It's been a long, long time since I posted last...and since that time I have knitted several socks, done some interesting knitted lace patterns from the mid-1800s, and learned a bit about point lace, although I haven't made any yet.

But now what I am working on is a set of stays for an outfit ca. 1795. This made me think about the interesting nature of women's support garments.

I think that some people think that they are a more modern invention, say renaissance and beyond, but I know that the women of Rome wore garments that were pretty much the equivalent of the modern bra (and in fact, showing naked breasts was so scandalous to the Romans that even erotic art often had women wearing them.)

But for the last three or four hundred years stays, corsets and their ilk have an interesting custom of being outerwear and becoming innerwear. In the 1600s, stays were mostly an outerwear garment, wore over the inner shift, and sleaves would lace into them. By the 18th century, they were mostly being worn under outer clothes like jackets or gowns (what we would call dresses). During this time, upperclass ladies, to get the right look, had stays that shaped their torso into an inverted cone. The fashionable look had the shoulders pulled way back. Working class women, of course, couldn't run around without more freedom of movement, but their stays approximated the inverted cone as well, but wear stays of some sort, usually boned, were something all women of good reputation did. I have been told by several sources that loose woman comes from a woman not wearing her stays in public.

If it was very hot, you could take off your jacket, and wear your stays in public view (over your shift of course, which looked something like a modern half - or quarter-sleeved nightgown) while you worked at home, and it wouldn't be considered improper at all, just very casual.

Towards the end of the century, though, fashions changed, and stays started getting shorter and shorter waisted. The fashions shifted to the chemise dress and empire gown, very high waisted, and worn with much less torso shaping. For awhile there, the stays had shrank into garments that resemble back support bras, or even wrap around garments that really do look a lot like a modern bra, but in two pieces (one for each breast).

By this time the stays had moved into a totally under-the-clothes garment, and either as stays, corset, bra, girdle, or all-in-one, stayed that way through the 1980s, when we see a shift develop, first with gym clothing (sports bras meant to wear as outerwear, for example) and then of making formal wear (and some casual wear) garments that are based on vintage stay patterns.) Madonna and company probably encouraged this by wearing underwear decorated or plain as performance clothing, but if you go to any dress pattern catalog today and look at the prom gowns and wedding clothes, you will see many a bodice that once people would have considered a support garment to be worn under the clothes.

Thus, we see, what goes around, comes around, but no matter what, made well, all foundations (except sometimes for the most fashion conscious) are reasonably comfortable and offer what we women wear them for...support of bosom and back...and make us have a nicer profile to boot.

Meanwhile, back to my stays. Being older, fat, and planning to wear them with a riding habit, I am cording instead of boning...But even so, half done, and on my dress form it looks so pretty that I would like to wear it as an outer garment...so I can understand why the designers are doing it now!

posted by Mrs. Stone 1:51 PM

. . .

Books on the history of knitting and old knitting techniques you should really have (I have some and wish I had the rest!)

Richard Rutt: History of Handknitting
Anne McDonald: No Idle Hands: The Social History of American Knitting
Marie Hartley, Joan Ingilby: The Old Hand-Knitters of the Dales
Irena Turnau: History of Knitting before Mass Production
Sheila McGregor: Traditional Knitting
Nancy Bush: Folk Socks
James Norbury:Traditional Knitting Patterns, from Scandinavia, the British Isles, France, Italy and Other European Countries
Alice Starmore: Aran Knitting

There are others, and I will be adding them to the list from time to time!

posted by Mrs. Stone 5:54 AM

. . .

Of Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos: Thread of a tale

The fiber lies in her sure hand,
the wheel whirls,
clickity, clackity round and round
as she draws the thread out,
that ancient magic,
lets in wind up on the spool,
repeat.

Our ancestresses used to walk miles
back and forth,
spinning the wheel,
pulling the threads
to clothe the naked back
white linen
and wool
and cotton
turn of the wheel by turn,
round and round,
forward and back.

How potent this magic,
of pulling coherent thread
from a mass of fiber,
so much like life,
chosing a direction
making it real,
spinning it out
from all the possiblities.

Thus the fates
spin out our lifes,
according to the ancients,
turning the spindle,
pulling the thread,
cutting the length.

Imagine!
the shape of the universe
in a handful of wool.

Copyright 2002 Susan E. Stone

posted by Mrs. Stone 6:12 AM

. . .

It has come to my attention that one of my favorite historical knitting sites is no more. Trombley's Historical Knitting Patterns, which had patterns from the 1830s, to the 1920s is now off-line. I have looked everywhere hoping she'd moved it, but it isn't back up yet.

