Knitting
Little Known Knitting Fact
I’ve been posting “little known knitting facts” written by Ava Coleman, my Stories In Stitches partner on Twitter and this one reminded me of something in the first book I wrote ten years ago.
Little Known Fact: The Catalonian Knitters’ Guild was established in 1496.
From my manuscript for The Knitted Rug: 21 Fantastic Designs (file dated 2003)
Knitted Rugs of The Past
Knitters around the world have been making rugs for centuries. Found in folk art, popular craft, and professional textile traditions, rugs have always had a place in the knitter’s repertoire. Using a variety of materials and techniques, knitters have fashioned many styles of rug: from ornate medieval knitted tapestries and humble rag rugs knitted by early Americans, to modern art-knitting and home décor items on department store shelves.
Our words “rug” and “carpet” stem from the ancient Norse word rogg, referring to a tuft of fur, and the Latin word carpere, a verb meaning to pluck or card wool. In the United States today, carpets are usually room-sized floor coverings, while rugs are smaller decorative items. In Australia and Europe, the word rug is also sometimes used to refer to afghans and blankets.
Classical Origins
Rugs were mentioned in literature as early as the Greek Odyssey, where Homer spoke of drawing up a rug-covered stool for Ulysses to sit on. The word he used for the rug is kivas, meaning animal fleece. This simple early rug inspired the development of woven fleece and pile rugs, such as the ryas of northern Scandinavia and the knotted pile rugs of Asia.
The first rugs were woven, with short pieces of yarn, or pile, knotted onto the surface to created a plush surface. The earliest known carpet, a knotted textile found at Pazyryk in Siberia, dates from the second- or third-century BCE. About a thousand years later, knitting and knitted rugs began to develop. The oldest positively identified pieces of knitting are blue and white cotton stockings and fabric fragments from around 1200-1500 CE Islamic Egypt, and two cushions from the 13th century tombs of a Castilian royal couple. The stockings and cushions were knit at a very fine gauge with all-over two-color patterning and Arabic inscriptions. Their complexity and craftsmanship prove that knitting was already a highly developed craft.
While rug-making and knitting developed separately, the two crafts followed similar paths—separated in time—from origins in Arab lands to Europe and, later, to America. Once knitting and rugs came together, knitters learned how to imitate existing rug-making techniques and developed new styles of rugs unique to knitting.
Medieval Masterpieces
The earliest known knitted rugs are also the most elaborate. Large, pictorial carpets were knit by men seeking entrance into the knitting guilds in the Alsace region between Germany and France during the 17th and 18th centuries. From flowers and Bible scenes to scripture texts and portraits of nobles, the minute details provide clear evidence of the advanced skills of the knitters. At six feet, or two meters, long these rugs were much too heavy to knit with two straight knitting needles. The knitters probably used several long double-pointed needles or a knitting frame (a precursor to the knitting machine, similar to a jumbo-sized version of the spools used to make knitted cord).
In medieval times, knitting was “man’s work.” Only widows taking over their deceased husbands’ memberships were allowed to join guilds. Women in rural areas and nunneries sometimes knit as well. At least one knitted carpet was known to be made by women—a group of nuns constructed it for their bishop as a gift.
Medieval Masterpiece Carpet in the Victoria & Albert Museum Medieval knitted carpets, also known as masterpieces, range from beautiful to bizarre, each one an elaborate example of color work the like of which we will probably never see again. Not intended for use on the floor, these carpets were used as table runners and wall hangings.
With twenty or more colors, these rugs are as complex as machine-woven tapestries. Charts on graphs, similar to those we still use for color-work projects, were likely used to keep track of the patterns. Knitters stranded unused colors were across the back of the work, or wove them in, the way you’d knit two-color Fair Isle. Today, we knit pictorial designs like this using the Intarsia technique, with each block of color using a separate ball of yarn. Intarsia uses less yarn and creates a lighter, more flexible fabric that is better suited to clothing. However, for knitting rugs, the extra strands on the back of the work add strength and have no disadvantage.
Some masterpieces were also fulled, or felted to increase their durability. Special felting houses provided large workspaces where artisans beat wet rugs with sticks, or stomped them with their feet, to cause the fibers to mat. Sometimes the dry felted rug was brushed with teasels (the dried seed heads of a thistle-like plant, Dipsacus fullonum) to raise the nap, and then sheared with large scissors to create a smooth surface. In several of the knitted masterpieces, the stitches are nearly invisible except where the surface has started to wear out.
To be continued…
Experience level – advanced beginner
After I finished my Arctic Lace Knitting Book, I finally allowed myself to explore the world of lace knitting and discovered that is is much more varied and elaborate than I could have imagined. Around the world and over time, knitters in different countries and regions have developed unique styles of lace knitting that range from easy-intermediate (like the knitting of the Oomingmak knitters) to advanced-insanely- difficult (like some of the Victorian patterns designed by English knitters). Other lace styles are used in Estonia, Russia, South America, Lithuania, Germany and Austria, and New Zealand. I’m sure there are even more, but these are the styles I’ve explored so far. – Donna Druchunas –
Experience: All skill levels, basic knitting skills required.
Have you ever wondered why some people can read charts easily and others find them incomprehensible? The truth is, charts are written in a code that can be deciphered by knitters who learn the symbols on the page and in their knitting. Charts do not use arbitrary symbols, but each symbol includes the instructions on how to make the indicated stitch! In this class, you will learn the secrets of interpreting chart symbols for texture and cable stitches.
