Slip stitch miscellany

9 November 201822 November 2021 Cary KarpLeave a comment

Before focusing on specific objects with slip stitch structures that have been described as nalbinding, here are a few relevant details about the crocheted production of such fabric that weren’t mentioned in the preceding series of posts. In them (Parts One, Two, and Three) we saw how Victorian instructions prescribe cutting the yarn at the end of each row of flatwork and starting the following row with a new length of yarn. All stitches of a given type appear identically on the same side of the fabric and the difference between the front and back faces can be significant.

This also means that any intrinsic procedural advantage there might be in not needing to splice the working yarn at relatively frequent intervals, commonly cited as a differentiating characteristic between nalbinding and crochet was not regularly utilized in flatwork until surprisingly late in the history of the latter craft. (It is not a structural attribute in any case).

The early Victorian texts also say that slip stitch crochet was known and practiced as “shepherd’s knitting” long before the craft was enhanced and renamed. Slip stitching then gradually fell out of use for producing fabric and became an ancillary technique for such things as moving the active loop and joining separate pieces of fabric. Nonetheless, the encyclopedic presentations of yarncraft that were produced toward the end of the 19th describe it in full extent.

One example is the “crochet-slip stitch” in The Dictionary of Needlework by Sophia Caulfeild and Blanche Saward, from 1882 (using a drawing that had appeared in earlier publications by other authors). caulfeild-ssc Another is the “single stitch” in the Encyclopedia of needlework by Thérèse de Dillmont, from 1886. (The direction of the chaining changes between the foundation and first slip stitch rows and then remains constant.)

dillmont-ssc

The same illustration appears in the undated New Edition of the encyclopedia, which is unlikely to have been published before the turn of the 20th century. It is labeled there as a “single stitch or small closed stitch…also known as ‘slip’ stitch.” However, in contrast to the 1880s instructions for working a new stitch into the back leg of the chain capping the corresponding stitch in the preceding row (BLO; back loop only), the New Edition allows for other points of insertion beyond the (unnoted) front leg of the loop that was the initial prevalent form (FLO).

Put the hook from the right side of the work, through the upper half either of a chain stitch or a stitch of the row below….

The instruction for inserting the hook into the right side implies situations where it is inserted from the wrong side. This has become a mainstay of contemporary slip stitch crochet in the form of inverse slip stitches, which are also found in hybrid knit/crochet fabric from de Dillmont’s day. The basic technique was described by Cornelia Mee in connection with beadwork in Crochet Explained and Illustrated, from 1845.

…insert your crochet at the back of the loop, instead of at the front, as usual, draw the silk through from the front, and take it on your needle, then draw the silk in the common way through both loops.

Although the loose yarn ends that characterize working each row with its own strand are only illustrated with the slip stitch, de Dillmont notes:

The rows are worked according to the kind of stitch, either to and fro, or all from one end. In the former case, the work is turned at the end of each row… If, on the contrary, the rows be all worked one way, the thread has to be fastened afresh each time… At the end of a row, cut the thread and pass it through the last loop; all kinds of crochet work may be fastened off in this manner.

Her illustration of the “plain stitch” shows BLO double crochet (UK) with all rows worked from the same end. This is followed by a “rose stitch” worked under both legs of the loop and turning the fabric at the end of each row — the current standard double crochet. She continues with numerous individually named stitches instantiating many possible combinations of front loop only, back loop only, both loops together; cut rows, turned rows; yarn wrapped over the hook, yarn wrapped under the hook.

dillmont-plain-rose

The first form of crochet to be described in the literature of textile systematics appears to split the difference between these two stitches. The Systematik der textilen Techniken (Systematics of Textile Techniques) by Kristin Oppenheim, published in 1942, clearly states that the double crochet (feste Masche) is worked through the back leg of the loop. The accompanying photograph shows the work turned at the end of the foundation chain but it cannot be seen if the subsequent rows are turned or cut.

Oppenheim illustrates an isolated chain in the same photographic manner but does not include the slip stitch. She uses schematic drawings for other looped structures, including two taken from non-European objects but labeled with the Swedish term vantsöm (“mitten stitch”; then a common designation for nalbinding) as “Peruvian vantsöm” (Peruanisches Vantsöm) and “South Sea vantsöm” (Südsee-Vantsom).

A successor work, Grundlagen zur Systematik der gesamten textilen Techniken (Basic Systematics of all Textile Techniques), written together with Alfred Bühler in 1948, extends the use of schematic drawings to crochet. It also adds material about vantsöm and disambiguates the photographed double crochet structure by replacing it with a schematic drawing of de Dillmon’t rose stitch, explicitly citing its source.

An expanded edition of the Bühler-Oppenheim Systematik by Annemarie Seiler-Baldinger was published in 1973, reverting to the title of Oppenheim’s initial Systematik der textilen Techniken and with a preface written by Bühler. This retains the material on vantsöm, the schematic drawing of the double crochet, and adds similar drawings of other crochet stitches. These include what is presented as a slip stitch (Kettenmasche) worked through the back leg of the loop, although the text says that either leg can be used.

seiler-baldinger-ssc

In fact, this is not a correct representation of the described structure. It shows one chain vertically connected to another but without the full loop-in-loop anchorage that is a definitive attribute of crochet. Seiler-Baldinger replaced it with another drawing that correctly shows the latter property in the second edition of the book, published in 1991.

slip-stitch

It can also be noted that both drawings are in the opposite direction to that shown by de Dillmont, whom Seiler-Baldinger otherwise cites, as well as Caulfeild and Saward. This is reasonable for the 1973 illustration of the stacked chains but wasn’t reversed in the revised drawing. This may simply indicate that the difference between it and the Victorian illustrations went unnoticed but the fabric it was based on can also have been worked in the direction shown.

