CHAPTER EIGHT

Knitting

… the innocent sleep,
Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care,
The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,

 

Chief nourisher in life’s feast (Macbeth, Act II Scene II)

The image of an old lady, sitting in front of the fire with a piece of knitting in her hands, is a popular one conjured up when the word knitting is mentioned. in It has connotations of fluffy old women, plump and comfortable, who knit endless garments for their grandchildren. For many years in the Twentieth Century this image made hand knitting very unfashionable.

With the cost of finished items having dropped because they were made by machine in labour-cheap countries, and the rise in women going out into the workforce instead of staying at home and making clothes for the family, the activity of knitting became a thing of myth and legend. Almost.

Knitting has undergone a resurgence of interest and has attracted new recruits from all walks, ages and of life. Men, once proud and professional knitters, who left the hand knitting industry with the takeover by mechanisation and shunned it as a hobby, have returned in droves armed with their pins and balls of yarn. It is fashionable now to be seen knitting: in cafes, parks, restaurants, on buses and at the cinema.

Thank goodness. The art of knitting was dying after such a long, long history. Knitting has been around as long as spinning and weaving, perhaps longer. In the early days its form was any kind of continuous looping, often only done with one needle.

Netting would probably have been the earliest form of knitting. Nets made from bast fibres are some of the earliest textiles that have been found on archaeological digs. In some instances the lengths of twine would have been looped and knotted and in others they were interlaced to make a loose mesh that had more give in it than the knotted type.

An old lady knitting.

An early form of knitting is called ‘naalebinding’. It is also called knotless knitting and knotless netting. It is a technique that is still practised in everyday life in some of the more isolated parts of the world. It too had two or more independent evolutions in different geographical locations. The term naalebinding, however, is a modern term for the ancient art.

It involves using one needle only. In some ways it resembles crochet in that the first step is to form a loop and pull the thread through that loop as one does in chain stitch crochet. It differs in that the thread is not pulled tight but left as a loose loop. The yarn is next passed through the newly formed loop and so on. When a row of these is made the thread may be passed through the length of it.

There have been pictures made by early mankind showing figures wearing all fitting garments that appear to have a knitted texture. To support the idea that they do indeed show knitted garments as the Bantu tribe in Zambia, still uses the same rituals and ceremonial gear that it has for centuries. Part of the ceremonial garb worn by the Bantu people is a close fitting all-in-one garment made from bark fibre and was worked in a looped style that strongly resembled knitting. The fabric of these items had the same give and stretch that knitting has. In light of the Bantu rituals it is tempting to think that those Neolithic depictions of figures were people wearing knitted body suits.

More early knitting

Knitting probably started where the earliest domestication of sheep started, though, as we’ve seen with the African tribes, knitting didn’t necessarily begin with wool yarn. It possibly came to Europe via the Black Sea with the Celts. It is also possible that at least one group came after visiting the Mediterranean. Motifs common to Irish Aran knitting have been identified with similar, though less complex, designs in the Greek isles.

A piece of textile from 5BC shows a definite pattern of knit and purl stitches suggesting that the two needle method was well established by then. Ribbed knitted fabric was used up until the Twelfth Century. The stitches were made: seven knit, three purl or seven knit, one purl. Apparently there was a religious and superstitious belief behind these combinations of numbers that regarded any item worked thus would offer a divine protection, or just plain good luck.

Two Needle Knitting

Within the two needle system there are two basic types of knitting: weft and warp, using terms we are more familiar with in weaving. The weft is the vertical, fixed threads in weaving and the weft are those that are threaded in and out of the other threads. Weft knitting is what we mean when we generally use the term knitting. One continuous thread is used and passed back and forth along the width of the item, looping into the stitches of the row beneath (at its most basic level).

Warp knitting on the other hand uses a separate length of yarn for each wale (column of loops running lengthwise like the warp of woven fabric). It is usually done by machine and includes: tricot, raschel, and milanese.

Casting on.

In the common two needle method, the weft method, the basic stitches used are knit (also called plain) and purl. These two stitches used in various combinations and by slipping, picking up and twisting, form a huge number of patterns with which to texture knitted products.

Two needles, more needles or one?

