On 3/10/08 8:08 AM, Ann McElroy wrote: > When I was growing up a toque was a specific type of > winter hat. It was knit and it was a long cone shape > usually with red and white stripes going around.
When I was growing up (Indiana, late forties & early fifties), that was a stocking cap. Neither fashionable nor unfashionable, just there. The girls all wore head scarves (now called babushkas); I don't remember what the boys wore. But stocking caps often appeared in winter illustrations. I believe pompoms were more common than tassels. Ladies wore hats; the more elegant you were, the colder it had to get before you put on a childish headscarf. (Still the very warmest way to cover your head, but nowadays I pin it on -- cold air sneaks past a knot.) -- Joy Beeson http://joybeeson.home.comcast.net/ http://roughsewing.home.comcast.net/ http://n3f.home.comcast.net/ -- Writers' Exchange http://www.timeswrsw.com/craig/cam/ (local weather) west of Fort Wayne, Indiana, U.S.A. where we still have snow on the ground and ice on the lake.
