More knitting geography

17 May 201815 March 2025 stringbedLeave a comment

As discussed in a previous post, there is no demonstrable geographic or historical basis for categorizing the knitting of fabric primarily with twisted stitches as “Eastern,” or knitting with predominantly open stitches as “Western.” Similar conditions apply to the terms “English” and “continental” when used to designate the two most widespread methods for holding yarn.

Most early writing about that aspect of knitting technique treats the predominant local approach as the ordinary one. Where alternative methods are described, it is in procedural terms that may or may not be identified with the name of another region.

This can be illustrated starting with The Workwoman’s Guide written anonymously by “A Lady” in 1838. This describes what is now called the English method.

The Common Knitting Stitch

Hold the pin with the stitches on, in the left hand; with the right hand, put the other pin under the first loop, making the pin lie across behind the left-hand pin, while with the first finger, the worsted is drawn in front between the pins. Then with the end of the right pin, press this worsted till it is brought through the stitch in the form of a loop upon the right hand pin.

The author follows this with a description of the continental method.

Dutch Common Knitting

This is another mode of knitting the common stitch, and is more simple, and more quickly done than the usual way. Hold the pin-ful of stitches in the left hand, as also the worsted, which should be wound once or twice around the little finger, to keep it firm, and allowed to pass over the first finger to the pins. The right hand pin is then simply passed through the stitch, and catching the worsted outside, draws it through, and forms the loop on the right pin, an so on.

With the exception of the way the two methods are labeled, the difference between them is presented in essentially the same way it still is. In fact, in British writing the left-hand method was commonly called Dutch or German until World War I, when the latter term was supplanted by a geopolitically neutral alternative.

The effort to promote holding yarn in the left hand continued in the Victorian fancywork literature, where the perspective of the left-handed knitter simply went unrecognized. This is typified in the 1842 edition of Jane Gaugain’s The Lady’s Assistant in knitting, netting, and crochet work, emphasized there with a pointing finger and italics.

☞ In teaching any person to knit, they should be instructed, as the more elegant mode, to hold the thread over the forefinger of the left hand, and not the right as most people do.

A Dutch text published by Anna Barbara van Meerten in 1823 (discussed in detail in a previous post) describes the way yarn is held for crochet by comparing it to the ordinary method of knitting in Holland at that time.

This is held in the right hand, along with the thread being worked, about as though one were knitting.

In light of the 1838 English description of the Dutch method it might seem that the practice there had changed in the interim (as it did more widely with crochet). However, van Meerten describes the local technique again in 1835, in a Dutch translation of a German Encyclopedia for Women and Girls.

The thread is placed over the right forefinger and held by the fourth finger and the little finger, while the other fingers hold the needles… Some people wrap the thread around the left index finger, which is the same.

The translator’s preface says that she adapted some of the instructions to local conditions, so it is safe to regard wrapping the yarn around the right index finger as the preferential Dutch practice. I haven’t been able to locate the original German version and don’t know if this is one of the modified passages.

Another German text on knitting from 1826 (echoing yet another from 1801) otherwise leaves the entire matter of how the yarn is held to the reader’s own understanding.

The rules and techniques of ordinary knitting are widely known.

These documents almost certainly do not reflect the full variation of local practice in the countries of their publication and obviously say nothing about subsequent trends. Skipping forward to the 1880s as described by Thérèse de Dillmont in her Encyclopedia of Needlework, the yarn-right method is presented as “the one usually practiced in England and France.”

The Germans on the contrary, lay the thread over the left hand, and can move the hands more quickly, in consequence. There are some ways of casting on, which can only be done in the German fashion.

The French edition of the same text makes no reference to England or France and implicitly describes the yarn-right hand position as the established method for a Francophone reader. It then contrasts it with the German yarn-left as just described.

Recent pedagogical material generally makes no presumption about the knitter’s handedness. It also strives to avoid regional categorization, with terms such as “picking” and “throwing.” Such alternatives require explanation, nonetheless, and only designate one component of the suite of actions that defines a knitting style. The broader categorizations English and Continental are therefore still often encountered. They have also been joined by the more recently coined use of “Portuguese” as a designation for the yarn-around-neck method of feeding the yarn to the front of the work, which may well predate any of the regionally labeled methods described above.

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More about Bosnian crochet

31 March 201822 November 2021 stringbed1 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.

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Who said knitting started with twisted stitches and hooked needles?

27 February 201822 November 2021 stringbed4 Comments

Several previous posts refer to generally held beliefs about the earliest knitters in Egypt using needles with hooked tips to make twisted-stitch stockinette fabric. More recent scientific examination of archaeologically recovered knitted fabric has radiocarbon dated the oldest known specimen of true knitting to the interval 425–594 CE. Counter to what the established tenet leads us to expect, this has an open-loop structure. Additional knitted objects through to the early 2nd millennium CE, found (but not necessarily made) in Egypt, have undergone similar examination and images in the published reports suggest that the open-knit form was by far the predominant one.

