Voyageur cap pattern

link from the "big" knitlist.

I've said before I like the idea of "historical" knitting - of making things (like a Voyageur cap or the Charlotte Bronte shawl) that are based on patterns from the past. I don't know why. I think part of it is the sense of connection, the being able to "go back and shake hands with" someone or something from the past. And part of it is maybe the hands-on inner-child that I have - I like the idea of putting on a hat and thinking, "Ah, so this is what it would have looked like, and felt like, and smelt like [provided I used a natural wool or the fiber the pattern called for]." The tangibility of it.

I already own a Voyageur-style cap, made from a kit from Imperial Stock Ranch. But I might make this one as well - it sounds slightly different in its construction.

I'd also like to find a pattern for a fine-gauge Phrygian cap - which looks like the Smurf hats (because that's what they were based upon). It was the "Liberty Cap" of the French Revolution, and it was in turn apparently based on a 18th century French person's imagining of what an ancient Greek cap would look like.