Knitting – Page 5

I’ve gotten myself fairly well bogged down (blogged 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 its parent verb) in a Danish, Norwegian, or Swedish document without contextual information beyond a general association with yarncraft, cannot automatically be taken as a reference to nalbinding. The tool-based compound form nålebinding (needlebinding) has that connotation by definition, but a garment-specific one such as strømpebinding (stocking binding) does not, nor does the word binding on its own.

A Swedish travel chronicle from 1730 (presented in an earlier post) makes a clear dichotomy between knitting and binding. The first is the craft still known by that name and the second is now commonly termed nalbinding. The same post notes a dialect dictionary from 1766 that more ambiguously defines ‘to bind stockings’ (binna strumpor) as ‘to knit stockings’ (sticka strumpor). Since the purpose of that dictionary was to present regional usage to a distant readership, it is possible that a less widely known craft was defined in terms of a more familiar one without signifying the lack of a substantive difference between them.

In 1773, Anders Gustaf Barchaeus wrote a report about agricultural activity in the Swedish province of Halland from an economic perspective. One of the endeavors he discusses is “strumpe-bindning,” both for household use and for sale in nearby cities. He describes knitting needles as the tools of that trade, so there is no doubt that it was knitting rather than nalbinding, and uses the terms knitting (stickning) and binding (bindning) with equal frequency as interchangeable designations for it. This is illustrated in a section from his text on stocking production in and around the city of Laholm. (I use the term knitting consistently in the translation and indicate Barchaeus’s own choice in square brackets.)

“Wool stockings are knit [stickas] prolifically in this city; mostly women’s stockings with decorative gussets. This occupies everyone who has nothing else to do. Men’s stockings are knit [bindas] primarily in six parishes in the surrounding countryside…in others to a lesser extent. It is worth noting how intensively they knit [binda] both while underway and indoors, even where they have come as guests. One stocking is knit [bindes] per day by children aged 6 or 7 as well as elderly women. What counts against them is that they are not worked firmly and strong. The knitting needles [strumpstickorna] are heavy and the knitting [stickningen] in the stocking is as loose and open as a sack. This is believed to be a result of their being knit [sticka] mostly for sale to residents of the cities, who give them wool and soap for fulling, and pay 8 to 10 öre per pair.”

The chronicle then indicates the extent of this industry by naming a single urban client who provided wool for 10,000 pairs of such stockings annually, which he then sold to the Admiralty for twice what he paid for them.

The same synonymous relationship between knitting and binding is still recorded in larger Scandinavian dictionaries, albeit with the latter term generally presented as an obsolete or dialectal designation. A book on home and industrial knitting in Denmark was published in 1947 by H. P. Hansen with the title Spind och Bind — literally “Spin and Bind.” He also alternates between the terms binding and knitting, although it is not clear if he regards them as equivalent in all senses. However, he does use binding preferentially in several contexts, including the manufacture of stockings.

The first explicit use of the term nålebinding was in a Danish publication from 1945. Its author, Margrethe Hald, is certain to have been familiar with the strømpebinding described by H. P. Hansen but apparently saw no particular risk of confusion between the separate crafts of ‘needlebinding’ and ‘stocking binding.’ In contrast, Swedish researchers immediately after Hald appear to have dealt with the potential ambiguity by avoiding the term ‘binding’ altogether. They label needlebound fabric by association with mittens, which were commonly produced in that manner, preferentially using the term ‘mitten stitch’ (vantsöm) for what was nonetheless ultimately termed 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 technique that he also calls binding, frequently referred to as nalbinding in current English discourse.

One problem with this knitting/binding dichotomy is that the definitive tool for the latter, the eyed needle, can produce a basic structure (cross-knit looping) that is identical to twisted-stitch knitting as produced on the equally iconic tool of hand knitting, the long eyeless needle. Indeed, the understanding of the early history of knitting was once occluded by a failure to recognize the secondary details that distinguish the one production method from the other.

Although that difference cannot always be described in terms either of the employed tool or resulting fabric structure, the production methods themselves can be categorized unequivocally by the way they work a strand of yarn. With an eyed needle, the tool is at the leading end of the yarn, the other end of which is anchored to the burgeoning fabric. The entire length of yarn is pulled through each successive stitch, limiting how long that yarn can be.

In knitting, the tools are placed between the yarn supply and the fabric, and move a small length of yarn from the one to the other with every stitch. A new stitch is formed next to the preceding one without pulling more yarn through the existing fabric than is needed to form the new stitch. This places no intrinsic limit on the length of the unworked yarn. Yarn used for stitching is measured by the needle full, and for knitting by the ball full.

This applies neatly to nalbinding and ordinary knitting. However, the knitting made on a small hook defined in the 1790s Swedish dictionary discussed previously is a further distinct type of looping. It is not clear that it was practiced in Sweden by 1730 but it begins to appear in the European craft literature after the middle of the century. The oldest extant object made in that manner noted so far has been dated to around 1780.

In retrospective analysis, this technique is referred to as slip stitch crochet but all descriptions of it in documents prior to the 19th century call it knitting. This is an entirely reasonable categorization if the decisive criterion is the interposition of the tool between the work and an effectively unlimited source of yarn. It is unknown if such hooked looping only coincidentally fits into Broman’s framework or if he was deliberately accommodating it. If the latter, it indicates a date by which the technique had set root in Sweden (or at least in the province of Helsingland).

At some similarly indeterminate point, slip stitch crochet began to share the same name (påta) with nalbinding despite a rich alternative vocabulary. Both techniques were applied within the same community to the same kinds of garments (caps, socks, mittens, etc.), suggesting that the functional commonality weighed at least as heavily into the naming process as did the differences between fabric structures or production techniques.

Similar relationships between needle-based and hook-based looping are seen in a number of additional contexts at widespread locations. One example is the mochila bags made in simple looping by the Arhuaca people in Columbia, and crocheted by the neighboring Wayuu. Another is in Papua New Guinea, where bilums are made under the same roof both by crochet and hourglass looping (“double interconnected looping” in contrast to the single interconnected looping of nalbinding, but produced with the same basic technique).

A quick look at Norwegian terminology may be an appropriate way to wrap up this discussion of classification and nomenclature. It’s the source language for the word nålbinding where this whole excursion began, and one of the designations it includes for slip stitch crochet is krokbinding. This translates literally to ‘hook binding’ and is a reasonable counterpart to ‘needle binding.’ It also illustrates the term ‘binding’ used not just to categorize knitting and nalbinding, as seen in the previous few posts, but also to include at least one form of crochet.

The most widespread designation for slip stitch crochet in Norway is now pjoning. That term has been borrowed into descriptions of that craft in other languages, in the apparent belief that it unambiguously labels a technique and fabric structure that is separate and distinct from knitting or binding. However, the word pjoning is the gerund of the Old Norse prjóna, which is normally translated into English as the verb “knit.” There is obvious latitude for discussion about the nature of the craft it designated in communities where what we call Old Norse was an everyday language. However, prjóna remains in the modern Icelandic vocabulary, where it designates knitting in the current sense of the term.

Tag: Knitting

All binding is not nalbinding

Knitting and stitching in 1730