Modern knitting can be done on two needles, making and transferring the stitches on one to the other. Or to make a circular object, for example, a sock, then three or four double pointed needles can be used so that the knitting can bend around on itself and the end meet the beginning. The other method for doing circular knitting is to use, circular needles. These are not literally circular but resemble a double pointed needle cut in half and length of thick nylon inserted between them. The flexibility this offers gives means the work in progress can be pulled around so that the last stitches of a row can be joined to the first and the second row begun.

The circular needle.

Joseph’s coat of many colours

A theory has been put forward that the fabled techni-coloured dream coat of Joseph, was in fact ‘a knitted seamless coat traded from the Far East’. The style the same as the seamless coat we found on sculptures in Phoenician Cyprus at the Nicosia Museum. These sculptures wear the contemporary dress of Jesus, King of the Jews, who wore, as King David did, the ‘Seamless Coat of Penitence’ which was no doubt a knitted mesh.1

Sailors

Knitting garments for warmth was a common pastime amongst the sailing fraternity. There was no thought of it being a female only occupation. Men at sea needed warm clothing and they had long periods with little else to do. It seems that sailors of all ethnic groups and religious persuasions undertook knitting. It may well be how the art moved around the world.

While British sailors were content to fashion their own sweaters they tended to buy their knitted caps, called ‘Phrygian’ from a reputable craftsman. The sailors of the Sixteenth Century, who explored the world and discovered new lands, bought many of their caps in Monmouth, which is still known for its knitted caps.

Sailor Knitting.

Shepherds were another group of men who made their own warm clothing by knitting them. It is easy to see the link between shepherd and knitting as the raw material was always there before him in the field. It would have been from the sheep he tended that he took the fleece. His wife, or other female family member (a mother or aunt) may have combed or carded it and spun it in to thread for him to take out and work at while overseeing his flock’s welfare. It would probably have been greasy wool, that is, only surface cleaned so much of the natural lanolin remained in the yarn. Greasy wool offers more protection from wind and rain than scoured wool.

Men knitting in the Twentieth Century

After the civil war in Russia in 1920, many Russians ended up in China where they were rounded up and detained. With China’s own civil war imminent it put the Russian prisoners into camel caravans and shipped them to Eastern China. In this way the Russian men taught their Chinese guards how to knit using the available camel hair; having first spun a yarn using a very primitive spindle and whorl method. Captors and captives whiled away the long, arduous journey in this way, presumably amicably.

War

From civil wars to world wars, knitting was seen as a indispensible. Women left at home, working during the day and left worrying at night, could work away with busy fingers producing warm garments for their men folk on the front. They knitted: socks, balaclavas, vests, sweaters, blankets and scarves. It was seen as part of a woman’s duty towards the war effort to produce these items and posters were put up to promote it.

Woollen blankets were desperately needed in the American War of Independence and, ironically, the woollen blankets provided to the army by the American government were made and sold by the English enemy.

Knitting for charity

Wars continue but hand knitted garments are no longer wanted or required for the people fighting them. However, knitting has become a standard media for raising money for charities. The knitted items can be supplied directly to the needy, blankets and rugs being common items. Or they can be sold to raise money for charity. Often these are novelty items or toys.

One seriously neglected area that is now being targeted by avid knitters is warm wear for undersized and disadvantaged babies. The infants are sometimes so tiny that clothes are made for them based on patterns for doll clothes.

Knitting samples

There are many different combinations of stitches that make many different kinds of textures in knitting. The most commonly used in western knitting are the stitches: plain and purl.

Plain knitting.

Purl knitting.

French knitting

French knitting is also known as spool knitting. It is a popular pastime with children. The spool is usually wooden with a hollow centre. Four pins are placed in the top and yarn is wound around this and looped over itself to form a long cylindrical textile. To make use of the textile it needs to be gathered, wound into a circle and stitched together to make a coiled flat fabric.

A common way of making a spool was to use and old cotton reel (in the days when they were made of wood) and hammer four nails into the top. Nowadays you buy super fancy ones.

For even younger children a very primitive but effective spool can be made out of a cardboard cylinder like a toilet roll. Four flat ice lolly sticks can be bound around the sides with masking tape so that they form the four pins protruding at one end. The size of this spool lets little fingers lift the wool over the yarn wound around the pins.

A fancy spool for French Knitting in the form of a doll.

Finger knitting

The earliest forms of knitting, including naalebinding, were performed with the fingers alone. Asystem of looping over a thumb and pulling the yarn through the loop is an easy task to perform. Finger knitting is a term given to the looping of yarn around the finger, following it with another loop and pulling the first over the second to form a chain.

