I’ve gotten myself fairly well bogged down in Scandinavian etymology while examining the origin of the term nalbinding (starting here). This is also a recurring topic in the current craft literature. However, one of the conclusions sometimes reached there is incorrect. The appearance of the word ‘binding’ (or one of the many variant or inflected forms of… Continue reading All binding is not nalbinding
Olof Johan Broman’s text from 1730 divides yarnwork into two categories: knitting and stitching. The first of them is the well-known form of looping that is still designated as knitting. It can be traced back before Broman’s day in both fashionable and utilitarian contexts, and in urban and rural traditions. His stitching is an older looping… Continue reading Knitting and stitching in 1730
In the third volume of his Glysisvallur — a massive description of all aspects of the Swedish province of Helsingland written circa 1730 — Olof Johan Broman includes the following description of yarn crafts under the heading of sheep husbandry: “Caps, mittens, stockings, and sweaters are knit [stickes] from both single and plied wool yarn. These… Continue reading More historical terminology
The 1917 volume of the Swedish periodical Fataburen includes an article by Maria Collin titled Sydda vantar. This literally means ‘stitched mittens’ and is an inversion of the term vantsöm seen in preceding posts. She discusses alternate designations at length including, as already noted, a dialectal reference to a mitten that was “bound with a needle or needlebound” (bunnen med… Continue reading Nalbound mittens in 1917
Margrethe Hald’s definition of nålebinding presented in the preceding post was intended to describe older textiles of Danish origin. She only used the name in Danish discourse and called it “looped needle-netting” in English. Nonetheless, nålebinding (lit. ‘needle binding’) made its way into the yarncraft vocabulary where it is now firmly established. Alongside the anglicized ‘nalbinding’ it names both… Continue reading Nalbinding: stitch structures
In an earlier post about a Swedish looped purse from 1693, I noted that the maker’s name for the way it was produced — virka — has been used over time for a number of different crafts. It appears again in a dialect dictionary compiled during the late 1790s, in the definition of sömma (literally ‘stitch’ or ‘seam’), a common… Continue reading Nalbinding: derivation and description
The long cylindrical hook normally associated with Tunisian crochet doesn’t differ physically from a hooked knitting needle. The past few posts here have considered evidence of that tool having been co-opted for some form of crochet before the first descriptions of Tunisian stitches were published. In contrast, the double-ended hook appears to have been taken into the… Continue reading The double-end tricot hook
