Melt the Ice Hat
August 13, 2026 by marianne h donley in category From a Cabin in the Woods by Members of Bethlehem Writers Group tagged as Bonnets Rouges, knitting, Liberty Cap, Marianne, Melt the Ice Hat, Nisselue Hat, Phrygian cap, Voyageur cap
When I’m not writing, I knit.
Sometime in January a red knitted hat pattern was recommended to me on my Ravelry page. For those of you who do not know, Ravelry is a free website that connects fiber crafters (knitting, crocheting, sewing, etc.) from around the world. It had a giant database of patterns—some free, some for sale—yarn, pattern designers, and a personal page you can customize.
Anyway, up popped The Melt the Ice Hat. The designer, Paul S Neary, based his design on the hats Norwegians made and wore in the 1940s as a protest to the Nazi occupation. This hat was to protest the ICE occupation and raids in Minnesota. Proceeds from the pattern are donated “to immigrant aid agencies for distribution to those impacted by the actions of ICE.”
I immediately bought the pattern and ordered two skeins of red yarn. In late January, they may have been the last skeins of red yarn available—every knitter on Ravelry seemed to be knitting The Melt the Ice Hat. The hat has a wide brim of ribbing, a top of stockinette that decreases to a point. A braid and tassel decorate the tip of the hat. I was going to have to wait a few days for my red yarn, I cast on in blue.
It was a fast knit, but I wanted a longer brim and a longer more pointier top. So I kept notes of what I would do when that red yarn arrived. As I was knitting, I was also reading information about The Red Hat.
Evidently, the red hat from Norway was called a “Nisselue” Hat or Santa Hat and was actually outlawed by the Nazis once they figured out the Norwegians were wearing the hats as protest. The Guardian has a great article with pictures of The Red Hats here.
My favorite part of the Norwegian protest hats—when outlawed the protesters switched to wearing a paper clip on their clothes. Not as in your face as a red hat, but still a protest. If you scroll down to the end of the above linked article you will see examples of the Red Hat from the Norway’s Resistance Museum.
Then, I read the Nisselue was really a French voyageur cap. I looked up voyageur caps. Sure enough, French trappers in North America wore red hats shaped like The Red Hat, but a bit longer. Instead of the braid and tassel, the tip was often fastened to the brim with some type of cockade (a circle of ribbon that could be symbolic, flag colors, etc).
Of course, most articles about voyageur caps mentioned the famous Bonnets Rouges of the French Revolution. “In revolutionary France, the cap, or bonnet rouge was first seen publicly in May 1790 at a festival in Troyes, adorning a statue representing the nation, and at Lyon, on a lance carried by the goddess Libertas. To this day the national emblem of France, Marianne, is shown wearing a Phrygian cap.
Photo de F. Lamiot
The caps were often knitted by women known as Tricoteuse who sat beside the guillotine during public executions in Paris in the French Revolution, supposedly continuing to knit in between executions.” (Wikipedia) And of course there is the famous knitter Madame Defarge from Tale of Two Cities. I wonder if she sat by the guillotine and knitted Bonnets Rouges with the the names of the people to be killed coded into the brim of the hats.
The bonnet rouge is so interconnected with France the the official 2024 Olympic mascot was a conical cap, the Phryge.
After reading about the bonnet rouges, someone mentioned the hats were actually American Liberty hats, worn during the American Revolution. I looked that up, and not only is the Liberty hat a thing, but Minutemen reenactors have a poling the Liberty Hat every year in Bedford, Massachusetts. In New York City, the Sons of Liberty had a tradition to erect the liberty pole to protest the British. The liberty pole is topped with the liberty hat.
The liberty cap shows up in American art all over Washington, DC. Colonies and early states used the liberty cap on flags and in seals. There was even a liberty cap large cent coin minted from from 1793 until 1796. The coin features an image of the goddess of Liberty and her accompanying Phrygian cap. (We’ll get to that cap in a bit.) The American Liberty hats had the tips folded forward, rather than to the side. Most of the pictures show the hat without a folded brim and worn above the ears—or like in Bedford, installed on a Liberty Pole.
