Thinking about Warm Things

Winter is coming, guys. This means the need for warm things. At least where I live. My living history group tends to have a lot of events in the spring and it can continue to be chilly then. And the historic/house museum I plan to eventually spend more time volunteering at also has winter events. And I have outfit ideas, so I've been looking at a lot of fashion plates, specifically bustle era ones. Now, there are lots of documented cold weather things for Civil War era, like big cloaks and hoods. But the plates and photographs and pictures I've been looking at do NOT show an adequate amount for the kind of winter weather I'm accustomed to. They have hats high on the head that totally don't cover the ears. In my world, that means frostbite. But there were people living in Canada during the 1870s and 80s, so they must have been wearing something over their ears, right?

Well, in my search for bustle era hoods, I stumbled across Canadian clouds. I'd looked into clouds before, AKA nubia, nubian. (Partly because koshka_the_cat was knitting one before and because Laura Ingalls knits a nubia for Mary at some point in the Little House books.) Much of this research had been on the Sewing Academy forum, searching through the threads. The Ragged Soldier also has a couple of knitting patterns. You can also see a pattern for a nubia on Ravelry. These all had information, but small amounts of info. Then I stumbled onto a great post by someone who had done research and was posting on Ravelry's Historic Knitting group. See here: West Coast Fibre Arts. And this is where I found the name Canadian cloud. See, I had all these questions like what sort of stitches were used for clouds and what colors were popular and how were these 3 yard long scarves worn. This blog post gave me lots of info, references in historic texts, and pointed me to where I could look up more info: Google Books. (Search knit nubia, knit cloud, knit canadian cloud and you should find the same things I did in handiwork manuals etc. from the period.)


^Knit nubia from 1916

Cloud facts:

1. They could be knitted or crocheted


2. They usually use very fine yarn (often Shetland, though Berlin, Pyrenean, and Andalusian are also mentioned (whatever those mean), and silks, so something fine) but large needles


3. They can be from 1 to 3 yards long (saw a few patterns saying 2 1/2 yards, others give a number of stitches or pattern repeats)


4. Seem to have been worn from 1850s-1920s (I've seen patterns dated from between these dates, could be an even greater range)


5. Popular colours are white, light pink, light blue, red (for brunettes) as well as combinations of colours like white with red (only for young girls), pink or blue, black or lavender (for older ladies), mix of yellow and black (for brunettes), and a few other colours, sometimes are striped by colour or stitch pattern


6. Worn by all kinds of people, especially popular amongst Canadians and Americans (no surprise about this if you've ever experienced a northern winter), and, although the Sewing Academy says that they were worn for nicer occasions, I found a source that says they could be made in darker coloured stripes for poor people


7. Although many repro knits tend to be flat rectangles with plain edges, a lot of patterns say to gather the ends and finish with tassel or knit/crochet lace borders or add a fringe on the ends or even have a fringe on one end and a tassel on the other (one end goes on the head and the other wraps around the neck)


8. One end could be a hood


9. They are worn over other headgear, like toques or evening hair arrangements

Yeah, when I finish my shawl, this is probably going to be the next thing on my knitting needles.

And yeah, this is what I've been looking at when I should be finishing my end-of-term essays...