Knitting Madonna

Knitting Madonna

After that, knitting neeles entered the dark ages as far as the history books are concerned, but that’s often the way with stuff done mostly by women. Not a lot of historic mention was made of say the whisk or the clothespeg. Doesn’t mean they weren’t popular, but you didn’t bring them into battle with you. Usually. By the 1300s knitting was HOT in Europe. Even the Virgin Mary is pictured knitting baby Jesus a sweater. Not socks, alas. Maybe they didn’t wear socks in the holy land? Anyway, these pictures of knitting Madonna (now that would’ve been a great name for a blog!) are from the early 14th century.

In the Elizabethan era was a big thing among men, apparently. They even had their own guilds.

In the 17th and 18th centuries Scotland had a booming hand knitting industry. Fishermen needed warm, thick sweaters and the slightly oily texture was a bit water resistant as well. Whole families knitted all manner of garments, leading to the development of the famous Fair Isle and Aran (cable stitch) patterns. The sad background to Fair Isle stitch is that mothers and wives knitted those special cables to be able to identify their husbands and sons if they had drowned at sea.

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