labourer's cap a.k.a. the Monmouth museum cap third attempt

So just under the wire for my third and last attempt for the labourer's cap in our regional arts and sciences competition held yesterday.  I worked within the information I could gather from studying the museum photo and the dimensions written by Rutt.  Something doesn't jive but I couldn't tell you exactly what that is so I went in between the two.
The hat is comfy, functional and well received.  It doesn't look the same as the museum photo but at this point, I'm pretty happy with my hat.
The original picture is here:  http://www.gtj.org.uk/en/large/item/GTJ01788/
The dimensions from Rutt are 22" around at the base and only 8" tall.  The image looks to be taller than the diameter.  Was this from the camera angle?  Was it stretched after being on this stand for too long?  Was Rutt incorrect in his measurements?  Can't answer those unless I go to Monmouth and measure myself so I guess I'll have to be content with what I have.
I was wondering about the gauge.  The hat I estimate to have about 50 rows and 60 sts around.  At one stitch per centimeter, that's 2.5 sts per inch.  At 8" it would be 6.25 rows per inch.  Whew that's compact.  The closest I was able to get was 5 rows per inch on my first attempt but I think my stitches were a little more per inch too.
So my final hat was in my own hand spun shetland yarn.  The rows ended up being half of the museum photo's but the dimensions were pretty darn close.  It's comfy too so next winter I have a hat!

labourer's cap a.k.a. the Monmouth museum cap

So number two of the cap has been done for a bit now.  I've had two or three false starts with the third rendition of the cap.  At this gauge (2.75 sts to the inch) I've discovered that it's easy to incorrectly measure gauge.  I thought I had 3 sts/inch.  That makes a big difference in your cast on sts.
Argh.  Well, I'm trusting Fate to deliver me a good outcome.  I was going to use a commercial yarn, but it has synthetic in it.  Now I have the practice enough to spin the right thickness of yarn, so I'm using hand spun now instead.  Come on now, the competition is only three days away ;-)

Here's second attempt below the first.  They want you to full the hat down to size.  I can't see the people in the 16th century using this technique like this, but hey, who am I?

more research

I was listening to my audio book of Richard Rutt's History of Hand Knitting while spinning and found an interesting line.  So I looked it up in my book version on the shelf (I know such a nerd) and saw references to wire knitting.  I assumed they were referring to the "viking wire weaving" I'd seen in the SCA so I thought, finally some historical references to back the claims up.  I'd been skeptical about the origins of it so I looked up the items I could in reference to this craft.  No luck.  The references are not the "viking wire weaving" that seems so prevalent in the SCA and I'm still waiting to see the evidence.

The items in question that you may be curious about referred to the Birka digs.  In Inga Hagg's book she has beautiful pictures of the finds and none of them are the jewellry cording that is the SCAdianism item.  There's a pdf available if you search Inga Hagg called "Fornvannen 1971".  I'd found the snippet of the book a while back when searching for Rus costuming info and I'm still translating the text.  The appliqued metal designs that is believed to be on a caftan-like coat are beautiful and I saw some replicas at "Viking U Like" at Pennsic.  I had a discussion with him about them and I think he was happy to have an intelligent conversation with another person who knew their stuff :-)

Next was some viking relics at Croy and Ballinaby in Scotland.  The Trewiddle hoard in Cornwall and some irish finds at Tara and Clonmacnoise.  It makes reference to Byzantine examples but I can't find anything with such a wide search word.  Finally, the Ardagh chalice in Dublin where the underside has some metal braidwork designs applied to it.

If anyone finds anything,  Please, let me know.  I'd hate to think that the SCA is promoting (unintentionally, but wrongly) another SCAdianism that is not historical.

Addendum:  the word trichinopoly is applied to the "wire knitting" and I tried this search as well.  Apparently that's the name of a city and when combined with weaving that brings up the wire weaving but still no historical images.  There are claims of examples but nothing concrete or specific.  There are plenty of twisted metal jewellry examples.

On a more positive note, I've added to my collection of bling.  I'm working towards some accurate Irish costuming and came across a ring pin at Pennsic.  Happy, happy, joy, joy...

The penannular brooches are much better known and I have some of those but I thought the earlier ring pin would be a nice alternative and I can show people different options in early period costuming.