The questioned notion about the developmental sequence was fostered by Fritz Iklé in an article titled Über das Stricken (About Knitting), published in 1936 in the Schweizerische Arbeitslehrerinnen-Zeitung (Swiss Trade Teachers Journal, vol. 19, no. 8). He discusses the earlier conflation of looped fabric with a cross-knit structure made with a single eyed needle, now generally regarded as a form of nalbinding, and true knitting. However, he characterizes the earliest knitted material as having a twisted-loop structure. The article includes a section on knitting with hook-tipped needles and he draws the conclusion that the use of such tools to produce twisted-knit stockinette was “apparently the form of knitting that preceded our customary knitting.”

Iklé then discusses later regional schools of knitting that employ hooked needles, noting that they are also used for open-knit stockinette. He illustrates this with a photograph of an unfinished sock.

“The beginning of knitted work from Turkey shows us that hooked needles can also be used to knit open stitches, for which we also have evidence from Arabic graves from the 9th to the 12th centuries…”

Iklé cites the work of Luise Schinnerer during the 1890s (discussed in detail in the following post), who was the immediate source for several of the ideas that he propagated. Their conclusions would less likely have been reflected in the English-language literature if Mary Thomas had not picked up on Iklé’s article in the preparation of Mary Thomas’s Knitting Book, from 1938. She explicitly credits him as one her informants and appears to have paraphrased the caption of the preceding photograph but misread a pivotal detail in the original German.

“…a half-finished sock of the 12th century found in a Turkish tomb reveals that the knitter was then working with five hooked needles…”

Either way, Thomas does not identify the Turkish tomb to which she is referring or substantiate her statement in any other manner. It should also be noted that if the Turkish sock illustrated by Iklé were indeed from the 12th century, despite his saying nothing about its age, its ribbing would provide incontrovertible evidence of knitting and purling side-by-side at a significantly earlier date than can otherwise be attested. Finding needles in place in work of that age would also be quite sensational.

Thomas bases what is now an entrenched dichotomy between “Eastern” and “Western” knitting on the assumption that fabric produced in the corresponding areas of Europe can be characterized by preferential knitting with twisted or open loops. Although the geographic labels are of mnemonic utility when discussing craft practice (for a right-handed knitter, loops with an Eastern mount face to the east and those with a Western mount to the west) the derivation of her nomenclature is gainsaid by the open-knit Turkish sock.

Thomas discusses and illustrates another regional form of knitting with hooked needles practiced in Landes, on the Atlantic coast of southern France. This is also mentioned briefly by Iklé with details that Thomas includes in her own description. She says that “the fabric is Crossed Stocking Stitch, knitted in the Eastern way” again contradicting the geographic basis for her classification of stitch structures. She resolves this by permitting both the Eastern and Western forms to be “crossed” or “uncrossed,” further treating knitted and purled stitches as separate constructs. Although again useful in knitting pedagogy, that model occludes rather than clarifies historical and structural relationships between the various forms, as well as the differentiation of the techniques used for their production.

Whatever the extent of Thomas’s reliance on Iklé may have been, he provided her with at least one item that is not described in his own text — a knitted fragment in his collection.

Thomas calls it a “magnificent example of Arabian color knitting of the 7th to 9th centuries…found in Fostat…and knitted in Crossed Stocking Stitch (Eastern)….” This dating is consistent with Iklé’s general appraisal of such material. Thomas notes that the decoration was knitted upside-down and that she aligned the photo with the direction of the stitching. This apparently assumes that the cuff-down working of the Turkish sock was normative for early knitting, rather than taking the orientation of the pattern to indicate what, in reference to socks, would be toe up.

When inverted, the pattern can be compared directly with the appreciable amount of decorated Islamic knitting from the Fatamid Period (969-1171 CE) for which descriptions have since been published. Several commentators have suggested on this basis that the Iklé fragment is also correctly dated to that period. The current location of the fragment is unknown (if it still exists) and its age cannot be determined more precisely. (Nor can the assertion that it has a twisted-stitch structure be confirmed; the photo does not display that level of detail.) For as long as it was considered illustrative of the earliest form of true knitting, the photograph in Thomas’s book was regarded as particularly valuable documentation.

One of the more rigorous recent discussions of Egyptian textiles is found in a presentation of selected objects from the Katoen Natie collection in Antwerp, written by Antoine De Moor, Chris Verhecken-Lammens, and André Verhecken, titled 3500 Years of Textile Art, and published in 2008. This includes photographs of a knitted stocking and fragments of three others that were all radiocarbon dated to the Fatamid period. The four photos are detailed enough to show open-knit structures, as can be seen in the full stocking here. The decorative pattern of one of the fragments closely resembles that of the Iklé fragment and a close-up detail shows its stitch structure with particular clarity (here in a detail of the detail).

