Knitting by the Book: Stitch Dictionaries 2

When I was a young girl, I thought all writers were dead.  I guess I came to this conclusion because I never knew anyone who wrote a book or was capable of doing so.  My parents had solid working-class jobs—my father was a postal worker and my mother a bookkeeper—and their friends had similar jobs.  They all grew up in the Depression, and they focused their energies on putting food on the table and a roof over their heads.  Anything like writing or art that didn’t have an immediate or secure economic payoff was on the backburner.

My view of knitting wasn’t much different.  I learned to sew and knit because those were skills a good wife should possess.  We made clothes to save money, not as an outlet for creativity or artistic expression, and good workmanship was more important than fashion.  My mother knit plain ribbed sweaters out of thin yarn for my father and baby things for me—in plain stockinette with only some ducks or bunnies as decoration.

And so when I stumbled on the U.S. edition of James Norbury’s book, Traditional Knitting Patterns, published in 1972, it awakened a sense I had but never articulated that I was following in a tradition of generations of knitters, who not only knit for the same reasons (to keep covered and warm), but did so with style and grace. 

It also never really occurred to me that there were regional knitting styles.  If you asked me about knitting styles back in 1970, I probably would have linked Aran knitting with cables and Scandinavian knitting with motifs like snowflakes.  To me an Aran sweater was something like this:

I knitted both the his and hers sweaters for a college boyfriend and myself in about 1965, and when I found this book among my mother’s things, I just laughed at how pedestrian the design was—and at the idea that this was considered to be a “real” Aran sweater by those who saw it.  It is no more authentic than the red goo for pasta claiming “that’s Italian” is Italian.

Traditional Knitting Patterns, which has been reprinted by Dover, is arranged historically.  It begins with “Arabic Knitting”, the name Norbury gives to the knitting done in Northern Africa while Europe was in the Dark Ages, and he traces the transmission of knitting from Northern Africa through Spain to other parts of Europe.  Each selection of stitches is arranged by region: Italian and French, German and Austrian, Dutch, Scandinavian, Fair Isle and Shetland, and British Isles knitting.  There is a short essay before each grouping explaining the origins of knitting in each area and regional characteristics.  Some of the descriptions identify people in the region with stereotypes that strike me as just too “neat” (the Dutch “are simple and austere” and British knitting “represents the richest tradition in knitting patterns that can be found in any part of the world”), but nevertheless the book talks about the way knitting styles evolved and the stitch patterns give examples of these regional styles.

As a stitch dictionary, this book is not as useful as most newer stitch dictionaries.  I have never worked solely with the instructions in the book because they use very old British abbreviations that the British most likely no longer use.  When I use this book, I will try to locate the similar pattern in another stitch dictionary that has more familiar instructions. Still, there are a few patterns in the book that are on my “you have use these someday” list.  They are the Italian patterns for flowers, which I’ve never seen in any of my other books:

And I never look at this book without learning something new.  As I was flipping through it again to write this post, I saw that Norbury places slip-stitch patterns with French knitting styles, and so it seems even more fitting to me that this is the type of pattern stitch that I’m using for my Chanel jacket.

As a stitch dictionary, this falls short of the mark, but it is a book that I am happy to have on my knitting bookshelf.  It is easily available, and it is well worth a look.  Reading it also makes you feel lucky to be knitting now, benefiting from the innovativeness of past knitters. Norbury claims the British owe a debt to knitters in other areas of the world who passed on their regional styles to knitters in Great Britain.  I think those of us in North America, where we have no regional styles, owe an even greater debt to those knitters of the past.

Comments

[Linda M]

Hi Marjorie,
I'm enjoying these posts very much, and thanks for the link: I sense a small Dover knitting books purchasing binge coming on!

[robin]

Very interesting post. I don't think I was ever taught *anything* that was intended for me to use in being a good wife and/or mother. In fact, the very loud and clear message was the opposite - don't ever get married or have kids! Weird how that post 60s sexual revolution aftermath worked, at least in my house.

[tiennie]

I love that you are going through your old books and giving us a review - especially on the out-of-date, out-of-style, and out- of-print ones.

[Dorothy]

I think many of us have those books that really opened our eyes to what knitting could be. For me it was Knitting Without Tears by EZ. I never realized that you could knit without a pattern and that you could be the boss of your own knitting. Because she told me I could, my first color stranded knitting was a Norwegian style sweater for me out of fingering weight alapaca. Steeks and all - because EZ said I could!