Display – Spun and Knitted St. Denis Cap by Adelisa Salernitana

Adelisa Salernitana, Barony of Buckland Cross

EK Wiki: https://wiki.eastkingdom.org/index.php?title=Adelisa_Salernitana

This was my attempt at a couple of things: fine spinning (of silk); extra-fine knitting; knitting in the round with double-pointed needles; and the recreation of an actual medieval object.
The original St. Denis cap, excavated out of a rubbish pit at the Abbey of St. Denis, is the oldest knitted object found in Europe, and is made of a substance no one has seen today: byssus, or sea silk. This is made from the thread-like proteins excreted by the foot of the giant Mediterranean mollusk, Pinna nobilis. There is no commercially available sea silk available today, so I went with conventional silk instead. 
More about the cap, how I reconstructed it, and byssus can be found on my paper on Academia.edu:
https://www.academia.edu/2306293/The_St._Denis_Cap_and_experiments_in_silk_spinning_and_knitting

7 thoughts on “Display – Spun and Knitted St. Denis Cap by Adelisa Salernitana

  1. This is amazing! Spinning silk fine takes absolutely forever, and this is just stunning. Such a lovely project!

  2. Wow- this is lovely. I love that you both spun and knit the cap. and enjoyed reading the information on the byssus silk in your documentation :)…. I also want to touch this so badly!

  3. Wow, that’s a lot of new skills at once. That’s so awesome! I can’t wait to see the cap in action.

  4. Thank you all for your support! Lissa, I promise you can touch the cap once the plague finishes ravaging the land!

  5. Great job. Spinning is out of my skill set and I really applaud those who can do it on something as challenging as silk.

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