Sophia Serve: Kelsey Mountain Hats

Hat 23-A

Because I’ve been wearing a lot of hats and scarves and wigs since I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2003, creating a new line of unique “designer” hats was kind of a “no-brainer.” To get started, I contemplated this question: "What can I do that’s really creative using recycled materials?"

Answer: Make 100% wool hats out of recycled sweaters (and other wool stuff). And call them after the little Vermont mountain on which I live: Kelsey Mountain Hats.

I’m a firm believer in letting a task teach you how to do it. When I started, I had no idea what I was doing. All I knew was I wanted each creation to be unique and carefully crafted. So after washing sweaters in really hot water and drying them in a hot dryer to shrink and “felt up” the ones that wanted to be “felted up,” I started cutting, starting with a circle.

One inscription on Athena's temple in Athens says:
All human things are in a circle.

And as Goethe put it: "Everything turns in a circle."

Nicholas of Cusa (and others, surely) said "God is a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere."
I find there is something extremely satisfying in starting with a circle of wool. Sometimes I think about what Robert Frost once wrote:

"We sit around in a circle and suppose.
And the secret sits in the middle and knows."

From my pile of sweaters, my wool palette of many colors and textures, I begin cutting strips and then I sew them together by hand. Small stitches. Over and over. I could use my sewing machine, but I choose not to in the same way, perhaps, a ceramicist wants to feel the clay, not the wheel.

Before I know it, a hat begins to take shape.

"What do you want to be?" "Who might wear you?" "Where should I put some 'bling'?

Hat 2 (SOLD)

Since my efforts are all recycled, I often use some of my mother's jewelry, old buttons, pins.

I’ll be adding pictures here often and I'll try to remember to mark the hats that I’ve sold.

When they can, my neighbor Tiffany and friend Cara model and make my hats even more beautiful.

Since people ask, I can tell you: If you’re interested in ordering from me—the current price I’m charging is $25.00 and if I can’t literally place it in your hands and on your head, please add an additional $3.00 for shipping and handling. (I take personal checks.)

When I am privileged to personally hand a hat to someone, I try to remember to say: "Wear it in good health." Hidden in that blessing is:

Be Warm. Be Well. Be Beautful!

Sometimes when I get to see my hats on just the right head, I think, YES! That hat was made you. Some are for men; some are for children. Most are for women.

One "satisfied Farmers Market customer recently bought "just the right one" after trying on several. As she walked away, she turned to me. Clutching it to her breast, she mouthed, "Thank you! Thank you!"

That's the moment I knew why I was creating Kelsey Mountain Hats.