An English translation of the second German edition was published in 1994 as Textiles: a Classification of Techniques. I discussed the imprecision in the correlation between the glossaries of the two languages in a previous post and included an inverted copy of the slip stitch drawing in another. The related issue of the concordance of the various graphic representations of the slip stitch was deferred to a coming post — this one — and will be considered further from the nalbinding perspective.

Looped Fabric

Twists and turns in the development of crochet — Part 3

26 October 20185 February 2023 Cary KarpLeave a comment

The authors whose writings illustrate the early Victorian practice of crochet in the preceding installments of this series (Part 1, Part 2) continued to publish extensively about the craft. Its development can be traced through each of their works and is concordant across them all. Frances Lambert is particularly clear in relating crochet to the predecessor craft of shepherd’s knitting and I’m going to wrap things up by focusing on how her perspective of the differences between them shifted during the 1840s (also summarizing snippets presented more fully in an earlier post on Scottish Knitting).

In The Handbook of Needlework, from 1842, Lambert notes that crochet had come into fashion only four years earlier “although long known and practised.” She published the first book devoted exclusively to crochet, My Crochet Sampler, in the following year (the 1844 printing is available online). It specifies the earlier form as “a species of knitting originally practised by the peasants in Scotland, with a small hooked needle called a shepherd’s hook.”

In the same work, Lambert defines “plain single crochet” and “plain double crochet.” These correspond to the present single (or slip stitch) crochet and double crochet (UK) with one key difference. The initial forms were worked into the front leg of the chain loop at the top of the corresponding stitch in the preceding row — a technical detail designated as “plain” (now abbreviated FLO; front loop only) — rather than under the entire loop (“both loops”), as is the current standard.

Lambert published a revised second edition of the Sampler in 1848, again emphasizing that:

“Heretofore, Crochet had been practised in its most primitive shape—as a species of knitting; the stitch now recognised as Crochet, being but little known. From that period—now ten years since—Crochet has gradually progressed.”

The reference to “the stitch now recognised as Crochet” and the dropped mention of the Scottish tradition are significant. Lambert and her contemporaries emphasize that a crochet stitch presented without further specification is to be taken as a “plain double crochet.” The 1848 Sampler labels this a “plain stitch crochet” and does not include the definition of plain single crochet that appeared in 1843.

Lambert describes several additional stitches, some of which are relevant to the present discussion. Here is double crochet worked into the back leg of the loop. (Although the concordance between the legs when designated as back/front or top/bottom is not always clear, in this case the description of the stitch provides the requisite context.)

“Raised, or ribbed crochet,—sometimes called elastic crochet—is worked in the same manner as plain stitch crochet, with this exception—the under loops of the stitches of the previous row are always to be taken. It is worked in rows backwards and forwards.”

Double crochet can also be worked under the two legs of the loop rather than into it.

“Double stitch crochet—is worked in the same manner as plain stitch crochet, with the exception that both loops (the upper and under) of the stitch of the preceding row are taken. It is only employed where extra thickness is required,—as for the soles of shoes.”

This extends her 1842 description (noted in Part 1) and drops the earlier constraint that “it is not suitable for working patterns,” taking a step toward eliminating the constraint on inserting the hook under both legs of the loop. There is also a significant structural difference between stitches worked into the loop and those worked under the loop but not into it. The former has a stronger affiliation with knitting that does the latter, providing greater justification for categorizing shepherd’s knitting as a species of knitting than there is for any form of crochet worked under the entire loop.

The visual effect of the changed technique, as that of turning the work at the end of each row rather than the waning practice of cutting the yarn, was to equalize the appearance of the two sides of flat crocheted fabric. Beginning each row from the same edge otherwise preserves the difference in appearance between the front and back, which is particularly marked with slip stitch crochet. That contrast is prominent even when it is worked in the round, as seen in extant shepherd’s knitting where both sides are juxtaposed on the public face of the fabric.

Two ways of changing their orientation were presented in the preceding installment. One is found in an instruction by Lambert for a slip-stitched bootee: “When finished it is turned inside out.” The other is a less obvious technique described by Jane Gaugain in 1842.

“It is not necessary to work an edge stitch [i.e., turning chain] on a round, but only where the work requires to be turned to the wrong side, in order to work round the other way.”

Slip stitch crochet itself successively disappeared as a method for producing fabric, as signaled by the difference in the 1843 and 1848 editions of My Crochet Sampler. It reemerged in the encyclopedic reviews of 19th-century fancywork published later in the century and the beginning of the following one (illustrated in a previous post on Bosnian crochet). Some recent pedagogical material fully reinstates it, illustrating the common legacy stitches and variants that only appear sporadically in the earlier repertoire. Nonetheless, there was a relatively long period when crocheters would likely have had difficulty recognizing shepherd’s knitting (by any name).

That interval spanned the late 1940s and mid-1950s, when the broader research community was first becoming aware of the distinction between the crafts of nalbinding and knitting. The joint applicability of these techniques for producing the structure alternately termed cross-knit looping and twisted-stitch knitting has been discussed in a number of previous posts.

The back side of FLO slip stitch crochet also has a superficial resemblance to that structure. Although someone familiar with the craft would immediately recognize the difference, that erudition was not shared by all of the participants in the initial discussion of the candidate production methods. As a result, some exemplars of shepherd’s knitting were identified as nalbinding, with the conflation of the two crafts in earlier research reports echoed in more recent studies.

On the other hand, the basic slip-stitch structure that characterizes shepherd’s knitting can also be made with an eyed needle pulling a single strand of yarn. Pending the identification of decisive secondary detail equivalent to that used to differentiate nalbinding from true knitting with regard to the cross-knit structure, it is safest to stipulate that there can be reasonable contention about the craft identity of a given slip-stitched object.

