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History of Fabric, Pt. 2 - Ep2
170 Plays5 years ago
Part 2!!
Have you ever looked at a piece of knitting and wondered, “How did they figure out how to DO that with just two needles and string?” Whether you’re a picker or a thrower, those techniques had to come from somewhere, and their origins may surprise you.
Rachel Roden and Heather Boyd look at knitting techniques with the eyes of designers, through the lens of archaeology: each episode travels the world to dig up and discuss a different technique, and then applies it to a clever pattern designed by Rachel.
LinksTo get your copy of the pattern, and knit-a-long head over to Rachel’s pattern store on Ravelry (https://www.ravelry.com/designers/rachel-roden)To get the yarn Rachel recommends, head over to Jimmy Beans Wool (https://www.jimmybeanswool.com/knitting/yarn/BichesetBuches/LePetitLambswool.asp?showLarge=true&specPCVID=91487)ContactRachelRavelryInstagramTwitterFacebookWebsiteHeatherInstagramRavelry
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Transcript
Introduction to Historical Yarns
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. Welcome to the Historical Yarns podcast, the show where we talk about knitting from the past and bring it into the present.
00:00:21
Speaker
Welcome to Episode 2.
Discussion on Fabric-Making Techniques
00:00:23
Speaker
I'm Rachel Rodin, and last week my co-host Heather Boyd and I started with a discussion of fabric making and the history of fabric making techniques.
Knitting's Evolution: Craft to Hobby
00:00:30
Speaker
Today we'll be delving into the evolution of knitting through the ages.
00:00:39
Speaker
So one of the things that really interests me when I started doing the research on knitting and where it developed from and what the history of it is, is how it started as not just a craft, but an artisan technique to make really beautiful things and also really functional things. And it was to create items that people really wanted to buy that they needed for their everyday life.
00:01:02
Speaker
And it started there, and then over the years it's kind of transitioned to where it is today, which is kind of a hobby craft that people do with their spare time. And I don't think very many people actually make money off of it these days. It's really just more for the pleasure of doing with your hands. And it's got a really interesting journey to get from the point it was in the beginning to over here where it's at hobby status. So that's what I wanted to talk about today.
00:01:26
Speaker
Yeah, I think you're right. Like most people today, if they're making money from it is from selling patterns, not from actual making articles like in the past.
The Origins of Knitting
00:01:34
Speaker
And I think you were telling me at another time, back when we were doing the research for this, that knitting started out as a popular way to make garments that were fitted.
00:01:43
Speaker
Is that what you were saying? Yeah, because when you pull the yarn through loops, the way you do to make knitted fabric, it makes a really stretchy fabric, which turns into really stretchy garments. And of course, if you create negative ease with them, and that means that they are smaller than the item or the body part that they're going around, that means you'll get a nice tight fit. And it makes it perfect for things like socks and undergarments and other things like that. Which is something you just can't really achieve with weaving.
00:02:12
Speaker
because there's no real rib stitch. Like, okay, so a knitting, if you're a historian and not a knitter, there's a stitch in knitting called ribbing. There's a bunch of different ways to do it, but it's a combination of knit and purl, and it provides stretch to the fabric. And what Rachel is talking about, negative E's, when it's off the body, it shrinks down to a smaller size so that when it's on the body, it kind of hugs the curve of whatever body part.
00:02:36
Speaker
It's on, say a sock or a calf or an arm if you're talking about sweater sleeves and things like that. So you can't really achieve that with weaving because the fabric that you get from it is not stretchy. Yeah. It's meant to be worn looser almost and with sort of the evolution of fashion over the years, particularly with things like the hose that men would wear, the short pants, I'm not sure what they were called.
00:03:02
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. They had to have something to cover up the rest of their legs so they'd wear the hose and those had to be like super tight. Well, they didn't have to be, but the fashion was that they would be super tight. So a lot of those were made out of knitted fabric back in the day. So it's an interesting history to know that it was these tight fitting garments is where it all started.
