Never Idle

I have been fairly silent these past few weeks, but let me assure you I have not been idle. For better or for worse, I have spent quite a bit of time knitting recently.

"The pretty make-believe industry, or elaborate idleness, of knitting all sorts of things in all sorts of crinkum-crankum ways . . ."

My needles have click-clacked non-stop, though to be quite honest, not exclusively on 19th-century projects. I've produced a set or two of baby booties, not to mention a cloche that I promptly unravelled as it did not fit quite right. I think the yarn was too heavy and now intend to use it for a lacy tank top.

Back to the 1850s, I've also finished my second grey railway stocking. I think I may take a break from knitting before starting my red stockings. I'll need to buy some more yarn soon too. But first, I intend to do something else with my life for a while. Otherwise, these little notes will become simply too dull to write, let alone read.

A Confession

I am addicted to knitting. This past week, while shepherding my computer through a serious roll-back (to June 2006!) to repair a failed program installation, I finished my second grey wool stocking. Since the beginning of the year, I have also knit a pair of baby booties (decidedly not 19th-century) and begun a cloche in mist grey bamboo blend for my early spring hat. I have even been considering writing a book of knitting patterns based on 19th-century accessories.

The consequence of this growing obsession is quite serious however. I seem to spend every free moment with needles in hand, instead of writing, reading, studying, or even cleaning my apartment. I must find a way to cut back...

On a side note, but also in the nature of a confession, two days ago I discovered proof of something I have long suspected: I knit backwards. I cannot tell you what mortification this has caused me, not to mention the oaths I suppressed while attempting to teach my hands how to do it right way round. I think I have the knitting part almost mastered, but the pearling still gives me pause. Since I knit with the yarn held across my left finger instead of casting every stitch, I have had to modify the little twists I use to pick up the working strand. The result is less slanted than my previously twisted style, but it's still a bit uneven (perhaps that will correct with practise) and definitely slower (also something that may improve with continued industry).

My camera cord was left at work by mistake, so I cannot even post pictures of my latest knitting accomplishments (including the beginnings of my hat, knit in the new, corrected, manner). But perhaps that is not such a tragedy. It will force me to focus on other topics as I plan upcoming posts.

Cheerio for now. Back to my knitting.

Half Done is Well Begun

Grey stockings: one down, one to go.

I'm using fingering weight wool this time, instead of lace, and it seems to work up quite well (not to mention MUCH faster). The result isn't nearly as cloud-like, but I think it's closer to the gauge intended by the original pattern. Also, I'm working it over three needles this time instead of four, as I read that stockings are knit with four needles (three for the stitches, one for knitting) and doilies with five. I guess it's to help manage the decreases and heel shaping.

Next up, the second grey stocking. And then there is the red yarn...and then the white silk blend.

P.S. I'm going to give in and buy some machine knitted stockings online. I found a few sites that sell them at various prices/qualities. And someday, maybe, I'll find someone with a working 19th-century stocking frame -- and bribe them.

Mostly Stockings

Thanks to a very mid-19th century sounding case of the sniffles, I had a bit of extra time to knit this weekend, and so have finished my husband's non-19th century sweater vest more quickly than expected.

Additional news from the knitting front includes the arrival by post of my latest yarn supply from knitpicks.com (I know it's very un-1850s to admit ordering yarn from a website, but what else can one do these days?). The colored balls are Peruvian wool, the undyed skein is a wool and silk blend. All are fingering weight and intended for railway stockings.

I must admit I begin to have doubts about how many reasonably well-to-do urban women knitted their own stockings in the 1850s. According to Godey's Lady's Book in March, 1847:

The knitting of the family stockings has, to be sure, been in a great measure superseded by the cheapness of the manufactured article. Still, the warmest and most lasting stockings are those knit by hand. We know several elderly ladies who now do the work of charity with their knitting needles, furnishing many pairs of strong, substantial stockings for the poor.

Clearly there was considerable availability of very fine manufactured product at a price that made it unattractive for many women to make or wear 'homespun' stockings. Most fashionable seem to be silk stockings, decorated with embroidered 'clocks' or even beads, according to one article. I have seen a pair of stockings from the 1870s matching this general description. They are of very finely knitted silk -- clearly done by machine -- their ornament being in the form of a monogram. They are figured (shaped to the leg by decreases and increases) and reach over the knee. I imagine that many stockings from the middle of the 19th century followed this pattern.

It seems that knitted stockings -- credited to Spain -- have been in demand ever since the mid 1500s when they began to replace cloth hose. It did not take long for someone to invent a machine to replace the extensive human labor involved. The frame was not immediately embraced, for fear of putting hand knitters out of work, but growing demand ensured its eventual adoption. Again, from Godey's Lady's Book, June, 1853:

HISTORY OF STOCKINGS.

WE are told that Henry II. of France was the first who wore silk stockings, at his sister's wedding to the Duke of Savoy, in 1509. Howell, in his "History of the World," says that, in 1550, Queen Elizabeth was presented with a pair of black silk knit stockings by her silkwoman, Mrs. Montague, and she never wore cloth ones any more. He also adds that Henry VIII. wore ordinarily cloth hose, except there came from Spain, by great chance, a pair of silk-stockings. His son, King Edward VI., was presented with a pair of long Spanish silk stockings by Sir Thomas Gresham. Hence it would seem that the invention of knit stockings originally came from Spain. Anderson tells us— others relate— that one William Rider, an apprentice on London Bridge, seeing at the house of an Italian merchant a pair of knit stockings, from Mantua, took the hint, and made a pair exactly like them, which he presented to the Earl of Pembroke, and that they were the first of that kind worn in England. There have been various opinions with respect to the original invention of the stocking-frame; but it is now generally acknowledged that it was invented in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, in the year 1589, by William Lee, M.A., of St. John's College in Cambridge, a native of Woodborough, near Nottingham. In the "London Magazine," vol. iv. p. 337, we are told that this gentleman was expelled the University for marrying contrary to the statutes of the College. Being thus rejected, and ignorant of any other means of subsistence, he was reduced to the necessity of living upon what his wife could earn by knitting of stockings, which gave a spur to his invention; and by curiously observing the working of the needles in knitting, he formed in his mind the model of the frame, which proved of such advantage to that branch of our manufactures. Mr. Lee went to France, and for want of patronage there and in England, died of a broken heart, at Paris. The Framework Knitters' Company was incorporated by Charles II., 1663. In their hall is the portrait of Lee, pointing to one of the iron frames, and discoursing with a woman, who is knitting with needles and her fingers.

