Images of knitting

sock of the week: no.10

the “everlasting stocking knitters” of Wales

sock of the week no.1

Philippe Mercier’s popular portrait of an eighteenth-century stocking knitter

YOLK!

Yes, I am standing in a frozen landscape dressed as a fried egg – what of it?

Cas

Eimear Earley introduces a gorgeous shawl inspired by the golden age of Irish art

Over the years I’ve gathered a small collection of knitting ephemera. This includes a few different styles of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century sticks, wisps and sheaths (used throughout Britain for supported knitting) and different kinds of representations–largely photographs or prints–of knitting all over Britain. Such representations do not afford some sort of transparent window onto…

hap-py

By: KDD February 7, 2016July 21, 2016

Images of knitting, knitters, knitting, The book of hapsdesign, designers, haps, History, knitting, shawls, Shetland, textile history69 Comments

I am extremely hap-py, because I am about to leave for a research trip to Shetland to do some work for a very exciting book that we will be publishing later this year. Do you want to hear a little more about it? The subject of the book is haps – the beautiful everyday shawls…

Great Tapestry of Scotland 93-123

Panel 94: Hill and Adamson The silver herrings and striped petticoats of the Newhaven fisherwoman. In the comments on yesterday’s post, Heather linked to an interesting take on the “when is a tapestry not a tapestry” question from a tapestry weaver who strongly objects to the misappropriation of the term in reference to non-woven textiles.…

Shetland Textiles: 800 BC to the Present

Writing of the worn and mended Fair Isle sweater that Shetland knitter, Doris Hunter created for her fiancé, Ralph Patterson, who spent four years in a Japanese POW camp during the Second World War, editor Sarah Laurenson states: “Ralph’s sweater is much more than a physical object. It is a site of personal and political…

Images of knitting #3

By: KDD May 23, 2013May 23, 2013

costume, ephemera, History, Images of knitting, textilesephemera, images of knitting, knitting, national costume, national stereotypes, postcards, Welsh women22 Comments

Here are a couple more postcards from my collection in which knitting is represented in association with regional / national stereotypes. This is an American card dating from the very early 1900s. It is number 11 in the popular “St Patrick’s series,” whose tone is, of course, incredibly sentimental and nostalgic. One could hardly imagine…

Images of knitting – 2

By: KDD April 30, 2013April 30, 2013

ephemera, Images of knitting, knitters, knittingadvetisments, biscuits, ephemera, feminism, images of knitting, knitting, McVities, nostalgia, postcards, Sunlight Soap, work49 Comments

Here are a couple more postcards from my collection. Strictly speaking, these are reproductions of advertisments, but I am particularly fond of the Sunlight Soap image which, as you can see, has been pinned on my board for some time. I find it interesting for the way it represents knitting as a leisure activity, rather…

images of knitting #1

By: KDD March 28, 2013April 11, 2013

ephemera, History, Images of knitting, knitters, knitting, readingAustria, ephemera, first world war, History, knitters, knitting, Philadelphia N Robertson50 Comments

I have a small (but ever growing) collection of prints and postcard in which knitters, and the activity of knitting, are represented. Some of these are really very interesting, and I thought I’d occasionally share them with you here. This card, which was posted with an Austrian stamp in 1916, depicts a ‘continental’ knitter working…