Invention of the Stocking Frame
00:03:24
Speaker
And they were all made by hand in the beginning too because there wasn't another way to do it until 1589 William Lee, an English clergyman, he invented this thing called a stocking frame, which is basically a mechanical knitting machine.
00:03:40
Speaker
And that was the first instance of creating knitted fabric, not by hand, essentially. And he apparently, I love this story, he apparently went to Queen Elizabeth first and was like, look at these amazing stockings. And she tried them on and wore them around and was like, nope.
00:03:58
Speaker
I don't like how these look. I don't like how they feel. They're super coarse. They're not very aesthetically pleasing because, you know, it was a pretty rough machine in the beginning. And she was like, nope, I don't like it. I'm not giving you a patent. And I think that this might take away jobs from my people, which we'll come back to that later. She's like, I think this might take away jobs from my people. So I'm not going to give you a patent and you're not going to use this invention in my country.
00:04:23
Speaker
So she took a pretty hard line on it. I don't have a source for that, so I'm not sure how accurate that is, but I hope it's true because I love that story and it totally sounds like something Queen Elizabeth I would do. She kind of like to throw her weight around a little bit, you know? So anyway, William Lee took his invention over to France and he got a much better reception over there and built a stocking factory and like the first stocking factory and it sort of spread across Europe from there.
00:04:50
Speaker
And that's where you really start seeing the machine knitted garments coming into play. So I think that was by the 1600s and definitely by the 1700s, you had a lot of machine knit garments out there. And they were pretty rough in the beginning from what I've seen. You know, they weren't in the round yet.
00:05:08
Speaker
in the round knitting machines came later on. The first ones were just flat pieces. So they were basically just using the machine to make flat pieces of knitted fabric and then sewing them together into whatever shape they wanted. So the world's first tube socks.
00:05:24
Speaker
I know, so it's like- That we're not knit in as a tube, it's a sewn of the side. Yeah, you kinda just like fold it over, save it up, call it a talk, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I can understand why Queen Elizabeth probably didn't want to wear that. Yeah, I know, and it probably had like a really ugly seam, it was probably uncomfortable. Apparently they were black, which, you know, I'm guessing they dyed the yarn later on. So I know, so my husband, he loves black, he loves black socks and he loves like,
00:05:51
Speaker
Just like the most simple things you can think of so he's giving me the thumbs up right now Yeah, so They definitely needed to go through some transition before the machines were able to make a quality that the aristocrats would have been interested in wearing as well as just your normal your normal person so
00:06:18
Speaker
But they did get bigger and better. They developed into machines that could do circular knitting so you would finally get like real socks that were knitting around and other pieces too like the arms of sweaters and stuff. Although true machine knit garments didn't really come to later on too, they're still really focused on these functional stretchy undergarment pieces at this point. A lot of socks, a lot of hose and that sort of thing.
00:06:41
Speaker
But they started being able to do more complex designs, too, as we transition, getting into the 1700s. You could do some lace. I don't think cables. Cables are never a thing that machines can do because of the way you have to overlap. Yeah.
00:06:57
Speaker
which is the position of the stitches, but they could start doing some of the more like textured patterns and the lace and stuff like that. So kind of see where I'm going with this. But the machines started just taking the place of the hand knitters and the people that were craftsmen. Well, I'm sure as as things gained in popularity and whoever the trendsetters were latched on to what was common and popular just kind of grew into this what we would call a viral phenomenon.
00:07:26
Speaker
now, right? Yeah, it's interesting because the machines were developing with the fashion trends of the time, right? So like they were just creating the fabrics that people wanted to wear for whatever reason. And in a quicker way. So fashion could move more quickly. So that way, like the trendsetters or whatever, as soon as one fashion swept through everyone else, they were onto something else, right? Yeah, for sure. And that's one of the biggest allures of the fashion cycle, right? Is the new.
00:07:55
Speaker
And especially in Europe too, like on mainland Europe where this is happening because like some of the fashion seats of the world are there. So it was really just like keeping up with what was popular at the time at that point. But it was kind of sad for the artisans though because you...
