Without originally intending to blog at regular intervals, I’ve long since settled into a fortnightly rhythm. I had every intention of maintaining it with a post this past Sunday despite being at the Textiles from the Nile Valley Conference in Antwerp through the weekend. I had a nearly completed draft of the intended post with… Continue reading The costs and dividends of blogged loopography
More about the double-ended Tunisian crochet hook
One of the recurring topics in the discussion of Tunisian crochet is whether fabric produced with a double-ended hook should be regarded as a variant form of ordinary Tunisian crochet or as an entity of its own. The earliest instructions calling for that tool that I have been able to locate so far are in… Continue reading More about the double-ended Tunisian crochet hook
Thinking outside the loop
In his book titled Ethnological Studies among the North-West-Central Queensland Aborigines, published in 1897, Walter E. Roth describes a man’s cap that includes what is now frequently referred to as ‘simple looping’ and its extended ‘loop-and-twist’ variant. This is among the earliest documentation of its type and illustrates the cap and its structure separately. “Head-net…a sort of… Continue reading Thinking outside the loop
A key to loop leadership
Back in the days when museums stored information about the objects in their collections in accession ledgers and card catalogs, structured vocabularies and classification systems were essential to the location and retrieval of this documentation. When dealing with manufactured objects, the basic nomenclature normally paralleled that used in the respective craft or industry. The higher-level… Continue reading A key to loop leadership
The 3000-year-old stitch eyes of Emilie Bach
Emilie Bach (b. 1840), a founding director of the Royal School for Artistic Embroidery (k. k. Fachschule für Kunststickerei) in Vienna, was one of the initial participants in the discussion of the techniques used for the early production of non-woven socks in Egypt. She was the first to identify a cross-knit fabric structure in such… Continue reading The 3000-year-old stitch eyes of Emilie Bach
Tunisian crochet with two hooks
The German periodical Der Blatt had a leading role in the publication of variant forms of the “ordinary Tunisian crochet stitch.” The first two appearing there are described in the post before last and depart markedly from what is now know as the Tunisian simple stitch (TSS). A variant presented in the 1 January 1862 issue differs from it… Continue reading Tunisian crochet with two hooks
The shepherd’s hook in mid-19th-century fancywork
I’ve used quite a bit of blogspace discussing slip stitch crochet and the flat hook used for it in widespread regional traditions. The stitch is termed “shepherd’s knitting” when first attested in the English language in 1812. The “little hook” described with it, is a “shepherd’s hook” in subsequent 19th-century sources. The initial English description… Continue reading The shepherd’s hook in mid-19th-century fancywork