However, if the object under examination includes shaped details such as the toe or heel of a sock, the practicability of the respective techniques can also be factored into the evaluation. I’ll be discussing a few such equivocal descriptions of potential historical significance in separate posts. These put nalbinding in contexts where it is otherwise unknown and date the crochet-type slip-stitch structure far earlier than can be corroborated by any other evidence.

Looped Fabric

Twists and turns in the development of crochet — Part 2

12 October 201822 November 2021 Cary KarpLeave a comment

This is a direct continuation of the preceding post. I’ve also tweaked its initial version to mesh better with the following text and even readers who have already seen it may find it worth reviewing before proceeding.

The first installment presented two source documents from 1846 and 1842 in reverse chronological order. This one works forward to 1842 from the first English language text that explicitly describes crochet — The lady’s assistant for executing useful and fancy designs in knitting, netting, and crotchet work by Jane Gaugain, from 1840.

This differs from the other documents under consideration by using the term “tambour” to designate a crochet stitch. This was taken from tambour embroidery, which together with shepherd’s knitting were the two immediate precursors of the craft all the authors term crochet.

Gaugain presents the chain as the basic tambour stitch and doesn’t differentiate between it and the slip stitch. Her compacted definition covers both the free chains of openwork mesh and the kinds of objects other authors say are typical for “Shepherd or Single Crochet.”

CXIII.—SINGLE TAMBOUR OR CHAIN STITCH

This is worked by drawing one loop through the other; it is seldom used save for open purses, and sometimes for muffattees, shoes, &c. &c.

The instruction that follows is for a “LONG PURSE OF OPEN STITCH OF SINGLE TAMBOUR” in the same arched mesh that appeared in the Dutch instruction from 1823 discussed in an earlier post. The next two instructions describe working double crochet with the alternate techniques of turning the fabric at the end of a completed row, and cutting the yarn at the end of every row and beginning all new ones from the same edge.

CXXV-—PLAIN FRENCH TAMBOUR LONG PURSE
(SOMETIMES CALLED DOUBLE TAMBOUR)

The purse is alternately worked on the right and wrong side… Cast on 100 loops in single chain stitch, having the last of the cast-on loops on the needle. 2d row, insert the needle in the first loop, and catch the silk from behind; pull it through the loop. You now have 2 loops on the needle, then catch the thread, and pull it through the two loops; this forms one stitch…

CXXVI—FRENCH TAMBOUR LONG PURSE

This is…all worked on one side. When you come to end of the row, cut off the thread, and draw it through the last loop, which fastens it. 2nd row, commence at the same stitch which you began the last row on…

Gaugain added a second volume to the 1842 edition of her text. This includes a detailed explanation of the turning chain.

Edge Stitch. — This stitch is worked by drawing a loop through the first loop or stitch on the row or round, then another loop through the one just made. This forms the edge stitch; then work on through the pattern. If the edge stitch of every row were not worked in this way, you would lose a stitch each row. It is not necessary to work an edge stitch on a round, but only where the work requires to be turned to the wrong side, in order to work round the other way.

A footnote (on p. 279) mentions the need to match the height of the turning chain to the stitches in the row it commences.

Again turn the work, and work back this round, and make an edge stitch; but instead of making one loop or chain stitch, make two, as this open stitch is higher than the plain rows.

Gaugain describes open stitches of two different lengths. One is now called half treble crochet (UK) and the other extended treble crochet (with an extra chain at the top of the post). She also modifies her terminology midway through the added volume, shifting from referring to a stitch as a “tambour” to the synonymous term “crochet,”

Worked in double tambour or crochet stitch, as described in the 125th Receipt of Volume First.

The first volume of the 1842 edition was unchanged from 1840 and the 125th instruction is excerpted above. Despite the statement about the limited use of the single tambour, the second volume includes several instructions for it. As with the statement about using an edge stitch for turning work to the wrong side, at least one of Lambert’s instructions for what she now consistently terms “single crochet” also moves the back of the fabric to its public face.

CLXXXI—BABY’S SINGLE CROCHET-STITCH BOOT

This Boot is worked exactly as the long and short Mittens for children, pages 317—323…[however] when finished it is turned out…

(Mittens, bootees, and the public display of the back side of the fabric will all figure prominently in the discussion of pre-19th-century shepherd’s knitting in subsequent posts.)

Cornelia Mee describes the same two basic flatwork methods in A Manual of Knitting, Netting, and Crochet Work from 1842. She doesn’t ascribe stitch status to the chain and presents the slip stitch as the:

Elementary stitch of crochet

First, make a chain, by making a loop and drawing one loop through the other, till it is of sufficient length; this forms a foundation; and all other crochet work must be begun in this way; then pass your crochet through the end loop, and taking up the wool or silk, draw it through; repeat this in every successive loop to the end of the row; then turn it, taking the under loop, and continue backwards and forward in the same way: this forms a ribbed kind of crochet, and is the most simple to begin with; the appearance of both sides is the same.

She then enters the familiar numbered sequence with:

Double Crochet

This may be worked round and round or in rows; if the latter, you must always break off at the end of every row, as it cannot well be done backwards and forwards, especially if intended to have a pattern on it. After the foundation is made, you will have one loop on your needle, insert the crochet through the next, and then draw your wool or silk through both; this still leaves a loop on your crochet, keep this on it, and draw your wool through the next loop, and then through both. When you come to the end of a row, draw the wool through the last loop, and cut it off, leaving an end of about three inches.

There is a key difference in visual effect between flatwork crochet turned after every row, and with all rows starting at the same edge. This is further influenced by other structural details that the Victorian texts leave almost without comment. I’ll go further into this in the next installment.

