Knitting Art and Woven Hose Heels // Casual Friday S05E45

[@msthimble]

Hi Roxanne, I'm so touched that you mentioned my email! This is my Celebrity Brush With Greatness. Happy New Year!

[@sophiachidgey-hallan9653]

Hi Roxanne, I am a reenactor and have made both woven fabric hose and knitted hose. I know of other reenactment folk here in the UK who are knitters who make cloth hose as well and there are probably folk in mainland Europe, combination of very strict minimum clothing accuracy standards and people going above and beyond. For cloth hose I would generally select a fine closest woven 2:2 twill though I know it can be done with a plain weave woollen cloth if you are really experienced. I primarily make cloth hose for my husband because for C15th and part of the C16th men wore full length bias cut cloth hose though I have made cloth knee hose for myself. There are details for C16th men's cloth hose in The Typical Tudor and the best guide to the drafting and making of medieval clothes is the 2nd edition of The Medieval Tailor's Assistant by Sarah Thursfield.

[@robertadzeima5132]

Roxanne I enjoy these videos so much. I can see your eyes sparkle when you are explaining something you are researching. Thank you for all the fascinating information.

[@cherylg.813]

I love vintage knitting and the history and stories that go along with it. Thank you for sharing!

[@nicolelafontaine1720]

Happy Holiday season ! Best wishes to you, your family and all your loved ones : Health, Peace, Joy . May you all be wrapped in empathy and gratitude.

[@Sequoya]

Great episode!

[@shirleychase1033]

As a re-enactor and spinner, I'm always interested in historical knits. Thank you for what you can share.

[@dr.evelynsharp2351]

Oh oh Glorious Knits. I've got that!

[@catherinemelnyk]

Thanks

[@RoxanneRichardson]

You're welcome! :-)

[@ccpperrett7522]

You have my sympathy Roxanne. Alaska has been experiencing sub zero temperatures for over a week now along with snow and wind. I finally just put my snow pants on in the house. At last I warmed up. Stay warm and safe everyone. ♥

[@lindagates9150]

I wish I had snow pants I wore my boots fur hat with my coat to stay warm in my house yesterday and I don’t live in Alaska I guess I would have pretended that I was on my way out if anyone had come to the door . I just had a thought perhaps I should buy a snowmobile suit like my mother wore in the seventies I remember wearing it to find my car that was buried in a snow drift after I realized that it hadn’t been stolen. Sounds like a good plan🎉😂

[@robyn3349]

Thank you!

[@RamblingKnitter]

A fascinating episode. Thanks very much - and stay safe and warm in what sounds like awful weather. Best wishes from the UK for Christmas and the new year. Bernadette

[@brandysears3546]

Sending support, love, and kindness from Lexington MI USA

[@catherinemelnyk]

Roxanne, you amaze me. You are so observant. You deconstruct knitting so well. Your attention to minutae is incredible.

[@aroundtheworldfibers]

Really interesting video and thank you for another great year of videos filled with incredible information, techniques and tips. I moved from California to Washington State recently - bad year to do this. I'm sure not used to these fridgid temperatures. I'm in Vancouver, BC visiting family and I can't remember the last time it snowed so much or there was freezing rain. I'm ready to move back to California. Have a wonderful holiday and Happy New Year.

[@caro1591]

I hope you are all staying warm & safe. The weather conditions in your part of the world sound extremely challenging. Thanks so much for sharing the beautiful artwork by Anja Rozen: It’s stunning & so perceptive. Happy Christmas.

[@x1435]

I'm also in MN and it has been so painfully cold and windy the last few days. I cancelled my Christmas travel plans because the blizzard conditions were dangerous. I'm with you on the central heating and long socks! I'd love to see you experiment with the woven stockings. I can't get my head around how woven fabric can stretch enough for such a close-fitting garment.

[@practicallymedieval2027]

So a while back JillianEve here on KZbin, did a handspun, hand woven fabric with the warp in one twist direction and weft in another, and the material came back remarkably stretchy. Apparently a technique used in some extant cloth that's been found. I'd be really curious to know what effect that would have on woven hose.

[@juliegogo2941]

I have had always old english sheep dogs. People sheared the dog along with the sheep! I have heard of spinners using their other animals fur too. Wow to the child's artwork and her words are deep! Thanks I may join the conference. Hear Hear! Plus funny the cold and snow which I was am still getting it too in Nebraska. I did not know the seaming on those re-engineered socks had it under the heel. Thanks

[@vadec5909]

Such an interesting video! Are the patterns easy to understand? I understand the cold!! We have had similar weather all week in Alberta, but Christmas Day will be above 0 after more than a week. Oh I look forward to seeing your stockings!! Merry Christmas

[@nottheborg836]

my mind is blown by those engravings. I can't even draw a circle

[@gabriellespanke]

Because of the holidays I am a couple episodes behind so you might have heard of this book already. I just got the book "Typical Tudor" for Christmas and it has knitting formulas for stockings based on 14 or so extant knitted stockings of the 16th century. The interesting thing is they made a point of saying that most of these stockings had short row heels rather than a common heel. It also talks about fabric hose (and a lot of other knit and sewn items based on extant items, paintings and inventories). The other thing I thought about while listening to you was about not realizing you can do something different because they were basing the knit stockings on how they had constructed the fabric hose. There are at least three early Bronze age shirts made of woven fabric that are cut and sewn in a pattern that must be based on how they cut shirts out of a stretch of leather. The shirts are all cut from a semi rectangular shape and the pieces are not cut away from the main fabric but rather slits are made where the top 2/3 becomes sleeves (sewn under the arms) and shoulders with the slit for the head in between and the bottom 1/3 are wrapped around the torso and sewn in back. Borum Eshoj and Egtved are two of the finds I believe, off the top of my head.

