Seamless garments

On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 01:40:02 +0000, Kate Dicey
wrote:

We speculated on it being knitted on 4 needles, like a sock, when I was
at school. I like to think of Mary knitting.

Richard Rutt, the only historian to take needlework
seriously, discusses this on pages 27 and 28 of _A History
of Hand Knitting_. He is quite certain that the "seamless
garment" was a woven khiton. (There's a mark over the "o"
in "khiton".)

Joy Beeson
--
http://home.earthlink.net/~joybeeson/ -- needlework
http://home.earthlink.net/~dbeeson59...HSEW/ROUGH.HTM
http://home.earthlink.net/~beeson_n3f/ -- Writers' Exchange
joy beeson at earthlink dot net

Dear Joy,

Most or all garments in the time of Christ were seamless--they were
draped around the body. Jews had to wear garments with a blue stripe
on them to diffrentiate them from others. The wearing of veils for
women in the Middle East began about 2500 B.C.E.

When I went to see the King Tut exhibit in Los Angeles many years ago,
I wasn't impressed with the gold and jewels, the statues or the other
funerary items. But there was a knitted linen glove. It looked to be
made almost the same way that we would knit one today. I have since
seen foot coverings (socks?) that were knitted in intricate patterns
from the same region, but just a little later. The patterns were
incredible.

Teri

wrote:
Dear Joy,

Most or all garments in the time of Christ were seamless--they were
draped around the body. Jews had to wear garments with a blue stripe
on them to diffrentiate them from others. The wearing of veils for
women in the Middle East began about 2500 B.C.E.

When I went to see the King Tut exhibit in Los Angeles many years ago,
I wasn't impressed with the gold and jewels, the statues or the other
funerary items. But there was a knitted linen glove. It looked to be
made almost the same way that we would knit one today. I have since
seen foot coverings (socks?) that were knitted in intricate patterns
from the same region, but just a little later. The patterns were
incredible.

Teri


I think that those 'knitted' items were a form of 'single needle
knitting' or naalbinding.
not sure, but I know they were not knit as we would define knitting today.

liz young

Dear Liz,

I wish that I had been more observant, or that my memory was better.
I've seen the naalbinding that you mentioned, and it looks different,
and is not as stretchy as real knitting. This glove from the tomb
looked like regular knitting. The woven textiles were as fine, if not
better, than those available today. I spend more time in the textiles
sections of museums than I do the fine art sections, simply because I
am fascinated with the superior quality of them, knowing they were made
with the crudest of tools.

I think straight knitting on a board is as old, if not older, than
needles. My knitting machines are not much changed from the sixteenth
century machine invented to make stockings, except mine knits flat, and
the stocking machine could knit in the round without seams. If I add a
second bed of needles, I can knit in the round.

I don't get as much satisfaction out of my machines as I do
hand-knitting. I use them for monotonous large projects, or sometimes
color work, because I don't like to work with bobbins. But I finish my
machine knitted items by hand, as I do my hand-knitted pieces.

Teri

wrote:

better, than those available today. I spend more time in the textiles
sections of museums than I do the fine art sections, simply because I
am fascinated with the superior quality of them, knowing they were made
with the crudest of tools.

Probably the quality is better because they weren't so concerned with
(a) speed and (b) profit as they are today.

Melinda Meahan - take out TRASH to reply wrote:

wrote:

better, than those available today. I spend more time in the textiles
sections of museums than I do the fine art sections, simply because I
am fascinated with the superior quality of them, knowing they were made
with the crudest of tools.

Probably the quality is better because they weren't so concerned with
(a) speed and (b) profit as they are today.

There wasn't much to be done about the speed before mechanisation was
widespread. The economic systems prior to the Industrial Revolution were
different. The earlier weavers often (but not always) worked for little
more than room and board. Typically the owner(s) of the workshops were
paid and provided the wherewithall to complete commissions out of that
payment.
Even after the IR took hold, weaving often still wasn't a very well paid
occupation for the weavers; no more than workshop dressmakers and
milliners.

On 17 Feb 2005 08:22:19 -0800, wrote:

I wish that I had been more observant, or that my memory was better.
I've seen the naalbinding that you mentioned, and it looks different,
and is not as stretchy as real knitting. This glove from the tomb
looked like regular knitting.

There are a zillion forms of nalbinding, and at least two of
them are indistinguishable from knitting, except that places
where a new yarn was joined in are a lot closer together
than they usually are in knitting.

Nalbinding can be an invisible way to darn hand knits,
though it's a *lot* easier if the knit being matched is
crossed -- you can nalbind crossed knitting without any
support, while uncrossed would be very difficult to hold in
place while you are working on other stitches -- most
instructions I've seen say to weave a yarn up each column of
stitches, and work this warp into the darn.

If a fabric is worn enough that I can't repair it with
duplicate stitch, I give up on invisible and just work
interlocking buttonhole stitch over the hole. An expert in
nalbinding once told me that my "point de venise" darn is a
primitive form of nalbinding. It's also the primary stitch
in needle lace (embroidered air), hence the name. (Though I
know point de venise is a kind of lace, whether it's needle
lace or bobbin lace I've no idea -- but I presume that
Mildred Graves Ryan, who coined the term, *did*. Lacemakers
call the stitch "buttonholing".)

The increases and decreases are often a giveaway -- methods
that are easy and natural in nalbinding may be difficult or
impossible in knitting.

According to Rutt, the earliest sample that might be
knitting is dated to the second century, and is too small
and too damaged to be certain. Nalbinding socks are found
from much later dates, and it's almost certain that someone
who knows how to knit wouldn't nalbind a stocking.

It is my unsupported opinion that the invention of knitting
had to wait for the invention of wire drawing. Knitting
needles are precision implements, and though it's possible
to make needles with no tools but a rough rock -- my
grandfather *did* whittle a pair of needles with his pocket
knife, and my oldest sister has them on the wall in her
stairway -- you aren't very likely to sit down and make a
set of smooth, uniform, very thin sticks unless you have a
use for them. And there's no way you could get the idea of
holding loops on thin, smooth, uniform sticks and pulling
other loops through them unless you have the sticks to play
with.

Joy Beeson
--
http://home.earthlink.net/~joybeeson/ -- needlework
http://home.earthlink.net/~dbeeson59...HSEW/ROUGH.HTM
http://home.earthlink.net/~beeson_n3f/ -- Writers' Exchange
joy beeson at earthlink dot net

Joy, it seems to me that I once read that early knitting needles were
made of bone. That would have been easier to model than sticks for some
cultures, and plentiful.

Karen Maslowski in Ohio

joy beeson wrote:


It is my unsupported opinion that the invention of knitting
had to wait for the invention of wire drawing. Knitting
needles are precision implements, and though it's possible
to make needles with no tools but a rough rock -- my
grandfather *did* whittle a pair of needles with his pocket
knife, and my oldest sister has them on the wall in her
stairway -- you aren't very likely to sit down and make a
set of smooth, uniform, very thin sticks unless you have a
use for them. And there's no way you could get the idea of
holding loops on thin, smooth, uniform sticks and pulling
other loops through them unless you have the sticks to play
with.

Joy Beeson