Many counties adopted the liberty hat as their symbol of freedom. The coat of arms of Haiti features a liberty hat atop a palm tree. For Argentina the hat is atop a pole being held by two clasping hands. Columbia also includes it in their coat of arms as a symbol of liberty and freedom. But as I mention before the liberty hat is sometimes referred to as a Phrygian cap.
Turns out the Phrygian cap is much much older.
“The Phrygian cap, also known as Thracian cap and liberty cap, is a soft conical cap with the apex bent over, associated in antiquity with several peoples in Eastern Europe, Anatolia, and Asia. The Phrygian cap was worn by Thracians, Dacians, Persians, Medes, Scythians, Trojans, and Phrygians after whom it is named. The oldest known depiction of the Phrygian cap is from Persepolis in Iran.” (Wikipedia)
The above link includes tons of pictures of the Phrygian cap in history. A carving of a Parthian wearing one from 203 AD. A 4th century BC bust of Attis—labeled Phrygian Attis wearing the cap. Roman artwork shows Paris of Troy wearing the hat. The Basilica of Sant’Apolinare Nuovo in Italy has the Three Wise Men wearing Phrygian caps. The cap was so common bronze helmets designed by the Thracian look exactly like a Phrygian cap, complete with the forward folding tip.
Just to round out the story of the liberty cap, I mentioned above that the Norway was called a “Nisselue” Hat or Santa Hat. So, Santa wears a modified Phrygian hat as do gnomes—and Smurfs.
The Melt the Ice Hat has a rich history. I enjoyed knitting it (twice). I have another one planned, but this time I’m going for the more voyageur styled cap. This hat is knitted in one piece with a elongated football shape. Once finished, one pointed end is tucked inside the other. This makes a double thick hat and if the brim is folded—quadruple thick and very warm. I’ll post pictures when I finish.
Books by Marianne
Have you heard of AllAuthor?
August 12, 2026 by Denise M. Colby in category The Writing Journey by Denise Colby tagged as allauthor, Denise M. Colby, MarketingHave you heard of AllAuthor? It’s an online platform and community that connects book authors with readers. It was established in 2016. As an author, it’s a place to list your books, enter book cover contests, and build an author profile. As a reader you can search by author name, genre, or by book with direct links to purchase books.
What is AllAuthor?
There is free level for authors. There is also an expanded level where you pay an annual fee for additional services. In either case, when you submit your books, there are several things that need to be answered including genre, questions readers might be asking about your book, and if it’s on Kindle Unlimited or not. There is even a place to to add awards. All of these answers help readers find your books.
If you have a new release, it lists it as new for a short period of time. Again a great way to give more visiblity to a new release. If you are having a sale, you can promote the limited time price as well.
There is a mobile app as well with over 80,000 downloads. I have not looked into this yet, but I’m thinking maybe I should.
Book Cover Contests
For the free level you can have one book cover be entered into one month’s book cover contest (for all time). Book cover contests are based on genre. There are several rounds and each round lasts seven days. The votes build on each round. By being a paid author on the site, I can now do additional book cover contests. I have found it’s a great way to give visibility and have something to post about and ask my readers to get involved in voting.
When you enter a contest, your Author profile will provide some automatic posts you can copy and paste into an email, Facebook, or other marketing vehicle. Right now my fourth book, A Whole New Plan, is in the contest. Here’s an example of one of the posts I can paste in.
Show me some love! Vote for my “Cover of the Month” contest entry. Help me win this thing. https://allauthor.com/cover-of-the-month/21017/
And while we are on this topic, I’d love your vote. My book cover is in the top ten and I’d love to stay there. Just click on the link and try it out.
What is the paid service?
This year I decided to try the additional service. I can feature one book with that. I chose my first book in my series, When Plans Go Awry. Every week they generate an image that gets posted on several different twitter accounts.
I also was provided an opportunity for a written interview. I recently submitted my answers and received a link to this lovely graphic and page for my interview. If you click on the image, it will take you to the interview page.
It’s nice to be able to share the promotional load with an established community. I’m not able to track how many clicks come from AllAuthor, but I’d like to believe it is helping widen my reader reach.
Denise loves to share about her writing journey (see all her posts here), including her word of the year (this year it is BALANCE), writing her Best-laid Plans Series, and all the things in between. You can visit her at her website and blog at www.denisemcolby.com or on her facebook or instagram. Please note: some links include Amazon Associate links where Denise can earn from qualifying purchases.