One of the ways that women contributed to the 18th-century American revolution was by foregoing European manufactured clothing and creating 'homespun' wardrobes for their families. This included a re adoption of the hand knit stocking. Not to imply that that cozy woolen article ever went completely out of favor in deference to its machine made counterpart. Merely that by the 1850s (and likely well before) it was not a la mode to encase one's calf in coarse wool if silk was available, nor was it considered a good use of an active woman's time to knit such intricate articles. Children and the elderly knitted stockings where bought ones were too dear or could not be had easily or in sufficient number. Of course there were many proponents of handmade stockings as better fitting, warmer, longer lasting, etc. Still, increasing improvements in their manufacture continued to make inroads on hand knitting.

This of course applies mainly to women's legwear. Many patterns of socks and stockings for men, and children especially, are given in the pages of Godey's (and one may presume in the pages of comparable publications) throughout the 1850s. Directions for knitting women's stockings are included in The Workwoman's Guide of 1840 (originally published earlier), and also in a number of issues of Weldon's Practical Needlework (published by a thread company in the 1870s to reintroduce lower and middle class British women to dying needlearts).

The only women's stocking pattern that I have yet found in Godey's around mid century is the aforementioned railway stocking pattern from 1861. Perhaps it was presumed that women knew as much as they needed to about knitting stockings and the railway stocking happened to be print worthy by virtue of novelty. But is it not a pretty coincidence that this simple (yet lacy), time saving pattern for hand knitting something that most women were accustomed to buy ready made was published just in time for the country to again go to war (when access to manufactured goods would be disrupted)?

Regardless of strict accuracy, I plan to continue my knitting of railway stockings in red and grey wool, and white silk. While it may have been more likely for a woman of my means to buy her stockings already made, I challenge you to find a stocking counter still in New York City, let alone one that carries figured knee-high clocked silk stockings at a reasonable price. Now if I could only convince my husband to let me build a stocking frame in our apartment...

**On another note that might interest my husband, legend claimed that the inventor of the stocking frame did so because he was tired of trying to attract his wife's attention while she sat knitting. In 1847, British painter Alfred Elmore imagined the scene in an oft-engraved painting entitled "Rev Lee Inventing the Stocking Frame" (the image below is of the engraving, also by Elmore).

In Which I am Waylaid

This weekend, I took advantage of a few idle hours to clean and organize my needlework supplies. Yardage, skeins, notions, trims, and tools of every shape and purpose occupy three shelves of a closet, the top of one large bookcase, and many odd spots around our studio.

During the course of my work, I discovered a few half-finished projects, including a sweater begun five or six years ago for my husband and put aside when I ran out of yarn to complete the sleeves. I tried at first to purchase more, willing to sacrifice continuity of dye lot, but discovered that the particular ply was no longer being manufactured. It seems to have been some marginal British weight, somewhere between DK and worsted, and the reason I obtained it for such a pittance in the first place was because it was soon going off market. After discarding the idea of purchasing slightly thinner yarn and knitting with one and a half strands, I hid the sweater.

Coming upon an almost finished project of this magnitude, I could not resist the temptation to take it out and see what I might do to salvage all the time and work. Running my fingers over the neat stitches, arrayed like so many little soldiers in row upon row, I remembered the triumph I felt upon learning to knit, pearl, and rib with the yarn looped over my left forefinger during the course of this sweater. I thought about the textured pattern I had carefully chosen from my book to replace the garish cables called for in the design.

It took very little persuasion to convince my husband that he would be just as happy with a sweater vest, thereby eliminating my need for more yarn. I unravelled what had been done of the sleeves, and have been using it knit on the collar and arm binding. I am sewing it up without blocking as I do not have a table large enough to accommodate the pieces. I plan to join the stitches carefully; with any luck, I will do it right and not discover later after it is washed that I have sewn off the grain.

In the meantime, I have sadly neglected my other work. Ah well. Knitting is a skill that ought to be nurtured, according to Miss Amanda Hess, author of The Little Girl's Own Book, 1834:

The favorite employment of our grandmothers ought not to be forgotten. It enables one to be useful in the discipline of life, when they can no longer be actively useful, and it is a never failing amusement. I never knew an old lady ignorant of it, who did not deeply regret she had never learned. Independent of these considerations, a little girl ought to know how to do EVERYTHING; it may not always be a necessity for her to sew and knit -- but she should KNOW HOW.

Perhaps Ogden Nash expressed my husband's sentiments more accurately when he said:

Life will teach you many things, chief of which is that every man who talks to himself isn't necessarily out of his wits;
He may have a wife who knits.
Probably only he and his Maker
Know how many evenings he has spent trying to raise a conservation while his beloved created sweaters by the acre.
Ah, my inquiring offspring, you must learn that life can be very bitter,
But never quite so much so as when trying to pry a word out of a knitter.