A History of Hand Knitting
Oooh! Side benefit of blogging! The very kind Sarah emailed me and suggested a method for using up the Koigu profitably -- patterned socks, the Koigu eked out with a solid color. I like that. I was thinking about socks, but hadn't got that evolved in my thinking yet, so I'm Quite Grateful.
I just noticed that Blogger, in moving me over to its new format, forgot that I'm blogging from the east coast of the United States, and decided I live in San Francisco. Yes, that would be nice, but it's untrue, and if any of you have been under the impression that I have suddenly become an astonishingly hard worker who goes to work at 5:30 in the morning, no. I haven't. I will explain all this to the machine.
I have been so enjoying Richard Rutt's A History of Hand Knitting. Though the book is very readable, I find the scholarship impressive -- this despite the fact that the author himself says that the book is not "an academic thesis," and that he has "forsworn the full delights of notes and page references" (p. v).
Well, he might have done, but he's meticulous with his evidence, careful about his reasoning, and invariably generous to other scholars, even when they're being idiots. Also, he's a graceful writer. Altogether a darling book.
One is not surprised, on turning to the endnotes, to discover that besides being the former Bishop of Leicester, he studied medieval and modern languages at Cambridge.
A sizeable portion of the beginning of the book is devoted to Debunking Romantic Myths Concerning the Origins of Knitting, and as someone who spends a piece of her time doing that with things such as drama and morris dancing, I do so enjoy watching other people do it.
That would be one of the reasons I was so delighted with Alice Starmore's Aran Knitting -- another readable book, not in the form of a scholarly tome, but solid in its scholarship none the less, and full of very useful bits concerning the Romantic Myths of Aran Knitting.
(All y'all who overbooked my Irish Lit class in the fall: You'll be hearing more about this later, when we discuss Romantic Myths About the Irish Peasant.)
I'll go to work now (it's a reasonable hour), and devote myself to graceful and generous debunking. Insofar as I can manage it.
I just noticed that Blogger, in moving me over to its new format, forgot that I'm blogging from the east coast of the United States, and decided I live in San Francisco. Yes, that would be nice, but it's untrue, and if any of you have been under the impression that I have suddenly become an astonishingly hard worker who goes to work at 5:30 in the morning, no. I haven't. I will explain all this to the machine.
I have been so enjoying Richard Rutt's A History of Hand Knitting. Though the book is very readable, I find the scholarship impressive -- this despite the fact that the author himself says that the book is not "an academic thesis," and that he has "forsworn the full delights of notes and page references" (p. v).
Well, he might have done, but he's meticulous with his evidence, careful about his reasoning, and invariably generous to other scholars, even when they're being idiots. Also, he's a graceful writer. Altogether a darling book.
One is not surprised, on turning to the endnotes, to discover that besides being the former Bishop of Leicester, he studied medieval and modern languages at Cambridge.
A sizeable portion of the beginning of the book is devoted to Debunking Romantic Myths Concerning the Origins of Knitting, and as someone who spends a piece of her time doing that with things such as drama and morris dancing, I do so enjoy watching other people do it.
That would be one of the reasons I was so delighted with Alice Starmore's Aran Knitting -- another readable book, not in the form of a scholarly tome, but solid in its scholarship none the less, and full of very useful bits concerning the Romantic Myths of Aran Knitting.
(All y'all who overbooked my Irish Lit class in the fall: You'll be hearing more about this later, when we discuss Romantic Myths About the Irish Peasant.)
I'll go to work now (it's a reasonable hour), and devote myself to graceful and generous debunking. Insofar as I can manage it.
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