This corroborates Iklé’s report of open-loop knitting being evidenced by material found in Arabic graves from the 9th to the 12th centuries, even if he estimated an earlier date for the fragment from his own collection. It seems likely that he based that assessment on the presumption that twisted-loop knitting was the older practice. However, the bulk of evidence now available does not support either the chronology or distribution statistics he described and Thomas then injected into the mainstream craft literature.

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True knitting

25 January 201822 November 2021 stringbedLeave a comment

I have been using the definitions of fabric structures provided by Irene Emery as starting points for the discussions of several forms of looping. Along the way, I tacitly noted that her definition of knitting is not as clear-cut as the others are and realized that it would be useful at some point to consider it here.

Emery defines the basic element of all looping as follows:

“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 cord or thread back on itself so as to leave an opening between the parts through which another cord or thread may pass.”

Applying this specifically to knitting, a strand of yarn worked into a row of twisted-stitch knitting forms one complete loop after the other.

emery-cross-knit

In contrast, the yarn in open-stitch knitting doesn’t cross over itself at all as it is worked across a row. It does cross over the yarn in the adjacent rows but those can be separate elements (and arguably are intrinsically so). The preceding definition of loop therefore does not properly accommodate this form of knitting.

emery-open-knitting

Emery addresses this in her definition of knitting by introducing an incomplete “open loop”:

“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.”

This correctly places twisted-stitch and open-stitch knitting in the same category but glosses over the contradiction in terms between a loop explicitly defined as an element that crosses over itself, and a loop as a u-shaped segment of an element that undulates along its length but does not cross over itself.

open-stitch-meander

The qualifiers “complete” and “incomplete” offset this, and treating the twisted stitch as a complete loop allows the open stitch to be an incomplete variant. However, if knitting is classified as a form of looping (as Emery does), twisted-stitch knitting would then be its primary type with open-stitch knitting as a variant.

Emery also discusses the need to distinguish between twisted-stitch knitting and the structurally identical cross-knit looping, noting (but not necessarily ascribing to) a widespread belief that I will say more about in a separate post:

“Crossed knitting is quite commonly said to be the oldest form of knitting.”

She uses the term “true crossed knitting” to narrow its scope to fabric produced by knitting techniques and not those of any other form of looping, but ultimately concludes:

“…even complete specimens (and many ancient ones are fragmentary) offer little reliable evidence of the process of fabrication. An unfinished fabric with associated implements would probably be necessary for positive determination.”

From the nominal perspective of this blog, it would be reasonable to discuss knitting exclusively in terms of looping. In that light, twisted-stitch knitting is “true looping” and open-stitch knitting is what could be termed pseudo-looping. Conveniently, there is no need to develop the latter concept unless Emery’s definition of looping is treated as inviolable, which she doesn’t even do herself.

In any case, much writing on the topic treats what is sometimes called “true knitting” as the reference point for both the historical and structural analysis not just of knitting, but of fabric produced by some other technique “that resembles knitting.” The definition of true knitting varies depending on whether focus is on the fabric structure or on the methods of its production. Regardless of the specific wording of any such definition, open-stitch hand-knitting would lie within its scope. Such fabric cannot realistically be produced with a single eyed needle, as can the twisted-stitch structure, so a qualifier similar to the one in Emery’s “true cross knitting” is not needed for it. Nonetheless, her formulation does recognize twisted-stitch knitting as true knitting.

The concept of true knitting ought reasonably (if not tautologically) to include knitting as defined by the practitioners of that craft. Current tutorial texts distinguish between Eastern style and Western style knitting. The sole difference between them that is visible in the finished fabric is whether the completed stitches are twisted or open. (I’ll discuss the origin of these terms in a separate post but will note for now that the material evidence does not establish twisted-stitch knitting as the older form.)

The Western knitting style is more widely practiced and therefore the one for which printed instructions are most commonly prepared. Eastern style knitters need to know how to deal with such patterns but the difference between the schools is otherwise of little practical concern. There is also a “combination” knitting that employs a hybrid of Eastern and Western elements to produce an open stitch structure, but this does not occupy a niche of its own in the present discussion.

A detailed classification system needs to recognize production methods. The two primary techniques for hand knitting employ a peg loom (subdivided into round and straight forms, using a single hook for working stitches on them) or knitting needles (with smooth tips or hooked tips and several ways to manipulate them). Both can produce twisted and open knit stitches with equal ease and neither can normally create other forms of looping.