[@RoxanneRichardson]

It's good to have more detail on what's in this book. The description I'd had before was very brief. The book is expensive, which I was okay with, but then the shipping from the UK to US made it REALLY expensive, so I opted to buy one of their older books, used, so I could get an idea of what their content was like.

[@gabriellespanke]

@@RoxanneRichardson I knew it was going to have a lot of knitting patterns because they listed them as individual patterns on Ravelry, if you want to see more details. The Tudor child has knitting patterns too.

[@jenthulhu]

I have spun and woven with my dog's undercoat fur--she's a Great Pyrenees (this stuff is almost as soft as bunny angora!). When I posted about this online, someone on Mastodon (a Twitter-like platform) sent me a link to an article about those Salish dog-wool knitters in the Pacific Northwest and I was so curious that I did some research. I highly recommend a google search to anyone interested in this topic. It's my understanding that they mainly knit blankets with that wool and someone did DNA analysis of extant pieces to prove there was dog hair in the wool. I've seen them described as white Pomeranians/Samoyed/American Eskimo dogs. There is a secondary reason why the Salish people stopped using the dog wool, aside from the arrival of sheep--the arrival of other breeds of domesticated dog that came with the European settlers. The Salish people kept the dogs on islands to keep them breeding true, but with the arrival of so many new dogs it became impossible to keep them breeding true. AND the dogs had been fed salmon--and that resource was needed for humans. A few of these spitz-type dogs remained in the area, seen sporadically by Europeans throughout the 1800s but were considered extinct by the 1850s.

[@newmoonjlp]

We've had wind chills of -30F in southern Indiana as well--much colder than we are accustomed to compared to Minnesota. Oof, don't know how you all live with it for extended periods 🥶

[@RoxanneRichardson]

We don't usually have it for extended periods--usually it's a week here or there during the winter, but it's always miserable when it happens!

[@maggieanne1027]

16th century WOVEN HOSE temptation: some re-enactment programs for TV; the first series I watched was set on a farm in Wales, with technology from no later than 1620. That series was Tales From The Green Valley (link to the half-hour episode: kzbin.info/www/bejne/hqSTmWunjZWAi7c) a British Historian (Ruth Goodman) is making a woven hose, I think it is this ep. I have also watched her knitting in other historical series (Edwardian Farm, I believe). Thank you for your very interesting content :D

[@gracefrank500]

While you're at it, you may want to explore how knitted knee caps might keep those stockings up!

[@bethliebman8169]

Morgan Donner on her KZbin channel has made some woven fabric stockings. She is a clothing historian who recreates historic clothing. Check her out. I'm fascinated by your research.

[@annaapple7452]

Abby Cox too. It was much harder than she expected, and made it way too complicated. Nicole Rudolph, who comes to her rescue and compares it to a knit pattern, also has her own channel with dives into the history of various garments and reconstructions.

[@thegamerwidows]

Regarding reinactors who knit, have a look at sally pointer. Fabulous woman with masses of useful information.

[@RoxanneRichardson]

Good idea! I subscribe to her YT channel, but I didn't think to look back through her previous videos (I don't think she uploads very often)

[@pamelabubeck491]

Off topic :. I've been sporadically on KZbin not my regular schedule getting ready for Christmas, so you may already have this info. If so, sorry . . . I just purchased from Schoolhouse Press ESTONIAN KNITTING 3. MITTENS. Was released early December and I totally missed it - again Christmas prep! Found it by accident on Schoolhouse Press website.

[@robertadzeima5132]

Look at Engines knits on yt. She is replicating sweaters. Not sure if she has done socks.

[@juliapriest9427]

Is this the one you mean in tidbit #6? She does hold the empty needle (and working yarn) in her left hand and mentions that she is a mirror knitter. It's hard to be sure which way she's wrapping the yarn but I THINK it looks counterclockwise--and if that is the case, I don't know why her stitches are twisted! kzbin.info/www/bejne/pYbUn5xnmtuea68

[@juliapriest9427]

I could see the bias on the petticoat but not on the mitts and socks. Maybe not all were made by the same knitter?

[@RoxanneRichardson]

They're in her Ravelry projects. The way she's casting on would not dictate how she is actually knitting. If she knits through the trailing leg of the stitch, she'll end up with twisted stitches, just as a standard knitter would.

[@juliapriest9427]

@@RoxanneRichardson wasn’t talking about the cast on. . . ?

[@RoxanneRichardson]

@@juliapriest9427 She was holding the needle and casting on. The direction of the backwards loops doesn't indicate how she would knit any of the sts after joining in the round.

[@juliapriest9427]

@@RoxanneRichardson you haven’t seen her knitting? I didn’t see a link in your show notes so I searched and found a video of her knitting, which I have linked. Maybe you can see the direction of her wrap and her stitch entry.

[@sharontabor7718]

The seamed socks aren't any different than the pre-1960s nylons with the seam down the back. A well-dressed woman never left the house if her petticoat was showing and her stocking seams were crooked. Of course, nowadays no one wears either.

[@bcase5328]

My Mom would happen to twist her knit stitches, the hazard of being a self taught left handed knitter.