00:08:11
Speaker
From what I was reading, it sounds like it was a craft where you would, it was like a family thing, you know? Like a cottage industry. Yeah, it was. So like the whole family would be making their entire living off of these hand knitted items, whatever it was that their family specialized in. But then they started having to compete with the machine knit stuff. And so like I said, the first machine that would knit was a stocking frame.
00:08:34
Speaker
As the machines got bigger and better, they started moving them from the home and into factories. So the stocking frame was small enough that like a family could own one and keep it in their home and create items with it, right? But as they developed and you get the circular machines or whatever, those were much bigger. They were more complicated to produce the more complicated patterns and garments and things. And they were moving into the factories. And all of this sort of starts coming to a head in the early 1800s.
Impact of Machines on Traditional Crafts
00:09:01
Speaker
And you might have heard of the Luddites.
00:09:04
Speaker
Well, the textile industry is where the Luddite uprising originated, and it was because of this movement from cottage industry, like you said, and making things in the home to factories. And contrary to popular belief, Luddites are not against technology and against the industrial revolution. Like a lot of people really think that.
00:09:30
Speaker
of terms, right? You do. And it's people who are opposed to technology. But what it actually meant at the time was it was people who were looking at less skilled workers coming in and going to factories, doing the same job. On a machine. On a machine and getting paid less. And then over here, these people who had spent their lives developing their craft,
00:09:55
Speaker
were out of a job essentially because they were creating something that could be done much faster on a machine over here. I'm not saying one side is right or wrong because it was just like this meeting of technology and people and it didn't go very well for them.
00:10:11
Speaker
So the Luddite Uprising was from 1811 to 1816 and as these people whose skills that were honed over a lifetime just sort of became obsolete and these less skilled workers took their place in the factories, it just sort of came to a head and they took their anger out on the machines too because the only thing they could do to stop what was
00:10:35
Speaker
going on was to be destructive. Yeah, was to stop the machines because they weren't going to hurt the people. They were mostly not violent towards people. It was just the machines. I have a little bit of sympathy for them because that just sucks to have your livelihood and the thing that you have done your whole life become not important anymore and not a way to make a living. You have to find something else completely or take a pay cut and go work in one of these factories.
00:11:00
Speaker
Yeah, I can see it from the other side too, though, as like a middle class person. I probably would not have the money to buy more than one pair of handmade socks a year. So I could see why fabric production becoming cheaper and quicker would be very attractive to a lot of other people. It was definitely better for like overall society because you could have five pairs of socks instead of just two or whatever. Maybe they weren't as good socks.
00:11:29
Speaker
Maybe not. They probably were. They probably didn't fit your foot as well as if you had had them handmade to fit you. Either way, we have to be thankful for it because it it left an opening for knitting to become more of an art form rather than just a necessity. Yes, that's true. So why don't we take a quick break and then when we come back, we'll talk about that transition from the function of the artisans who made things to sell to more of a hobby.
00:11:56
Speaker
So, we're talking about how knitting transitioned from a functional skill into a hobby. And along about the time of the Industrial Revolution, where you began to have factories that would mass produce fabric, and as we were talking about before the break, knitting machines came into vogue. During that time, people started wanting patterns for different types of home goods that they could knit.
00:12:23
Speaker
That's around the time where we start finding patterns, like published patterns that people could take home and follow to knit. And that's, it's kind of an interesting time period because knitting is like many other crafts, usually passed down from person to person. And a lot of times there's not even a written pattern. And in fact, like certain types of knitting, we'll get into this later with Estonian lace.
00:12:50
Speaker
The actual item that you knit is considered a sampler of sorts that helps you practice a certain stitch. And as you learn a stitch, you go on to the next stitch and that's how you memorize it. And then you teach it to the next person. So having published patterns is sort of a revolution in the knitting world, right? And so once they started publishing them, they didn't stop.