Looped Fabric

Twists and turns in the development of crochet — Part 1

28 September 201822 November 2021 Cary KarpLeave a comment

Instructions for crochet began to appear in the Victorian fancywork press in 1840, presenting it as a more elaborate and fashionable successor to the long-practiced shepherd’s knitting — the slip-stitch fabric made on a flat hook discussed in several previous posts. That stitch appeared in instructions for the new craft but opinions about its utility varied and its role at the urban worktable began to shift from the production of fabric to an adjunct technique.

The double crochet (UK) supplanted the single crochet (later aka slip stitch) as the workhorse for closed work. However, in contrast to present-day practice where a new such stitch is normally worked under both legs of the chain at the top of the stitch it is anchored to in the preceding row, the Victorian instructions prescribe working through only one leg of that loop. (The current terms “front loop” and “back loop” refer to the respective legs and are better read as “front leg of the loop” and “back leg of the loop.”)

Another difference between early Victorian and current practice is that fabric worked flat was not commonly turned at the end of each row. This technique does appear in the first published instructions (discussed in Part 2) but the alternative of cutting the yarn or thread at the end of each row and starting all new rows from the same edge was generally preferred. The further option of crocheting in alternating directions without turning the work was also described.

I’m going to proceed by discussing such aspects of Victorian crochet and then move back to details of shepherd’s knitting that have long since disappeared from mainstream practice. Beyond the obvious purpose of describing procedures that have come and gone during the technical development of the craft, I want to call attention to crocheted structures that might not be recognized as such when assessing the method of production of non-woven fabric with an unfamiliar appearance. There are probable instances of this having happened during the analysis of some objects published in the archaeological literature, which I will also go into in detail.

In order to provide an easy path into unaccustomed terminology, I’m going to begin where the current glossary has its clearest roots and work backward from there. Two relevant texts are covered below and others will be considered in the following post.

In her Knitting, crochet, and netting from 1846, Mme. Riego issues the general instruction that:

In crochet that is worked square, at the end of a row, cut the wool off, and draw it through to fasten it; begin at the other end.

The first of the following stitch descriptions is for:

Shepherd or Single Crochet.
This stitch is usually worked round, for Cuffs,
Mufatees, Boots, &c. &c

Make a chain, join it, keep the loop on the needle.
1st round — Put the needle in the 1st chain stitch, draw the wool through; there will now be 2 loops on the needle; draw the last loop through the 1st.
In the 2nd and following rounds, take the 1st part of the chain on the needle.

Riego continues with “Plain, Double, or French Crochet” and then “Treble Crochet.” Despite the familiar labels, there are two significant differences between her single, double, and treble crochet fabrics and their contemporary counterparts. These were discussed above and are the cutting of the yarn at the end of each row worked flat, and routinely crocheting each stitch through only one leg of the loop in the chain along the top of the preceding row — i.e., into the loop and not under it.

The latter procedure produced a structure that was described with a name of its own by Frances Lambert in The Handbook of Needlework from 1842.

Double stitch crochet.—In this, both meshes of the chain are taken. It is principally employed for the soles of shoes, and where extra thickness is required, but it is not suitable for working patterns.

Lambert uses the term plain crochet or plain single crochet to designate a slip stitch, and plain double crochet for what became the familiar double crochet. She notes of it that:

This is the crochet stitch generally practised, and that used for working table-covers, etc.

She then describes rows of both the single and double forms of plain crochet being worked in two directions using yet another term that was not taken into common usage.

Plain stitch elastic crochet—is worked alternately in rows backwards and forwards, first taking the upper, and then the under mesh of the chain.

Both this and the following descriptions of that process can be read as reversing the direction of the crocheting at the end of each row without turning the work. However, the indications of direction may also be relative to the front side of the fabric, facing toward and away from the worker in alternate rows (as in contemporary knitting charts).

…a chain of sufficient length is made to serve as the foundation for the article it is intended to make. Pass the needle through the last made loop of this foundation, and, catching the silk, draw it through, repeating the same at every successive loop; then returning along this row, repeat the same to form a second. A repetition of which, alternately backwards and forwards, from right to left, and from left to right, will give the first and easiest lesson.

Lambert abandons working in two directions (however it was executed) in the immediately following first complete instruction, for “a sofa pillow or table cover,” and all others in the same section.

This pattern, be it understood, is merely given as the first and easiest pattern in crochet, for the purpose of teaching the stitch… Instead of working the rows backwards and forwards, as before described, begin each row separately at the same end. When the last stitch of each row is finished, draw the wool through, and cut it off, leaving an end of three or four inches.

There is similar ambiguity in an instruction under a later heading. This indicates that cutting the yarn at the end of every row is the ordinary method. It therefore seems likely that the following snippet should end with a reference to “plain stitch elastic crochet” (as presented above) and not the contradictory “plain crochet.”

Raised, or ribbed crochet is worked in rows from right to left, according to the ordinary method; but the side of the work is reversed at every alternate row, as in plain [ribbed] crochet.

Lambert also recognizes the significance of what is now termed a turning chain.

To make a stitch — at the commencement and end of a row, is to make one stitch of a chain before the first stitch, and after the last, which in the next row are to be crocheted.

This is described in greater detail as an “edge stitch” in another text from 1842 and will be considered further in the next installment.

Looped Fabric

The chain gang

14 September 201822 November 2021 Cary KarpLeave a comment

The preceding two posts discussed inconsistencies in some of Irene Emery’s remarks about the fabric structures she calls plain knitting (here) and plain crochet (here). Her narrative continues with the observations:

In plain knitting all the loops in one row are on the same face of the fabric… One face has a smooth surface with an appearance of vertical chaining which emphasizes the vertical alignment of the interlooping…

and

Crochet is really a doubly interlooped structure (made with a hooked implement)… It is basically a kind of chaining… In the simplest stitch — plain crochet — each loop is drawn through two previous loops, the corresponding one in the previous row and the previous one in the same row.