If you had missed getting patterns from her site, you might want to check out the internet archive site, at http://www.archive.org/

This site archives the web. You type an address into the search box and it takes you back to archived versions of the site.

posted by Mrs. Stone 5:27 AM

. . .

Yes, a Sock; therein lies a tale

Knitting, in some ways, is like telling a story. First you start with a thread. Is it the child of sunbaked fields of cotton, lazing in the summer afternoon, latest descent of that fiber that shaped so much of our history here in this country, or is it the warm and soft coat of a sheep; they too have their own history which is a story worth telling in its own right.

Next then, the pattern. It too could tell a tale, something as simple as a sock. Socks have a special history. In them we see generations of people in the Shetlands, in Scotland, in England, especially in the Dales sitting by their fire in the evening, knitting the many stitches to gain a few shillings. We see mothers and wives trying to protect the ones they loved. We see the arcane arts of needle and yarn passed down mother to daughter.

The top. How is it ribbed? Some ribbing tells a tale of a sock that mimics a hand sewn woven sock. Some ribs were favored by sailors, others by soldiers. How long is it? Once gentlemen wanted socks to go over their knees, then like the working man, they too wore long pants and shorter stockings.

The heel tells much. Once it had a seam down the middle, but during the Civil war, women in their haste devised other, more comfortable ways...and they created new ways of using machines.

Is it machine knit? The Saboteurs threw their sabots to gum up new style knitting machines that were interfering in their more highly skilled ways of machine knitting stockings.

Many are the stories behind the simple sock.

posted by Mrs. Stone 8:41 AM

. . .

It's been awhile since I posted last, but here I am again, knitting yet another sock.

Socks. Stocking knitting was no doubt the mainstay of knitting since it first began to be used. Poor people knit huge numbers of socks and stockings for many years to make a little extra money before they really got good sock knitting machines developed. In some areas, there just wasn't much else to do to make a little money. I am always amazed by those pictures of poor women in the Shetlands walking from the peat fields with baskets of turfs strapped to their backs, knitting socks as they walked along.

Stocking knitting was so prevalent that when they first started writing patterns down, people didn't write down too many of the stocking patterns they were using, since this was like plain sewing - it's something every girl child was expected to learn at home, while they were young. Many artists have given us painting of girl children busily knitting away, sometimes the children of peasants while they are tending the sheep, sometimes the children of privilege, dressed up like grandma.

Personally, I just like to see them take shape as I work. The cuff drives me crazy, sometimes, although I am getting better at being patient doing rib stitching. Once past that, doing the leg to the heel flap is not bad at all. I love it though, when I turn the heel, pick up the gusset stitches and start the foot, because by that time, you can tell it's going to be SOMETHING. But oh, the foot seems to take forever!

Right now, I love doing round toes. Usually, you start by k2tog every 7th stitch, then do 6 rows plain, k2tog every 6th stitch, then do 5 rounds plain, and so on. I like the shape, and I like the way the rows inbetween decrease in number of stitches. Maybe I need to be easily amused!

I really want to do a shaped calf stocking in Old Shale, but haven't figured out how I want to do the decreases yet. I have a pair of girls' socks from about 1900, knit in a fine cotton yarn done like this, and they make beautiful stockings, but I am also so addicted to the lovely jacquard yarns that require a simple pattern, that I don't know what to do next.

posted by Mrs. Stone 8:15 AM

. . .

Every now and then when I am kipping (a/k/a knitting in public), someone will tell me how they wish they could do that, but it looks so hard to do. Perhaps it's because I am usually knitting in the round, with those four double pointed needles, and it looks like I am doing what one person described as "wrestling an octopus".

Then I tell them it's not really that hard; small children used to be taught how to do this when they were in kindergarten. They look at me a little strange when I say that, but it's true. I have a book called drills for children, which is all full of how to teach kindergarten boys and girls the basis of knitting and hand sewing.

It was not uncommon in the 19th century, and perhaps earlier, for children to be given a daily task of knitting. Some people record how they had to knit an inch on their socks before going out to play. In the Shetlands, small children are given toy knitting needles, and have been given them for over a hundred years, so they could play at they were knitting while their moms and other family members were doing production knitting.

And Victorian art is full of pictures of children knitting. Near the end of the Victorian period, a favorite theme seems to have been to dress a girl up like granny and take her photo. But there are plenty of photos, paintings and illustrations of children (usually girls) knitting away.

This is a craft not just for adults.

posted by Mrs. Stone 4:29 AM

. . .