Mandolin Cafe Ball Cap

[mandolirius]

toque....touque...we like to throw around "u's" like confetti up here. But I forgot about Mike Nesmith. That's a toque! Very warm on those cold winter nights.

[journeybear]

Of course an official Mandolin Café patch could be sewn onto any cloth item, be it a toque, tuque, touque, or what have you ...

[Mike Bunting]

Of course an official Mandolin Café patch could be sewn onto any cloth item, be it a toque, tuque, touque, or what have you ...

Hint, hint.

[Malcolm G.]

First post on this wonderful site.
I've been lurking for a few weeks and was starting to feel a little wierd - ya know?
I've ordered two caps based soley on your collective endorsement - being a novice picker and a terrible fisherman, I need all the help I can get.
Question, if I may?
Will the patches fix all those annoying flats in my singing? Actually, my wife wants to know.
Cheers all!
Mac from Montreal

[journeybear]

Welcome to the Café! We're (almost) all at least a little weird. You get used to it.

Remember, we're talking accessories here, and at this point merely a suggested one, plus this is a mandolin site ... so for help with your singing I'm afraid these won't be much help. But what you can do is play mandolin really loudly at the same time you think your singing is off. You'll either cover up any gaffes or distract listeners' attention just enough to get by.

Yep, that's always a solution - when in doubt, MORE MANDOLIN!!!

[Dan Hoover]

i thought a touque was a chef's hat?? and i thought mike wore a beanie?? i guess it is all hazy.....hey,they had a great car though...i'm just waiting on the " Mandolin Cafe Bucket Hat " or maybe a Fedora??

[farmerjones]

ya, i thought it was a tuk, eh?
Patch. Ya. A big one, and a lil one. That would be a beauty, eh? Lil one for the tuk. Big patch for the jacket. Then you could maybe put rockers above and below it for your chapter and hometown.

i have to say that prior to owning and wearing "the cap" i was a totally overweight, middle-aged, shrub with no hope. Now,




i've got shade for my nose.

How many of us Mandolin Caf'e capped persons are there to date?

[journeybear]

i thought a touque was a chef's hat?? and i thought mike wore a beanie?? i guess it is all hazy.....

Unfortunately, sir, you are correct. I was gonna let this slide, but nooooooooo ...

Yes, a toque is the famous chef's hat, but the wiki's definition is rather broad and inclusive, specifying simply "a type of hat with a narrow brim or no brim at all." The tuque (as they spell it; never seen this spelling before) is what mandolirius mentioned. There they do mention "touque" as he spelled it, with this proviso:

"The word is etymologically related to the name of the chef's toque, although it is sometimes incorrectly spelled toque instead of tuque (still pronounced /tuk/) by assimilation, or occasionally touque, although the latter is not considered a standard spelling by the Canadian Oxford Dictionary."

But what does the COD know?

Wiki mentions several famous people known for wearing tuques: Michael Nesmith, The Edge, the SCTV/SNL characters Bob and Doug McKenzie, Bill Murray in "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou," etc, going on to say:

"In other parts of the anglophone world, this type of hat is more commonly referred to by other names: knit hat or knit cap, sock cap or stocking cap, watch cap, skull cap, snow hat, snow cap, ski cap, tossle cap, woolly hat, chook, or beanie. In Australia, New Zealand, the United States and the UK, the term beanie refers almost exclusively to the knitted tuque-style hat, although that word is also used elsewhere to denote a more rigid cap that is not knitted but rather made up of joined panels of felt, twill or other tightly woven cloth. The lack of a consistent term outside Canada for the tuque is a popular source of material for Canadian comedians."

Somewhere around this point in my research I had the idea for a sew on patch that could transform one's already well-worn and beloved cloth or knit item into a Café item, and posted this idea. Apparently that was not sufficient for some but that's all right.

Finally, there is this:

"In some sections of Canada a tuque with a brim on it, commonly worn by snowboarders, is nicknamed a bruque (a brimmed tuque). The tuque is similar to the Phrygian cap and, as such, during the 1837 Patriotes Rebellion a red tuque became a symbol of French-Canadian nationalism. The symbol was revived briefly by the Front de libération du Québec in the 1960s."

So there is some interesting history connected with these lovely things. I used to have a bruque (did not know that's what they were called) made by Timberland that got me through several winters. It had earflaps if you rolled it down. Loved that little brim, 1 1/2" long at most, that was enough to shade my eyes and keep a bit of snow off my face.

[Dan Hoover]

Unfortunately, sir, you are correct. I was gonna let this slide, but nooooooooo ...

your like all smart and stuff..
well,fortunately,i'm surprised i remembered what a touque was right now?? i'm on my second round of " THE " flu...and everything is hazy..
i only have 1 cap,and i usually wear it backwards,i think i'll order myself a mandolin cafe hat..early present..but,i'm with you JB,i'll go for a patch too..that way i can put it on my bowler cheers

[BenTTree]

"In other parts of the anglophone world, this type of hat is more commonly referred to by other names: knit hat or knit cap, sock cap or stocking cap, watch cap, skull cap, snow hat, snow cap, ski cap, tossle cap, woolly hat, chook, or beanie."

