also most exposed to wind.

And especially if you're a male, you're likely to begin losing what natural skull-covering you were born with, by the time you're in your mid-20s.

The fur-lined hat, like the fur-lined anuraaq (that's anorak to you) seems like such a natural outgrowth of the instinct to put something—anything—insulating up against the ears, it's probably the foundational hat. After that? foundational proto-knitting like nålebinding or crochet, probably.

I'm in the early stages of Women's Work, and what I find most interesting is how much earlier spinning weaving came to general usage than knitting. Wool twills were being made 3000 years ago, and no-one has mentioned knitting yet at all; the date I recall is somewhere a little before 0 BC, but certainly not into the early Iron age of Hallstatt fabrics. The reason this seems backwards is that the set-up for weaving is so much more involved: stringing the warp into heddles alone is a pretty technically sophisticated job. By contrast, knitting requires a single ball of yarn and two sticks. It's as portable as spinning, a similarly carry-everywhere process.

Besides, who wants to wear a woven hat or mittens?

Now, the piece I want to know about is protecting the face. More later...