The first statement says the vertical chaining on one face of plain knitted fabric is not a structural attribute but only has the appearance of one. Nonetheless, the chains that create that appearance have a demonstrable structural coherence. This is seen when the loop at the top of a chain is dropped from its support and then runs through the stitches below it, forming a “ladder” of horizontal bars between the corresponding stitches in the adjacent intact chains. The vertical structure is commonly restored by using a crochet hook to loop each bar in the ladder around the bar above it in a process that can as reasonably be termed chaining as can the mechanical action fundamental to crochet.

The second statement presents two requirements for fabric to qualify as crochet. An individual crochet-type chain intrinsically fulfills one of them; each loop is drawn through the previous loop in the same row. However, a chain does not meet the additional condition of also being drawn through the corresponding loop in the preceding row. A row of chains is therefore not crochet in itself and only becomes so when it is worked into an adjacent row of chains.

The challenge addressed by the present series of posts is devising a descriptive framework that includes not only plain crochet and plain knitting, but also plain tricot (Tunisian simple stitch). This is procedurally more closely affiliated with ordinary crochet than it is with knitting but the same cannot be said about the fabric’s structure.

One of the definitive attributes of tricot is that a complete row of stitches requires two passes across the fabric. The forward pass resembles knitting in both procedural and structural regards. The return pass is similarly akin to crocheted chaining. However, its purpose is to return the tip of the hook to the starting edge of the fabric and does not necessarily add a crocheted structure to it.

This is clearly illustrated with plain tricot. The return chains can be removed from such fabric entirely, transforming it into plain knitting. If the vertical knitted structure is removed from plain tricot, the fabric simply disintegrates. However, there are tricot stitches where the forward row is worked directly into the preceding return chain. This interlooping qualifies them as crochet (again, by Emery’s definition) and there is an array of intermediate states.

Since both the horizontal and vertical structures in plain tricot can be described as chains, as can plain crochet and plain knitting, an obvious next step is to consider whether the chain can serve as the modulating factor in an overarching categorization scheme. The difference between its two forms is that a crochet-type chain is made by placing a single loop on a support and working a new loop through it in immediate succession. Although such a chain has no inherent directionality, when interlooped into fabric it is positioned horizontally. Knit-type chains are made by first placing a row of loops on a support and then successively working a new loop into each of the preceding ones. This forms a vertical structure with as many parallel chains as there are loops on the support.

The loops in the two types of chains can themselves be differentiated in terms native to industrial knitting. A distinction is made there between symmetrical and asymmetrical loops.

symmetrical-asymmetrical

It can readily be seen how the symmetrical form relates to plain knitting.

open-stitch-meander

The asymmetrical form (fundamental to warp knitting) only needs to be envisioned horizontally for its relationship to plain crochet to be similarly apparent.

The height of both knitted and crocheted fabric grows as new chains are added to it. However, since chains of asymmetrical loops lie flat across the working edge of the fabric, the vertical increments are smaller than those of chains made from symmetrical loops of the same diameter. That difference is recovered and can be dramatically exceeded by a structural device specific to crochet. This adds height to a row of what would otherwise be plain crochet by interposing a “post” between each new chain and the chain capping the corresponding stitch in the preceding row.

The length of a post is determined by the number of times the yarn is wrapped around the hook during its production, and the position of each “yarnover” relative to the loop(s) in the preexisting fabric into which the hook is inserted. This variation is labeled with the familiar (albeit ambiguous) sequence double crochet, triple crochet, etc., each with an extended form that adds a vertically oriented chain to the post. It is also possible to insert the hook into the post in a preceding stitch, or through a combination of loops and posts, adding further variation to the repertoire.

Crocheted posts are structural elements of tricot, together with crochet-type and knit-type chains. As noted, many tricot stitches combine them in manners that permit the resulting fabric to be characterized as a structural hybrid of knitting and crochet. However, other tricot stitches cannot be described adequately in terms of either. The remaining tricot-specific structural attribute(s) will be considered in the next installment in this series (after revisiting a few other topics).

Looped Fabric

Crochet plain and simple

29 August 201824 December 2024 Cary Karp3 Comments

Irene Emery takes care to distinguish between procedural and structural detail when describing the primary fabric structures included in her classification system. (This post is a direct continuation of the previous one, which includes additional information about the source references.) She also separates the core definitions of categorized structures from contextual discussions of selected aspects of their manufacture and application.

Those narratives include statements of Emery’s personal opinion about systematics and terminology in prior literature. Her remarks are more likely to address misunderstandings about knitting than anything related to crochet but she does emphasize the incorrectness of the routine identification of “fabric…as crochet simply because hooked needles were used to construct it.” The defining and differentiating attributes of the two structures are:

Knitting and crochet represent the two major types of interlooping. In knitting the interlooping is vertical and the loops are vertically aligned, each loop securing the corresponding one in the previous row. Crochet is characterized by both vertical and lateral interworking of loops, and each new loop (or the series of loops constituting the new stitch) secures the one before it in the same row.

With allowance for the differences in the way Emery relates closed-loop and open-loop knitting to the parent category of looping (discussed in the preceding post) her remarks about knitted fabric and illustrations of it are consistent with corresponding material in the craft literature. The same cannot be said of the way she treats crochet.