Cafe humor and strong coffee... the perfect way to start every day! As a long-time member (read [I]lurker[I]) though seldom poster, I couldn't pass this one up. I'm Canadian; my wife isn't (she comes from a small Appalachian community in the States). During our first winter together here in Ontario she acclimated well but used to throw the house in tumult when she'd announce plans for an outing. "Everybody grab your gloves and toboggans and let's go!" she'd yell. You can well imagine the household scrambling to gather winter gear and sleds... right? Wrong! Seems a popular "Appalachainism" for a knited hat is, indeed, "toboggan" as I verified the word with several Ohio friends. Now we've gotten used to her funny way of talking (lol) but she sure shakes up some store clerks when she asks for help locating their "toboggans" and really means touques!

Needless to say, we still joke about her unusual approach to winter hats... she's asked if it's hard to get in the car with that "toboggan" on her head and we tell her not worry if she falls down 'cause she can always meet us at the bottom of the hill... use your imagination, here, the possibilities are endless, lol. She's a good sport even though she's still a little confused and steadfastly sticks to her terminology. Me, I'll avoid all confusion and stick to wearing my classy new Mandolin Cafe ball cap 11!

[allenhopkins]

Toques (touques?) in action:

[NotJethro]

First post on this wonderful site.
I've been lurking for a few weeks and was starting to feel a little wierd - ya know?
I've ordered two caps based soley on your collective endorsement - being a novice picker and a terrible fisherman, I need all the help I can get.
Question, if I may?
Will the patches fix all those annoying flats in my singing? Actually, my wife wants to know.
Cheers all!
Mac from Montreal

Hey Mac

Great to see you've joined the cafe. I think if you wear the cap in just the right way (such as, have the bill cover your mouth), your flats will sound a whole lot better. Works for me, anyway.

[Dan Adams]

I like the new colors! In a roadtrip to the NE US, I left my original in a cafe in Ithaca, NY. Its probably unlike somebody will recover this valuable lid and send it back to me in Colorado It's like I lost a friend. Now I have to decide on the new color. Dan

[journeybear]

I've worn my original-color-khaki cap for so long I thought it was olive. Now I'm confused ...

I'm thinking about the charcoal - close enough to black that it will be suitable for formal occasions.

[ColdBeerGoCubs]

I made the promise that I will never wear any baseball hat that doesn't have a Cubs 'C' on it until they win a series. So I'm pretty much screwed, but I am going to get an Olive one to Keep on my computer desk. Maybe give it to my dad, so he'll stop wearing that one he got at a company awards banquet in the mid 80's.

[jim_n_virginia]

Anyone who knows me know that a ball cap is part of my uniform of the day! Most people have never seen me without a ball cap! LOL!

I've been wearing Cafe caps since they came out and ordered 2 more yesterday! All joking aside I kind of consider myself a ball cap connoisseur! I have dozens of them.

But seriously they really are a good quality cap. I've had caps made before also and you have a choice of how good a quality of hat you want and Scott definitely went with the best one.

I HATE those trucker ball caps with the mesh back and plastic strap with the plastic button adjustment! LOL!

I just wish Scott would get some made in black!

[JeffD]

I've been wearing Cafe caps since they came out and ordered 2 more yesterday! All joking aside I kind of consider myself a ball cap connoisseur! I have dozens of them.

:

BCAS, ball cap aquisition syndrome.

[MiG-19]

Just ordered the olive colored one based upon the recommendations here. As everyone knows, fishermen never lie.

[Gene Korte]

I'm hanging loose until the red one comes out !!

[D C Blood]

"the term beanie refers almost exclusively to the knitted tuque-style hat, although that word is also used elsewhere to denote a more rigid cap that is not knitted but rather made up of joined panels of felt, twill "

Sometimes with a plastic propeller on top...

[D C Blood]

"In other parts of the anglophone world, this type of hat is more commonly referred to by other names: knit hat or knit cap, sock cap or stocking cap, watch cap, skull cap, snow hat, snow cap, ski cap, tossle cap, woolly hat, chook, or beanie."

In the South, commonly known as a "boggan"...
OOPS. posted this before I saw the previous post...

[Jim DeSalvio]

All this talk about caps made me order 2 more today. The red looks cool too. Now I can take the first one I ordered and start to wear it!

[journeybear]

Red cap? Where do you see that? I thought that was in the "we'll-see-how-these-go-first" stage ...

[JEStanek]

Read through the comments in the blog. Scott's ordered 50...

[journeybear]

OMG! Board ... social groups ... now blogs? How am I supposed to keep up on all this stuff? I yi yi!

I mean, thanks ...

I've said it before, I'll say it again - if I had had any idea how much time I would be spending futzing on keyboards, I would have put more effort into typing class back in junior high. I know that term flies right over the heads of you young whippersnappers, having grown up with computers, but there was a time such things just didn't exist, and typing was looked down upon by both boys and girls. Really!