Silly Hats

I am a huge fan of the silly hats.  Whole outfits have been worked around the wearing of silly hats.  This particular hat is not only silly but mysterious.  It looks like it's fur, but one could knit and full such a hat just as easily (in fact I think I saw someone at a Ren Faire once with just such a hat, though slightly smaller than the one in the portrait).  As I am planning to go to Pennsic this year anyway, I need more cloths, and starting with a silly hat makes as much sense as anything else, so here goes.  Now to figure out how it's constructed and what the best way to reconstruct it will be.

More information on the original portrait can be found at the National Gallery.

There's also this hat:

which to me looks like a mini version of one of these:

They both like a variation on a knit and fulled beret, or possibly a brimless wool flat cap like you see later on.  Of course the top lady is English and the bottom one is German, and a few decades apart, but the basic shape looks pretty similar.

Here's another portrait with a fabulous hairdo and headpiece I sort of love and may have to copy and thus work a whole outfit around as well (maybe the same outfit).  This one should be much cooler (duh) than the one above, and gives me a good reason to not cut off my hair.  I am sort of wondering if it's a beaded piece or a metal band though.  Beading would be far easier for me to do, as I already know how to do that.