Twisted stitch knitting

This is a poor photograph of the back of Ropes and Picots.



The color isn't even very true, at least not on my monitor. (It's a greenish blue - more blue than teal). Also, even though I played with the camera settings to try to be able to get a shot without flash (which always washes out the texture of stitches), you can't really see the "ropes" there.

The ropes are sort of like mini-cables, but they're made by twisting stitches - that is, knitting the stitches out of order (you don't need a cable needle to do them).

I was flipping through my copy of "Around the World in Knitted Socks." One thing that strikes me is how certain techniques seem to be typical of certain areas. Twisted and traveling stitches, for example, seem to be an Alpine thing - southern Germany, Switzerland, Austria. Brightly-colored patterned knitting, for example the iconic eight-pointed star, seems to have originated or at least flourished in Scandinavia. The British Isles have cables/aran patterns, and the northern parts (the Shetlands) have very specific lace patterns. (And France and Spain also had certain lace patterns).

You see this to some extent in quilting, too, though I think quilting/patchwork had its greatest flourishing in the U.S. Within the U.S. there are subgroups - the Amish are very known for their particular style (And interestingly, when I look at photographs of some of the Welsh quilts I've seen - the color combinations and heavy use of large pieces of solid-colored dark fabric - recall the Amish quilts. (However, the quilting designs are different - the Welsh tend to use rather elaborate, almost Celtic looking quilting designs). The African-American quilts of the Carolinas have their own distinctive style. And there is Seminole patchwork (which apparently developed in the 1920s, after missionaries brought them sewing machines...however, I have seen some of the Choctaw fancy-dress outfits that have similar designs - though in different colors, the Choctaw tend to use one solid color, often red, plus white, whereas the Seminole use many solid colors together)

And quilting has become popular in Japan and Holland (among other places) and I expect we'll see distinctive styles developing there as well. (Even with the widespread nature of quilt magazines and the Internet, I still think a person's culture often informs what they design and create).

I suppose treatises may have been written on the regional styles of things like knitting and quilting, and I've just not seen them, but I think it would be interesting to read. And I wonder how and why a particular technique developed and flourished in a certain area. I've read that cabled knitting was used in part because certain ways of handspinning yarn leaves it with "energy" (a tendency to twist) that can cause plain knit fabric to bias, and that cables stabilize the fabric more. But I also wonder if perhaps there was some element of competition that got going - say, some knitter in an Alpine village somewhere figured out a fancy pattern on his/her* own using traveling stitches. Other knitters saw it, were maybe a bit jealous of the person's skill, and figured, "I'll show them" and figured out something even more complex. (I can see that happening. You see that happening in some quilt guilds. Which is actually why I prefer not to consider submitting my quilts to shows or competitions - what I like is very simple and rather plain, and I don't like the whole, "I'll best her design even if it kills me" attitude).\

(* In the really early days, like Medieval eras, most of the knitters were men. Or at least, the people who could knit for money were men - there were knitter's guilds and membership was only available to men. We tend to forget that know, with knitting having been largely thought of as a female occupation since, I don't know, 1600 or so)

In a lot of cases, the patterns are more complex than they need to be. (The story about being able to identify a drowned Aran-isles fisherman from the particular knitted pattern in his sweater is pretty much myth). And I can't help but think that someone charged with knitting stockings for themselves and their family wouldn't want, necessarily, to do something far more complex and elaborate that takes more time. (Then again, maybe that's why the complex and elaborate stockings have survived in museums and such: they were knit "for good" or for fancy-dress occasions, and the plain everyday socks got worn out.)

I also wonder about trade routes and travelers and if certain styles or methods of doing something got spread that way - I know there's a divide somewhere in the Balkans between toe-up socks (more of a Turkish/Eastern European style) and cuff-down socks (more of a Western European style). Makes me wonder if there were people in, I don't know, France or somewhere who had traveled in the Balkans or emigrated from there who still insisted on doing toe-up socks. (Though I suppose prior to 1800 or so, there was a lot less travel than there is now, and perhaps there was less of that sort of emigration.)

It's interesting, though, to have books like the Socks around the World book and to compare the different styles side-by-side, and to wonder how historically accurate it is to suggest that traveling stitches are mainly an Alpine phenomenon, and to look at the different types of colorwork from Estonia vs. Denmark, etc.