This is a method used with young children in preschool. Thick, coloured yarn is an attractive option and children are content to sit and make yards and yards of it which can then be wound and stitched into objects such as hats or simple toys.

Finger knitting, the first knitting.

Toilet roll knitting!

A 1980s model knitting machine no longer in use.

William Lee and the knitting machine

According to legend, William Lee, a clergymen living in the latter half of the Sixteenth Century, got to work inventing a machine to knit so that his lady love could spend more time with him.

In 1589 he presented his new device to Queen Elizabeth and her court to consider for patenting. She did not grant it, requesting first that he knit her a pair of silk stockings, the woollen ones he had presented her with not being fine enough, and besides, since 1560 she had only worn stockings made of silk by her personal stocking maker, Mrs Montague.

Designer knitwear by Kaffe Fasset, photo courtesy of Kaffe Fasset’s Studio.

When he brought the stockings forward, having fulfilled her request admirably, Queen Elizabeth still denied him the patent arguing such an invention would put the domestic makers of stockings out of business.

Consequently, the machine was offered across the channel to the French king and Lee set up business in foreign climes. Where William had failed, his brother succeeded and 30 years or so after William’s first attempt at patenting, the stocking knitting industry was revolutionised by the first knitting machines. It did outrage hand knitters and it was not done without a fight.

Knitting machines were very popular in the 1970s and many homes had one. They fell out of favour and although still in use are nowhere near as popular as sewing machines.

Crochet

There are those people who are devoted knitters and then there are those who would rather crochet. Crocheting is done with a single crochet hook and the stitches are made with one on the hook at a time as opposed to a row of stitches on a knitting needle. The yarn is pulled through a loop with the hook end of the needle. Yarn is wound around the hook first to make different kinds of stitches.

Double Foundation chain.

Chain stitch.

Bobbin lace being made by Vicki Taylor.

Bobbin lace made by Maureen based on an old Dutch pattern.

Lace

Lace should probably have a chapter on its own. It can be formed using several different processes: knitting, knotting, weaving and embroidery. True lace, defined as lace made by looping, twisting and braiding, was not in use until the Fifteenth Century.

In excavations of Roman towns bobbins resembling those used for lace making have been found. However, there is little evidence to show that this was what they were used for, certainly no textile fragments have survived and there is no documentary evidence of it being made at that time.

Lace making may well have started in Flanders in the Fourteenth Century, which was renowned for its fine weaving. Brussels became a big lace making centre later on.

Lace is categorised into the following types:

• Bobbin lace – is made on a pillow using fine thread and small wooden or bone bobbins around which the threads are wound. Pins hold the threads to each side as the work progresses. The lace is made by interweaving the threads
• Crochet lace – is made with a crochet hook and fine thread
• Cut work – an embroidery technique where threads are removed from the backing fabric and the spaces left are filled with needle made lace work
• Guipure – an embroidery made lace where the embroidery is done on a water soluble ground which is removed when the piece is finished so that only the embroidery thread remains
• Knitted lace – open work knitting such as Shetland lace made using ultra fine wool
• Knotted lace – includes macramé, the knotting of threads and tatting which uses a shuttle wound with thread that enables the thread to be looped and pulled through itself

  A tatting shuttle.

  

  Several types of machine made lace.

  
• Machine made lace – a variety of machines make different lace types, replicating those traditionally made by hand
• Needle lace – as the name suggests, this type of lace, for example, Kenmare lace, is made using a needle and thread. It is suggested by purists that this is the finest form of lace; it is not the quickest of procedures

• The first knitting trade guild was started in Paris in 1527
• Knit comes from knot, possibly from the Dutch verb knutten, to knot, though as it is similar to the Old English cnyttan, to knot, then it is likely there is an even older word that engendered both English and Dutch words
• The Craft Yarn Council of America has estimated that the number of women knitters aged between 25 and 30 rose by 150 per cent from 2002 to 2004. The trend is due to fashion not need
• Crochet and knitting are becoming trendy art statements. There is a movement around the world to bombard the streets with knitted graffiti. Nothing is safe: buses, poles, trees and even animals

Note

1

Kiewe, Heinz Edgar, Textile Design Anthropology ‘ History of Knitting’, exhibition catalogue, Oxford, 1977, p. 6.