How old is knitting? I have been asking myself. Well who can really say? All I have found out so far is that there's quite a lot of evidence going back a few thousand years of knitting or very similar techniques with charming names such as Sprang and Nalebinding but actual evidence of the origins of knitting are unlikely to emerge, so speculation seems in order.
The suggestion that weaving would have been a precursor of knitting does not really wash with me. I tend to go with the idea that the simplest fabrics would come first. As an early man surely you would go for some simple tools, for example two sticks, before you got round to thinking of making a frame, stretching fibres, interlacing etc. And maybe before two sticks perhaps just one with a bent end, like a crochet hook, would have sufficed.
I am going back now - right to the beginning, Adam and Eve after the Fall finding themselves naked had recourse to fig leaves for apparal. Now one fig leaf (as so often depicted) would still have been very drafty, not to say impossible, without the means to hold it in place necessitating a length of something, maybe a vine or some sort of long plant fibre. This would quickly lead to the need to make some loops and a little hook would have come in handy. After all there are thousands such instruments on any tree.
To try and prove my point I spent a recent stroll in the woods around Sherwood Forest looking for suitable twigs to make a natural crochet hook. I have one lined up for the job and eventually I will get round to see if I can use it to loop up some vines.
 |
| autumn oak leaves |
Now I want to make a knitted collar or little cape based on vine leaves or fig leaves. Just now the leaves are falling - I see it as delicate layers of Autumn colours, crisp brown on top of fading and still verdant tresses.
Just a few things to master first - like knitting lace and dip dyeing. I'd better press on.
Woolly Facade
No comments:
Post a Comment