This suggests that true knitting can usefully be defined both as the application of those implements to the manufacture of knitted structures, and as fabric resulting from that process. This does disallow machine knitting, but that includes many structures that cannot be produced by hand knitting and is generally discussed in a terminological and conceptual framework of its own. For present purposes, knitting machines will be seen as automated cousins of the peg loom, without encumbering the definition of true knitting.

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All binding is not nalbinding

17 August 201722 November 2021 stringbedLeave a comment

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.

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Knitting and stitching in 1730

8 July 20175 February 2023 stringbedLeave a comment

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.

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More historical terminology

1 July 20175 February 2023 stringbed3 Comments

In the third volume of his Glysisvallur — a massive description of all aspects of the Swedish province of Hälsingland written circa 1730 — Olof Johan Broman includes the following description of yarncraft under the heading of sheep husbandry.

“Caps, mittens, stockings, and sweaters are knit [stickes] from both single and plied wool yarn. These are also stitched [sömes], especially the first named garments, but never sweaters. The difference between knit and stitched stockings, mittens, etc., is known. The latter practice is also called ‘to bind’ [binda] and the product, for example, bound [bundna] stockings, etc.”

The phrase ‘to bind stockings’ (binna strumpor) has its own entry in a Swedish Dialect Dictionary from 1766. This defines its use in the province of West Götaland as “to knit stockings” (sticka strumpor). Nothing else in that dictionary clarifies if knitting is distinct from binding, a synonym for it, or a generic term that subsumes both. These various senses are attested in other documents, where knitting and binding are used both to name specific crafts and as broader designations for other forms of looping.

The term knitting is used in that overarching sense in the definition of a name for slip-stitch crochet in the same West Bothnian dialect dictionary from which the definition of sömma presented at the outset of this excursion into Swedish lexicography was taken.

påta — v. (pōtă) … 2. to knit [sticka] caps, mittens, etc., with a small hook [krok].

This craft is commonly referred to as “shepherd’s knitting” in English texts. Written and illustrated descriptions of it began to appear in several European countries in the second half of the 18th century. All share one important attribute — they treat it as a form of knitting, or even binding. Prior to the 19th century, wherever the word crochet appears in a craft-related document, it designates the tool.

The word påta remains an accepted Swedish designation for traditional slip stitch crochet made with a flat hook. In the preceding post, we also saw it used to designate stitching with an eyed needle to make mittens. It appears in an intervening fictional narrative from 1907 consistent in all regards with the preceding dictionary definition.

She graciously took out a half-knitted [halfstickad] mitten. to which the white wool yarn was still attached. It was påtad as the women in Norrland used to do, who with a small bone hook [benkrok] put together [påtade ihop] splendid strong mittens.

The hook and the needle techniques also share contemporaneous dictionary definitions that categorize both as forms of knitting, and the 1790s dictionary says both were used to produce the same kinds of functional garments. A redundant array of names for techniques and crafts can be teased out of all this — binding, hooking, knitting, looping, needling, stitching, etc. They are all applied to the production of a more clearly defined number of warm utilitarian garments — caps, mittens, socks, and stockings.

Of these craft designations, knitting appears to be the one used in the broadest generic sense. However, the early sources differ on the other techniques they place in that category. All obviously agree that it includes knitting as a discrete craft, and slip-stitch crochet generally appears there as well.

The 1730s narrative unequivocally regards knitting and stitching as separate categories. Given the native Swedish terms for the implements fundamental to each — sticka and nål — the term ‘needling’ contrasts most clearly to knitting. In fact, nålning is used preferentially in Swedish scholarly texts through the 1960s, despite Margrethe Hald having introduced the term nålebinding into the vocabulary of Scandinavian textile research in 1945.

In 1963, Anne Marie Franzén published an article about a nalbound medieval sock, with the Swedish title En medeltida socka i nålning. The report on nalbound mittens Maria Collin published in 1917 noted that traditional practitioners called them nålade. Franzén cites Hald’s earlier work but does not mention nålbindning.

A Norwegian article headed Nålbinding, by Marta Hoffman in a volume of a pan-Scandinavian encyclopedia published in 1967, lists the corresponding Danish term as nålebinding and the Swedish as nålning or vantsöm — again without mention of nålbindning. Anna-Maja Nylén did adopt that term in her book from 1968 (perhaps having consulted the other sources noted above) but landed somewhere in the middle with ‘needle looping’ in its English translation in 1976.

I’ve taken the derivation of the various Swedish designations for nalbinding about as far as I can. One of these terms — virka — appeared in a previous post about looped purses (linked to above), and will be revisited in the contexts of chain-stitch embroidery and crochet. In the meanwhile, I’m going to consider the 1730s distinction between knitting and needling from a technical perspective and set etymology aside.