Who needs Vegas? I rolled a Lucky 7 in the London Book Biz
August 11, 2026 by Jina Bacarr in category Jina’s Book Chat, Writing
When I was seven
Books were my heaven
Tales of princesses and fairies galore
I loved to read more and more
Then I wrote stories about women so brave and good
And lucky for me they found a home at Boldwood!
===============
Happy 7th Birthday to my fab publisher Boldwood Books!!
Try an Experiment by Kitty Bucholtz
August 9, 2026 by Kitty Bucholtz in category It's Worth It by Kitty Bucholtz, Writing tagged as It's Worth It, Kitty Bucholtz, life choices, menopause, Perimenopause, writing
I was listening to a podcast recently about confidence and the guest said she tries to look at everything in life as an experiment. Can she do it? Let’s give it a try. Did she fail? She found that it didn’t work that way. Did she succeed? She found that this worked. Listening to her, you could tell this was clearly a personality thing for her.
But it reminded me of choices that I’d forgotten. Between the stresses of nearly six decades on Earth and the personal hell perimenopause/menopause have made of my life the last several years, I’ve found myself with a mostly negative and scared attitude about life. This from someone who was called Pollyanna since I was a kid! Huge change. And it seemed like there was nothing at all I could do to stop this downward spiral. (Thanks, hormones.)
I’ve been waiting for the extra hormones I’m taking to even out my thinking and feelings and it seems to finally be working. (Aside from the worldwide estrogen shortage going on!)So when I heard this super cheerful woman talking about how everything is an experiment, I thought, I could try that. At least try it, that would be my first experiment.
It’s only been a week or two, but I think it’s helping me to feel calmer and less stressed overall. And it reminds me of another experiment I started doing a month or two ago that is helping me stay calmer even more — keeping my feelings in the now. Partially because of the hormone changes (and I can’t tell if it’s 50% or 90% or 100%), I’ve been suffering from a lot of anxiety and a fair amount of depression the last few years. But I’ve been remembering to try to bring my thoughts and feelings back to Now and ask myself how I feel right in this moment.
Not thinking about what’s “probably” going to happen in ten minutes or tomorrow or the scary thing I don’t know how to deal with that’s on my calendar for next Tuesday. Just right this second. And if right this second I’m happy because I’m eating a delicious meal my husband made or I woke up to realize I’d slept well or I have time to read five minutes of my favorite new book…then I savor that one moment of being happy and try to keep my thoughts from running into the future fears.
I mention these things because they have helped me as a person trying to survive and thrive in the world, but also as a creative writer who needs to figure out how to continue to be creative when my brain is struggling through the menopause process. For me, it’s working. And I hope the ideas help you too. Anything we can do to help each other live a more joyful, peaceful life — it’s worth it!
Spotlight on Jenna Barwin
August 4, 2026 by marianne h donley in category Writing tagged as First Book in Series, Jenna Barwin, new release, novella, Rescued by the Outlaw Vampire
Rescued
by the
Vampire Outlaw
Jenna Barwin
Dark Wine Novella 1
August 4, 2026
Hidden Depths Publishing
ISBN: 978-1952755231
About the Book
COLIN
Seeing her again tears me apart. Four years have passed, and I still love her as fiercely as the day she walked away. But my vampire community has given me one job: rescue her.
A catastrophic typhoon is racing toward the California coast. To save her life, I have no choice but to abduct her—because she’ll never believe the truth in time.
Then I bite her to restore the memories she lost.
The fear in her eyes guts me.
I’m doing my duty…but all I want is a second chance.
Can I convince her I’m not the monster she thinks I am?
NAMI
I wake screaming. There’s a man in my room. Then I realize who it is. My ex-boyfriend who believes he’s a vampire.
Part of me still loves him. But I can’t build a life with someone who’s delusional.
So I run.
But when I try to escape, he shows a side of himself I’ve never seen before—an outlaw who refuses to let me go.
Our desire still burns, but captivity changes everything. Every mile between us and freedom deepens my confusion. I still want him. I still care.
Yet if I don’t find a way to escape, I may lose more than my freedom—because my very heart is at risk…
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