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globally | A Rich History of Global Knitting Traditions The "immigrant era" in North America was supplanted by a new national pride following World War II, and only a few folk-knitting traditions penetrated our collective consciousness. Exceptions were the Aran or fisherman's sweaters, with their characteristic cable designs, and Shetland sweaters in the Fair Isle style, with tiny, detailed and colorful patterns. Later, Icelandic ski sweaters, bulky garments of unspun roving yarn, became popular — often in undyed shades of gray and brown with bold geometric patterning at the yoke. Americans and Canadians adopted these sweaters as fashion statements rather than as knitting tradition. Generic patterns were produced by yarn companies to sell their product, but little historic or cultural emphasis was researched by designers, knitters or vendors. In the 1990s, a burst of interest in the wealth of world knitting surfaced. Serious scholars as well as knitting enthusiasts set about documenting and preserving local knitting ways. In Latvian Mittens, for example, Lizbeth Upitis shows mittens in an incredibly rich cultural context. Latvian mittens are elaborately patterned, covered with geometric and floral motifs in brilliant colors and fine gauge yarns. They are given as gifts for many social occasions, especially rites of passage. A bride might knit 50 pairs of mittens in preparation for her wedding day, and need them all. She would give a pair to the man who drove the wagon to take her to the church, a pair to the groom, a pair to both her new mother and father in law, and so on through the day. When she and her new husband reached her new home, she would hang pairs of mittens over the barn door to promote fertility among the cattle, and in the orchard to ensure a good harvest. Latvian Mittens gives extensive photos of mittens, each identified by the village where it was made, and the text is in both English and Latvian. Thus it provides a glimpse of a distant world to American knitters, but also encyclopedic documentation for Latvians of their own artifacts. As in so many other places, the old ways are dwindling away in Latvia. The book is a permanent record, and has sparked the creation of a museum in Latvia to preserve and display the proud knitting history of the nation. Adapting patterns and working out technical details of traditional knitting is a serious job for those interested in ethnic textiles. These designs have no formal written instructions or standard sizes, precisely because they were produced by folk traditions. Ethnic knitters do what they have always done, as they were taught by the preceding generation of knitters. They improvise changes at whim to custom fit their family members and to take advantage of colors and materials available to them. To complicate the task of communicating these patterns, ethnic knitting is often done at gauges that would stagger most contemporary knitters. Latvian mittens routinely have 10 to 12 stitches per inch. The fine gauge allows for fantastic pattern detail, as well as fabric that is thin and flexible enough to wear for work. But few contemporary knitters will attempt such things, even for a relatively small project like mittens or socks. 'Time was, knitters used local wools and fibers and knit in patterns traditional to their native village or region. They learned techniques that stayed constant for generations, and were seldom influenced by outside (i.e. suspect) sources. As a result, from one region to another there were enormous differences in technique as well as in design. Knitters from the British Isles carried their yarn in their right (or dominant) hand. Most still do. But on the European continent, knitters stranded their yarn in the left or non-dominant hand; hence the moniker "continental style" knitting. Adding an additional twist (no pun intended), Greek and Italian knitters — as well as those from the Andes — provide tension to the yarn by running it up and around the back of their necks. (Picture the string that holds the toddler's mittens through his snowsuit....) All over Western Europe, socks are begun at the cuff and knit downward toward the toe; in the Balkan states and to the south and east, one starts at the toe and knits upward. Socks, in fact, are a micro-laboratory of knitting ethnicities. In her book Folk Socks, Nancy Bush explores the history of knitted foot coverings, and then gives examples from more than a dozen nations. Priscilla Gibson-Roberts fills Ethnic Socks and Stockings with 26 more examples, and manages to overlap almost nothing. In Fancy Feet, Anna Zilboorg explains that Turkish socks have different patterns on the sole than on the leg and instep. How sensible is that in a world where shoes are removed upon entering the home? When people sit on cushions on the floor, friends and family see the bottom of your socks. Of course they should see pattern, and beauty, and color. We are truly blessed to live in a time where all of these traditions are available for us to study and imitate and build upon. Through books and magazines and internet, we can view the work of centuries of loving hands. For the next few weeks in this mailing then, we'll be looking into the knitting traditions of nations and peoples, and seeing how they influence the knit styles that captivate us today. Stay tuned .... Knitting in the Central and South America In Andean Knitting: Traditions and Techniques from Peru and Bolivia, Cynthia Gravelle describes the beautiful knitwear she saw in that region when she visited for other research. She traces not only the different patterns associated with different regions, but also the gender roles involved. In Peru and Bolivia, knitting is primarily men's work. Boys of ten make their own ch'ullus, the distinctive pointed cap with earflaps. (These are all the rage in the US and Canada and Europe right now. Go figure, huh?) By the time they are adolescents, boys are very skilled, and can improvise their own colors and patterning. Interestingly, in a region where men no longer wear their traditional ch'ullu, "mothers spin and dye the sheep's wool they use to knit colorful little caps for their baby boys and girls." Women do customarily knit sweaters and socks for their families ... and for sale to tourists, as economics requires. In Guatemala, men are also fiber workers, this time in crochet. Carol Norton describes in Tapestry Crochet the shoulder bags she discovered there, created by Mayan men who use them to carry seeds in planting season, and to carry lunch or dinner at any time. This shoulder bag is the only item of traditional clothing in Guatemala that is not made by women. Even though