Emery uses familiar UK terminology for crochet stitches, with the exception of the slip stitch or single crochet (synonymous in UK, different in US; she says nothing about the separate glossaries or her departure from them). She terms this a plain crochet, seemingly coopting a term that appeared in the Victorian fancywork press. However, in that context plain basically meant what is now termed front loop only (FLO) and applied to both single and double crochet.

Emery also uses the name “simple stitch” without italics in narrative text and doesn’t indicate if it is a synonym for plain crochet. A description of how the “simple stitch can be elaborated” seems to use it in that sense.

If a second loop is added before a new [simple] stitch is complete, the stitch may be called ‘double,’ if three are made, ‘treble,’ and so on.

The same clarity does not apply to the caption under a photograph of square filet mesh where both the horizontal chains and the treble crochet (UK) vertical separators are described as “Simple crochet stitches combined to form open meshes and solid areas.”

emery-filet

Anyone reading that caption without having studied the narrative text would likely have difficulty understanding the labeling of the stitches. Even at that, if simple and plain are properly read as synonyms, the caption does not correctly describe the treble crochet in the mesh. By Emery’s definition this stitch is made by adding two extra loops to a simple crochet — i.e., slip stitch — before the stitch is completed. This is technically correct but arguably an oversimplification. It is not equivalent to the erroneous caption description of a treble crochet as a combination of simple stitches.

Seiler-Baldinger apparently attempts to disambiguate the terminology by using Emery’s “simple crochet stitch” to designate a chain. However, by Emery’s definition crochet is interworked both laterally and vertically. Since a chain is worked without running anchorage in any adjacent structure, it does not qualify structurally as crochet in itself, even if chains are fundamental elements of crocheted fabric.

Adopting Seiler-Baldinger’s definition, instead, and accepting the chain as crochet would have staggering implications for the history of crochet. Chains are encountered in many other contexts and reckoned among the universal constructs that date back to early stages of human invention — devised independently at an indeterminable number of times and places. If a chain is crochet, the craft did not originate in the late-18th-century but in deep prehistory. I don’t believe that Seiler-Baldinger’s intended any such implication. A chain is an “air stitch” in German – Luftmasche – which I suspect was conflated in back-and-forth translation with the German word for slip stitch – Kettenmasche – literally meaning “chain stitch.”

Both authors do use “plain crochet stitch” to designate a slip stitch, which is the smallest structure that meets Emery’s definition. There is nothing to be gained in current discourse by substituting the unfamiliar label plain crochet stitch for the established slip stitch, which has the advantage of being the only label that designates the same stitch in both the UK and US glossaries. However, plain knitting frequently appears in the comparative discussion of textile structures and it is useful to have a corresponding plain crochet.

The series of posts to which the present one belongs has the goal of defining Tunisian crochet in terms that Emery or Seiler-Baldinger might plausibly have used had either of them chosen to cover it. Although this is a potentially intricate hybrid of crochet and knitting, there is a ubiquitous basic form of such fabric that can be compared nominally and structurally to plain crochet and plain knitting.

It was known as “plain tricot” in the Victorian literature, where it was first described in 1858 (in three separate publications), and only contains structural elements that are found in plain crochet or plain knitting. The next post in this series will consider ways of clarifying Emery’s definitions of both crochet and knitting so that they lead more directly to an equivalent statement about the composite fabric structure.

Looped Fabric

The systematics of crochet, knitting, and tricot

13 August 201824 December 2024 Cary KarpLeave a comment

I’ve been introducing fabric structures in previous posts with reference to what Irene Emery says about them in her book The Primary Structures of Fabric; an Illustrated Classification, originally published in 1966. This is not because I think her categorizations and descriptions are optimal, but they are widely recognized and a generally useful point of departure.

It is frequently complemented by a second reference text, Textiles: a Classification of Techniques, by Annemarie Seiler-Baldinger, from 1994. As the title indicates, it is directed toward the classification of techniques rather than structures but strives to be concordant with Emery’s terminology. Unfortunately Seiler-Baldinger’s book suffered in translation, first by mismatches between some of Emery’s terms and the German category headings for which they were listed as alternate designations in the original German editions (1973 and significantly revised in 1991). This misalignment was then carried back into the English edition, where Emery’s terms were used as translations for the German category headings apparently without technical review.

Neither of the books adheres rigorously to its nominal point of view, nor could it, and both are essential reference works on a desktop such as the one where this blog is kept. That’s also the place where I prepared my presentation for the recent In the Loop at 10 conference, questioning the applicability of Emery’s basic definition of a loop to open-stitch knitting.

A complete loop is formed (and will be retained in the fabric) if the element crosses over itself as it moves on to form the next loop.

Loop: a doubling of a cord or thread back on itself so as to leave an opening between the parts through which another cord or thread may pass.

This satisfactorily covers twisted-stitch knitting.

However, the path taken by the horizontal elements in open-stitch knitting doesn’t double back on itself as is fundamental to the definition.

To rectify this, Emery introduces a seemingly self-contradictory “open loop,” meeting her requirement for the yarn crossing over itself on a row-by-row rather than loop-by-loop basis.

Knitting in its simplest form consists of successive rows of ‘running’ open loops, each loop engaging the corresponding one in the previous row and being in turn engaged by the corresponding one in the following row.

The twisted-stitch and open-stitch variants of knitting ought reasonably to be treated as having the closest possible structural relationship. This raises a question about the adequacy of Emery’s way of associating them. Seiler-Baldinger skirts the issue by defining loop in more senses than Emery does, before defining knitting.

I intend to delve further into this in future posts but am also trying to puzzle out how Tunisian crochet might have been described in either of the two reference works had the authors chosen to cover it. Since it contains elements of both knitting and crochet, not including it in a text on primary fabric structures is understandable. There is no similarly obvious reason for its absence from a book on textile techniques.