00:13:11
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. They would just publish them in like newspapers and magazines and stuff like that. And ladies magazines. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's probably how it became more of a lady, you know, craft or whatever, because it was before it was whole families like men, women, everybody who would be involved in it, even children, you know, but it became very like female focused in this time where it transitioned into a hobby thing rather than the functional hobby and an expression of art. Right. Yeah. So that's sort of.
00:13:40
Speaker
around this time kind of within the female wheelhouse. And so you ended up having all these aristocratic ladies that adopted knitting as a way of showing their artistic expression and their skill with handicrafts. So you'll see or you'll read in Austin novels about women practicing their netting is what it was called.
00:14:03
Speaker
But that's what it is, admitting. And as a way to show that they were skilled at something similar to doing embroidery or mastering a musical instrument or having a beautiful voice, something that you would learn in finishing school that would show that you are a lady and worthy of marriage. Yeah, exactly.
00:14:23
Speaker
You're going on to the marriage mart, you know? So you gotta have these skills, these like homemaker skills or whatever. Homemaker skills. I guess they're even skills to just set you apart from someone else or for your worth to be measured in some way. I mean, it's kind of... Very sexist, but that's crazy. It's the Victorian time. Like, what can you do? It was what it was. Rachel and I were discussing earlier about
00:14:49
Speaker
What sort of skills we would have been deemed to have? I don't know how I would have been marketed at all. Well, you can sing, so you got that going on. Yeah, well I could. I used to, but I can't anymore because I didn't practice it. I could kick a soccer ball pretty far.
00:15:07
Speaker
Yeah. I'm not sure that that would get you a husband in the 1850s, but... Not back then. I don't know. Nowadays, though. Maybe, yeah, today, not bad. That's good skill. Well, my knitting definitely wasn't good enough to be a skill at the time that I got married, so I wouldn't have been able to sell myself on that, but yeah, I guess we can all...
00:15:27
Speaker
be thankful that that's not really a practice anymore. But back in the day, yeah, that's how people latched onto it is something that could be improved continually, right? So by practice and by learning new techniques and inventing new techniques. I think that this probably was the time when different stitches began to emerge, right? So beyond the basic knitting and purling that was required for making fabric or ribbing,
00:15:57
Speaker
more intricate arrangements. Right. Yeah. And people began to be more innovative in the way that they shaped garments and basically just figured out as they went along how to make something look a certain way. Yeah, exactly. Because the benefit to hand knitting something is that you can
00:16:18
Speaker
you can achieve a perfect fit to whatever body you're trying to put something on or whatever body part you're trying to fit to by increasing and decreasing. And I think people recognize the value of that from a hobby standpoint, because it's just far too time consuming to do it for each individual person who needs a sweater.
00:16:34
Speaker
But if you do it for yourself or your family, sure, it's a great hobby because you really can just achieve that perfect sock or perfect sweater fit using increasing and decreasing to get to the exact right shape of whoever it is that you're clothing. So yeah, I think that was one of the things that was really appealing about knitting. That's why it managed to stay relevant because a lot of the crafts
00:17:00
Speaker
as they were taken over by factories, you know, they kind of dropped out too. Like you don't see a lot of, well, like we were talking before, like the tatting and stuff like that. Like you don't, you don't see a whole lot of some of those crafts going on these days, but no, because to be efficient, they had to make it as simple as possible. They had to take all embellishment away.
00:17:18
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, but knitting, it's just a little bit more functional. So it, and because you could make such really great pieces that managed to like, you know, keep a toehold at least in society. And now we see people knitting all the time today, of course. Yeah. And it's still going on today too, that innovation. I mean, every so often you'll, you'll see a new sort of technique or a way, a new way a technique is being used for shaping or for
00:17:46
Speaker
you know, putting lace insets in a certain type of knitted fabric or a different way to do increases or decreases so they lay more nicely. Yeah. People are still innovating all the time. So much innovation. It's very like, it's like the minutia of it a little bit, you know, because it is very tiny things that are being innovated.
