My darling has been asking me for quite some time to sew him a fur hat for winter. While trapping the deep Alaskan wilderness last March, he lost his treasured hat in the endless snow. I am quite the procrastinator unfortunately, so in mid autumn is when I finally decided to begin the deed. Living in an Ekimo village, fur is a staple and fur hats are a necessity to keep from dreadful frostbite in the -30 degree weather. I have never sewn fur before and this entire ordeal was quite new to me. There are no patterns available for a traditional Alaskan trapper hat, and I absolutely hate math, but managed to create seemingly ideal measurements. We lack any materials or sewing machines so I quickly learned the pain staking work of hand-sewing leather. I used an old pair of black jeans and the liner of an old coat for the fabric parts of the hat. A beaver my darling caught last spring would be the much needed insulation to our harsh cold. Two rainy days in a row I worked, a total of twelve hours. And a night when my darling left to visit friends, I finished the article and left it on a kitchen chair where he could see it when he got home. Trying it on it was a bit big. The strings I made of old shoelaces hung a bit low and the stitches were a bit crooked. But it was warm, and he being the wonderful man he is, was forever grateful. So the sore hands and frustrating work was well worth it. And I am so so very pleased with the end result.