many Guatemalan men have turned to western-styled clothing, most continue to make and use their traditional shoulder bags. If a man does not crochet his own, he buys one at the local market, since some men produce extra bags to supplement their meager incomes. The Maya have incorporated color combinations and design motifs specific to each region. It is unclear how exactly they learned to crochet. Historians have claimed that the art was probably taught to colonial Indians by the Spaniards during the 1500s. But crochet aficionados know that crochet is the "newest" of the fiber arts, and didn't come into use until the 18th or 19th century. Could this be another of the Mayan "inventions," like the calendar and astronomical findings, which predate western awareness? Knitting had a European élan in Russia, from the era when anything French distinguished the aristocracy from the masses. French language, French art ... and French lace and elegant stoles spoke of culture, education, and sophistication, which supposedly set the titled apart from the Magyars. However, a strong tradition of knitting socks and mittens and caps and scarves from sturdy, serviceable wool already existed in Russia. The product with which we are most familiar today is a mixture of these two traditions. Ravishing Orenburg shawls and scarves come from the eponymous region of Russia, where they are created in their entirety, from sheep to shawl. Orenburg knitters harvest and spin incredibly fine mohair from goats raised in the village — often, in the knitter's back yard. This they use single ply, in tandem with another ply of commercially spun silk. The two-ply yarn is maintained on separate, disk-shaped bobbins, but knit together in various shades of brown, gray, and natural white. The shawls are traditionally used for weddings ... and then for christenings of the babies which follow. Their reputation as "wedding ring" shawls comes not from their usage, however, but from the fact that the finished lacy, detailed knitted product is fine enough to be passed through a woman's wedding ring. Continuing our exploration of knitting around the globe, next time we'll look at knitting in Japan. Stay tuned; you might be surprised. Contemporary knitting in Japan is big business and serious couture. On the yarn front, Japanese manufacturers are the cutting edge of innovative fibers. Currently, they are making yarns from paper, from metal filaments, from non-traditional plants. They incorporate found objects, they extend the concept of color floats, they produce neutrals so subtle they defy understatement. As to sweaters and other garments: Japan has taken the concept of Wearable Art out of the galleries and into the marketplace, albeit an upscale market. A well to-do Japanese woman is as likely to have a personal knitter as a Hollywood actor is to have a personal trainer. Nihon Vogue, Japan's leading needlework publisher, established a sophisticated school in Tokyo several decades ago which has turned out more than 50,000 instructors certified in fiber skills. To be eligible for accreditation, one must study for seven to nine years is all disciplines of handcrafts. Some Japanese knitters are so proficient that they can copy a design from observation. A serious shopper will often attend a show or a gallery accompanied by her own personal knitter, who is able to duplicate a design directly from a swatch, withou taking notes or charting. There are two reasons for this proficiency. One is that Japan as a nation does not have an indigenous knitting history, so no prior knitting traditions limit the maker's imagination or technique. The second is that pattern presentation in Asia is almost entirely symbolic. Graphs and charts largely eliminate the need for text and language. The Japanese, in other words, do not waste time in telling you how to knit. They assume that you know the basics, and expect you to plunge directly into a project. Once a knitter is comfortable working with diagram-based patterns, it is a short step to modifying or creating an original design. Even the display and marketing of fiber materials is an art form in Japan, with yarns wrapped stylishly around paper cones or crescents, then staggered on a textured surface for photography. As in so many facets of Asian culture, the convention of making Beautiful an integral part of daily life applies to fiber and knitting and its products. Wordsworth said of Wales that there was "nowhere in so narrow a compass with such a variety of the sublime and beautiful." Add to that description towns named Raglan and Cardigan, sheep as plentiful as trees on the hillsides (11 million sheep, but who's counting), fast running streams which used to power woolen mills, lakes ideal for finishing and dyeing ... and it is inevitable to encounter a rich Welsh knitting history. Curiously, there has never been a knitting style which is known as wholly Welsh. Women knitted sweaters for their fishermen in guernsey, Aran, Fair Isle and other techniques of the north country. Sock knitting was an industry which supported several Welsh towns in the late nineteenth century. Yet while Wales as a nation has remained fiercely proud of its heritage and language, it was only in the 1980s that Welsh designers and their products gained renown in contemporary knit circles. Sasha Kagan lives and works on a self-sufficient farm in north Wales today. Her designs and acclaim, however, have traveled throughout the globe. She consults and teaches in Japan and the United States; she has held a one-woman show at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, her book Sasha Kagan's Country Inspirations has been translated into multiple languages. Yet Sasha claims that all of her inspiration comes from the wildflowers, the herbs, and the mountainous beauty she sees in her day to day life in Wales. Colinette Stansbury and her husband Geoff have built a thriving international yarn business in a restored Baptist chapel in tiny Llanfair Caereinion, Wales. Although both artists studied and worked in Italy, Wales was the spot that brought them satisfaction and the inspiration for their exceptional hand spun, hand painted fiber collection. Fifty plus colorways are dyed by hand onto twenty-two types of yarns, so no retailer anywhere else in the world carries their entire selection. (Fortunately for us, I brought back an entire trunk filled with Colinette yarns on my recent trip to the Colinette mill shop.) So the next time you eat a Welsh rarebit/rabbit, savor some smoked salmon, or slip on a cardigan ... remember the gentle wool workers who offer us pieces of beauty from their lakes, their dales, their mountains, and their heathered slopes in Wales. | top | © 2000-2003 |