I don’t know how much effort this undertaking will require and am going to gear up for it with a review (in the following post) of what Emery says about the relationship between tools with hooked tips and the structural attributes of the looped fabrics they produce. She counts both crochet and knitting among them. However, as with her description of the relationship between twisted-stitch and open-stitch knitting, her characterization of crochet mesh is not as focused as it needs to be for analyzing the hybrid structure of Tunisian crochet (using the predominant Victorian designation for it here — ‘tricot’).

Looped Fabric

Crochet is old hat

28 July 20181 May 2025 Cary Karp1 Comment

I attended the In the Loop at 10 conference at the Winchester School of Art last week and wrapped up my stay in England with a visit to the Victoria and Albert Museum’s textile study facility, The Clothworkers’ Centre. I shifted from event participation to personal exploration mode at the Winchester City Museum where archaeologically-recovered material relevant to the general theme of the excursion was on display. My friend Dora Ohrenstein was present on all three occasions and discussions with her provided additional useful perspectives on what was seen and heard.

This all left me with a heightened understanding of loopery, to say nothing of fuel for new blog posts. I’m not sure if or how the conference presentations are going to be made publicly available and will wait for clarification before posting anything based on them beyond micro-reviews of the presentations that were most compellingly close to my own interests. These covered things ranging from beknottedness, through cleeking (referenced in passing below), to the perennial favorite — systematological nomenclature.

I’m going to start with an 18th-century English cap that I was kindly permitted to examine at the Clothworkers’ Centre. A photograph with the V&A’s catalog details can be seen here. The September 2016 issue of Slip Knot, the Journal of the Knitting and Crochet Guild, includes a report by Lindy Zubairy of its examination during the KCG’s own visit to the study center earlier the same year.

“…an intriguing little cap, dated somewhere vaguely between 1700 and 1800, yet undoubtedly crochet. There is very little evidence of any crochet being worked before 1800. So is this the earliest known example? Or are the dates wrong? Using a magnifier we were able to make out the back-loop-only treble stitches [UK], a spiralling increase in the round, and evidence of short row shaping.”

As I was expecting, it was immediately apparent that this description is entirely correct. The cap was worked top down in treble crochet (retaining UK terminology throughout this post) with a number of rows worked fully in the round and shaped with increases, followed by several short rows for additional shaping, and continuing to the bottom of the cap with rows successively shortened by cutting the yarn after a decreasing number of stitches.

That technique is not mentioned in the KCG report. The stitches in the cap were worked in the same direction throughout. This means that the yarn was cut at the end of each row that was not crocheted all around. The side selvages were not finished particularly well and numerous yarn ends had loosened, assuming that they were securely fixed to begin with. The lack of proficiency with this detail is in noteworthy contrast to the apparent skill with which the fabric was otherwise worked.

The intended shape of the crown of the cap is similarly unclear. The increases in the spiral rows are too numerous to produce a smooth contour and progressively larger pleats may have been worked deliberately from the sides toward the top of the crown. However, the increases were not distributed with particular symmetrical accuracy, again at variance with the general quality of the crafting. One possible explanation is that the cap was a practice piece for someone skilled in an allied yarn art but less familiar with some of the component techniques of crochet.

The rustic appearance of the hat is consistent with the assessment of its age to sometime in the 1700s. However, the only form of solid-work crochet that is otherwise documented from that date is the slip stitch fabric commonly referred to as “shepherd’s knitting,” described and illustrated in printed sources beginning in the last quarter of the century. On the other hand, treble crochet is not attested until the 1820s. Cutting the yarn at the end of a row rather than turning the fabric, was a recommended practice for double crochet well into the 1840s, and into the 20th century for slip stitch. Working single-loop-only for all stitches remained the standard until at least the middle of the 19th century.

In any case, the stitches in the cap are of too fine a gauge to have been made with the strongly-tapered flat hook that is normally associated with shepherd’s knitting. Nor is such a “shepherd’s hook” well suited for anything other than slip stitch crochet (practiced as cleeking in Scotland at least through the 1950s). So in addition to the KCG’s question about the possibility of this being the oldest known example of crochet (a judgment I suggest deferring until other candidate pieces have been fully evaluated), it can also be wondered if the technical resources of shepherd’s knitting were more nuanced than the slip stitching with which it was equated in the Victorian fancywork literature.

Looped Fabric

Methods of holding yarn for crochet

16 April 201822 November 2021 Cary Karp3 Comments

The 1823 issue of the Dutch monthly publication Penélopé (cited in several previous posts) describes how the yarn is held for crochet, placing it in the same hand as the hook.

“For this one needs a tambour needle, with a small hook at the front…. This is held in the right hand, along with the thread being worked, about as though one were knitting.”

More detail is added in an issue from 1833, including an illustrated reference to a form of flat hook known to have been in use for slip stitch crochet at the latest by the 1780s.

“The needle, or hook, is held like a knitting needle in the right hand. Just as with knitting, the thread [is held] around the fingers, so that it rests on the first finger and is wrapped around it. The work itself is held in the left hand very close to the hook, but still protruding above the finger. For coarse work in silk or thick knitting cotton, one uses a copper hook of this form…”

The alternative of “a fine so-called tambour needle” for other work is then repeated.

In contrast, the earliest British publication that “shows the position of the hands, and the manner in which the needle and the work should be held” for crochet, My Crochet Sampler, from 1844 by Frances Lambert, illustrates the hook in one hand with the yarn and work in the other. This placement has remained in common practice through to the present day.

There is no evidence of a change in the way the yarn and crochet hook were held between 1833 and 1844, beyond what is implicit in the latter illustration. Precedent for the Dutch method is found in a German description of slip stitch crochet from 1800 (to be discussed in a separate post) using a flat hook.

