Before the talk, we examined a number of surprisingly assorted example pieces of knitting placed on each of our chairs by our speaker. Who knew there were so many ways of looping lengths of silk, wool or cotton together to make something so useable?!?
Gill Fulton informed us about the varied historical forms of knitting, with many examples. She also had illustrations of knitted socks going back hundreds – even thousands – of years, and a picture of the first automated knitting machine. Amazingly, she had a picture of a very ancient scrap of knitted material found in a Siberian tomb, which is now on display in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. Her favourite style of knitting is the colourful and intricate Latvian, which is still as popular today. It was all enough to get our fingers itching to get started ourselves – or to complete that partly-finished garment which has been laid aside for years!