Ladies Hair Style Photos

Meet the Hat Junkie

And leave your hat on.

You might step out with another hat or two.

Not "top hats," "white tie and tails," like the song of old.

But straw hats, or fleece hats, or wool hats, or felt hats.

Hemp hats. And half hats — "fascinators" — too.

Hatpins, hatbands, hat pictures also adorn the upstairs studio of her Lunenburg home, a sort of hat heaven.

And she’s sporting a green felt hat, with boinging flowers, as she greets you at the door.

Not too surprising.

She is, after all, "the hat junkie," which also happens to be the name of the 43-year-old hat maker’s business, stepping out and doing some strutting of its own.

Her handmade hats are now in stores in four Canadian provinces, including Nova Scotia, and three American states.

She custom makes them for customers, too.

They’re also available online and regulars at the Lunenburg, Halifax and Hubbards markets. (For details, go to www.hatjunkie.com .)

And to think, her love of le chapeau — and career as a milliner — all began with a little pink hat, more than 20 years ago.

"I was 19 and . . . (visiting) my aunt in Montreal and we went into this store and I found this pink felt hat and I just fell in love with it," says the former modern dancer and ballet teacher; dark curls coiling, broad smile brimming under a green felt rim.

"It was like $45 . . . which seemed totally extravagant to me at that time, and I was a student and went back to my aunt’s house and I was scheduled to take the train back to Toronto in the morning and I dreamt about the hat. . . . So she took me back there, I bought the hat and then that kind of started the whole thing."

She soon started buying more hats for "celebration or consolation reasons."

"Every birthday, I bought myself a hat, and every time I failed my driver’s licence, I bought myself a hat. So there were a lot of hats right there!" says the bubbly craftswoman. "I won’t tell you how many times."

She soon discovered that "when you wear a hat, you get a lot of attention."

"Really positive attention. I would have people hold doors open for me and old people smiled," she says, smiling.

"They get all teary-eyed remembering a time gone by."

That’s the nostalgic way Shoub feels about hats, which she started actually creating — from scratch — 17 years ago while living and dancing in the United States. She still makes her own felt from unspun wool; still shapes her straw hats on a wooden hat block with steam from a kettle.

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