That implement is also fundamental to the Swedish school of traditional crochet which never went fully out of practice between its origins — again documentable from the mid–18th-century — and its more recent return to the specialized craft repertoire. The following video shows Kerstin Jönsson using a flat hook in the manner described in 1800, and she discusses the Swedish craft further in her book from 2006, Smygmask virkning – teknik och mönster (“Slip stitch crochet – technique and patterns”).

My scouring of early publications never revealed any indication of the yarn-around-neck method of knitting described in the preceding several posts having a counterpart in crochet. However, the comments by Marie Jones on the most recent one made it clear that I had overlooked something of interest.

An entry in Carol Ventura’s Tapestry Crochet blog describes a visit to Portugal and includes photographs of three crocheters. Two of them are working in the manner illustrated in the 1844 text. The third, however, has the yarn around her neck and is holding the hook with her thumb extended in the manner typical for Portuguese knitters using hook-tipped needles.

The same round of image-searching located a number of photos of other Portuguese crocheters consistently working in a somewhat different manner, using a shoulder hook, feeding the yarn through the hand that holds the fabric, and apparently focusing on lace. This is most clearly illustrated in this detail.

The way the yarn passes under all the fingers except the middle one, which it is wrapped around, precludes the mainstream technique of meting out and pre-tensioning the yarn for each new stitch by raising either the index or middle finger — yet again as shown in the Lambert illustration from 1844. The equivalent effect is provided instead by the tension placed on the yarn passing around the neck or a shoulder hook.

Similarly, altering the direction from which the yarn is fed changes the action of wrapping it over or under the hook. This now only requires the hook to be held against the yarn from the appropriate side, with the loop then completed by the same compact action of the thumb that characterizes Portuguese knitting.

None of this permits conclusions about when yarn-around-neck crochet came into practice in Portugal. The age of the method says nothing about that of the craft and the photos of contemporary practitioners needn’t signify anything more than a preexisting method of holding yarn for knitting having been adapted to crochet — especially if hook-tipped knitting needles were still in prevalent use whenever that might have happened. Nonetheless, there is obvious reason to keep an eye out for additional evidence indicating earlier forms of yarn-around-neck crochet in regions where that method of knitting is well established.

Looped Fabric

More about Bosnian crochet

31 March 201822 November 2021 Cary Karp1 Comment

The description of Bosnian crochet given by Luise Schinnerer in 1897 and discussed in detail in the preceding post, is echoed in almost all points of detail in the article on crochet in the Encyclopedia of Needlework; New Edition by Thérèse de Dillmont. This work has appeared in numerous editions beginning in 1886 but the first one makes no mention of Bosnian crochet, nor do the first French or German editions. The revised French edition appeared in 1900 (briefly reviewed in the newspaper Le Radical on 31 July 1900) and the various translated versions would not have been released earlier. This left ample time for Dillmont (a native German speaker) to have taken note of Schinnerer’s article in the interim. (The online copy linked to above is of a printing from January 1922, as indicated by the numerical code ‘122’ at the bottom of the page following the title page.)

Linda Ligon reviewed the Dillmont article in the July/August 1994 issue of PieceWork Magazine also noting that there was no mention of Bosnian crochet in the first edition of the Encyclopedia, “so it’s not clear when this special kind of work came to her attention.” I believe the answer to that question is when she found Schinnerer’s description of it.

Beyond illustrating the craft, Dillmont’s text is particularly important because it enters the English term “Bosnian crochet” into the fancywork glossary, defining it according to Schinnerer’s description. However, Dillmont does not retain Schinnerer’s exclusive focus on traditional tools and applications. The shared basic stitch is described in the Encyclopedia as the “single stitch” noting that it “is also known as the slip stitch.”

The work is not turned at the end of a row and the yarn is simply carried a bit beyond the final stitch and cut. When the next row is started, “the thread has to be fastened on afresh, each time.”

Dillmont provides detailed instructions for making a strip of the mixed-color form, working into the back leg of the chain loop of the corresponding stitch in the preceding row (now abbreviated BLO). Schinnerer only says that the same leg of that loop is used without specifying the front (FLO) or the back.

Another instruction is for the characteristic relief pattern that results from selectively alternating the point where the hook is inserted, from the back leg to the front leg of the loop. Both Schinnerer and Dillmont say this is only done using a single color.

Schinnerer also shows a photo of a hat where the upper closed-work portion is made in this manner (but does not describe the stitch structure of the wide band at the bottom).

Her article additionally discusses Bosnian-Herzegovinian knitting with hook-tipped needles, and the regional practice of making fabric with alternating bands of slip stitch crochet and knitting. Although something of a centerpiece for Schinnerer, Dillmont says nothing about it.

One interesting characteristic of the hybrid fabric is that the crocheted portions are made using a special hook and not the hook-tipped knitting needles, despite Dillmont indicating that the latter option would be viable. Her illustration of an ordinary crochet hook being used to produce slip stitches could as easily show the end of a hook-tipped knitting needle. In fact, this ties into an earlier post that I left dangling with the intention of following up much sooner, where a cylindrical crochet hook (found in trade listings up to 35 cm long) is illustrated in use for what may well have been slip stitch crochet.

Nonetheless, traditional slip stitch crochet is often associated with the use of a special hook, not just in the Bosnian school, but in others as well. Various local manifestations have been discussed in several previous posts. The current Swedish tradition uses this form, which can be traced back into the late 18th century.

It is also described in an early Dutch publication (details here ) and presumably used elsewhere. However, given the clear difference between it and the Bosnian hook shown by Schinnerer, there is no substantive basis for the frequent reference to the Nordic/Dutch form as a Bosnian crochet hook.