00:18:04
Speaker
But when you're in it, it's like the most amazing thing I've ever seen. Like when you discover a new way to do a decrease or something. Right. Yes. It's wonderful. It's exhilarating. That's what it is. And this is the nerdy side of us coming out right now.
00:18:22
Speaker
I'm sure if you're not a knitter, you're wondering, how could knitting be exhilarating? But it really is. It's exciting. When you learn the difference between a center double decrease versus one of the ones that slant to the right or left, you're like, this is amazing. Now I can have that perfect line of stitches down the center of whatever it is that you're knitting.
00:18:42
Speaker
It's life changing. If you think about, if you're a knitter, you've probably heard of Jen's surprisingly stretchy bind off. That is a relatively new thing in the past 10 years probably, but it has revolutionized the world of socks, especially for those of us with big calves. Who's ever knitted a sock and then had a really tight cuff on it?
00:19:05
Speaker
It's just, yeah, it's wonderful. But because knitting moved into this hobby room, it sort of opened the door for these kind of innovations to happen, which is what's really cool about it, I think. And they've invented a word for it, too. Whenever you hear knitters talking about something that has these little intricate parts to it, you'll hear them talk about the knitterly details, right? They're knitterly.
00:19:27
Speaker
because they're appreciated by knitters on a global scale. Yep, for sure. And also, we can't forget too that some regions and places in the world were able to keep hand knitting alive as an industry, even when machines came into more popular use in the 1800s, because there are some things that machines are just never going to be able to copy. They just simply can't do it.
00:19:51
Speaker
complicated color work, for example, cables, complicated lace patternings, stuff that you would see from like Shetland Islands, Fair Isle. We'll talk about a lot of these things in future episodes and in future seasons, but they're just way too complicated for a machine to ever be able to do. So those
00:20:11
Speaker
hand knitters in those regions they actually really thrived in this time period where everyday garments were on the downside and they were they were going over to machines well these more complicated things they thrived and like you were talking about the Estonian lace shawls and stuff like that like they honed in on what was special
00:20:28
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. It's really cool. If you look at it from a marketing standpoint, even, they figured out what they could do that was different, that people couldn't just go to a store and buy. And they really, really figured out how to make that work for them. There's some really cool stories about whole towns that built a whole livelihood out of it. And we'll get into more of those later on into the actual season. But it's really, really neat.
00:20:49
Speaker
So that was kind of the transition that happened. You're still getting handed stuff coming from Fair Isle and Shetland Islands and stuff like that. And then we're getting out of the Victorian period at this point and into like the early 20th century.
Knitting in Wartime Efforts
00:21:04
Speaker
And then it's still alive and it really got a revival during like World War I. We were talking about that earlier, super cool with the... Yeah, all these men were coming down with trench foot.
00:21:14
Speaker
Yeah. Because they were only issued one pair of socks. And if they wanted that pair of socks to dry, they'd have to take off their boots and dry their socks at night and then be basically sockless and very cold temperatures. And it just didn't work. So they'd leave their nasty wet socks on all the time as, you know, men are what to do. What are you going to do? It's either freeze or have nasty wet socks on. I think I'd probably choose nasty wet socks too. I'm the opposite. I'd have to take my sock off and put my shoe back. I can't stand a wet sock.
00:21:42
Speaker
Oh, I don't know. I don't mean cold. You know what? I am so lucky to not have ever experienced this. Yes. Anyway, yes. We're all glad we've not had to experience trench, but basically, it was a huge problem. And so they were asking moms and wives and daughters and basically all the women at home to start dating.
00:22:06
Speaker
Because the factories could not keep up with the production of socks or they didn't have enough raw material to really run a factory. Yeah, and the factories were making like munitions and stuff like that. Parachutes, all the nylon and everything else was going toward parachutes. And so they needed home knitters to take up the cause and knit for the men. And that's exactly what they did. So everyone was constantly working on a pair of socks.
