After downloading and printing a pattern from Knitty yesterday, I turned to my husband and said that I had no idea what people did before Ravelry and Knitty since both have been around for almost all of my knitting life. So I thought I'd find out. Here are a few little facts.
- Knitting, as defined by Wiktionary, is "Combining a piece of thread with two needles into a piece of fabric." The word is derived from knot, thought to originate from the Dutch verb knutten, which is similar to the Old English cnyttan, to knot.
- It is commonly believed that knitting started in the Middle East and Egypt can claim having the first known examples of true knitted garments, brightly coloured socks.
- In the 1400's knitting was a man's game. Guilds were formed and knitting was a respected profession for the boys only.
- Fair Isle is named after a tiny island in the north of Scotland.
- Apparently the way in which we knit is affected by world wars. During WWII Continental knitting fell out of favour due to it's German origins.
- You can knit with the following: wool, angora, llama, alpaca, camel, dog, cat, yak, qiviut, cotton, silk, bamboo, hemp, yarn with milk proteins, jute, nettle (surprisingly soft), raffia, yucca, coconut husk, banana leaves (very, very stretchy), soy, and corn (knits a lot like cotton.)
Nicely educational! Apparently, pre-Ravelry was the heyday of the knitting magazines, like Interweave. And now, those mags often have an on-line component as well, so they didn't really suffer horribly at the change. Plus, we get errata in a more timely fashion. I'm lusting after those Cookie A socks you made. The sock bug hasn't truly bit me yet, but it'll probably happen once I get to some fun parts on mine.
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