00:22:34
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, or any, you know, accessory for cold weather, scarves, hats, the whole shebang, like the soldiers needed all of that throughout the war. And even new patterns came from it too. In fact, like fingerless gloves that you see everywhere now, they're so popular because people love to have a fingerless glove for their smartphones, right? Like... Yeah, I gotta be able to access my phone and even in the middle of winter, come on. You can scroll your Instagram with a midnight. Hashtag priorities. So, in they go.
00:23:02
Speaker
They created fingerless gloves, which they called trigger gloves, because that way the men could feel the triggers. They could keep their hand warm while feeling the trigger with their fingers. And it was another new innovation in knitting. Yep, super interesting. And then after World War I, you're getting into depression years.
00:23:21
Speaker
hand knitting still managed to keep on going because it was a way that people could make a little extra money on the side.
Knitting as Hobby and Art in Modern Times
00:23:27
Speaker
You know, when you're totally out of a job and you have nothing else to do, well, you can at least knit all day and then maybe you can sell that thing at the end of the day and have a little bit more money, right? So the depression kind of helped keep it, I wouldn't say alive as an industry necessarily, but at least the skills got passed down through families. Like I was taught by my nani who was born in 1930.
00:23:48
Speaker
And she learned from her mother, you know, right in that timeframe in the thirties and forties, you know, in depression, World War II era. So like, you know, that it got passed along. So at least the craft didn't die there. Yeah, it sort of wrote the line between being necessary and a hobby for a lot of time there because I know because I think
00:24:08
Speaker
sewing actually took the same route, right? Because I know that even though commercially produced fabric and knitted items were available after that, most people could not afford them. And so making your own clothing and your own knitted items was something that a lot of people had to know how to do just to be able to make ends meet, right?
00:24:29
Speaker
Yeah, if you could at least make your own stuff and save a little money there, then you'd have more money to eat or whatever. So I think those skills were passed along from family member to family member. And it was really important that that happened for the livelihood of the families. So it was cool. And then, of course, we get into World War II after that. And it was sort of a similar situation to World War I, not the trench foot thing, obviously. But still, soldiers going off to really cold areas and fighting. And so the rally, again, to make socks, gloves, hats, any kind of accessory.
00:24:59
Speaker
And even then I think it was also a way to take home to the soldiers. Yeah. And remind them of what they were fighting for and just have that always in their mind of these people back home are why I'm fighting this war. Yeah. And vice versa too. It gave the people back home. Like it made them feel invested in what they were sending their men off to do too. You know, cause like you wave goodbye to somebody and just
00:25:25
Speaker
hope that everything turns out okay. Well, at least you can knit him something, or knit his buddy something, and whatever. You can feel a little bit more connected to those people that have been sent off to fight for your home and your country. I think that was really important too. Yeah, so that's sort of the history of knitting, getting into the early part of the 20th century.
00:25:45
Speaker
Since then, it's gone really straight hobby after that. There's a lot of artistic expression going on. Designers will occasionally have a show that's mostly knitted garments, but it's just a way to express yourself. Also, with the rise of unnatural fibers, nylons and acrylics and that sort of thing, you see a lot of those kinds of yarns coming in in the 60s, 70s, 80s becoming a lot more prevalent.
00:26:12
Speaker
And that pretty much takes us right up until today where we have this revival going on probably when you and I both picked up knitting again or learned it in the early 2000s. It got some juice back and now it's part of the like homemaking thing, the DIY movement. So that's kind of where we're at with it today.
00:26:35
Speaker
All right. Well, that about wraps up our brief history of knitting through the ages. I hope you enjoyed it and we hope you tune in next time. Thanks for listening. Thanks so much for listening. You can find me on Ravelry and on all the socials as Rachel Unraveled. And you can find Heather on Ravelry as HeatherBoyd84. Be sure to like and subscribe to the podcast wherever you found it and we'll see you next time. Happy knitting.
00:27:08
Speaker
This show is produced and recorded by the Archaeology Podcast Network, Chris Webster and Tristan Boyle, in Reno, Nevada at the Reno Collective. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chrisatarchaeologypodcastnetwork.com.