In my previous post (here) I outlined how I arrived at a theory for the development of knitting from cross-knit looped nalbinding. In short, I noticed that the structure of cross-knit looped nalbinding and crossed-stitch knitting are similar. The only difference was the direction of the loops (pointing down for nalbinding and up for knitting). Because of this, I hypothesized that nalbound fabric should behave like knitted fabric if unraveled from the starting end rather than the working end – as might happen if a hole were to develop in one’s sock. So, I tested this by making a nalbound tube and then unpicking the starting edge to see how the fabric would behave. When pulling on the yarn from the starting edge, my nalbinding unraveled in the same way knitting unravels. Observing this quality, which is particular to cross-knit looped nalbinding, could have given the makers of the iconic split-toed crimson socks from Egypt (image below) the initial idea for knitting, or what I will call ‘proto-knitting.’
Of course, a nalbound tube made specifically with the intent of unraveling it from the starting edge is not exactly like working with a hole in a sock. Therefore, I decided to make my first ever split-toed, nalbound sock modeled after the ones from Egypt (image above) in order to see exactly how ‘proto-knitting’ might help me mend a hole. After two days, my labor of love was ready to be sacrificed. There is a considerable amount of horror and dread at the idea of taking scissors to something one has spent so much time making, but my desire to see this thing through gave me the courage.
My very first nalbound sock made with the cross-knit looping stitch and modeled off of the 4th-5th century CE socks from Egypt pictured above.
In this video, I cut a hole into the sole of my sock. Notice the difference between the stitches on either side of the hole.
I cut horizontally through four stitches and created a hole about an inch wide. The side of the hole closest to the toes (start of sock) was quite stable; although, it could still be unraveled if picked apart. The other side of the hole had loops that were very easy to unravel. After unraveling two rows from the side with the loops, I noticed that the now loose yarn remained connected at both sides of the hole since it was still part of the structure of the fabric. This yarn could be used to mend the hole. However, the open loops needed to be stabilized, first, so that they would not continue to unravel as I worked. It was natural for me to think of putting a stick in these loops to hold them. While this could be attributed to my experience as a knitter, I believe it also just makes mechanical sense.
In this video, I explain the working direction of the sock and how the two sides of the hole differ.
In this video, I explain how the loose yarn is still part of the structure of the fabric and how the loops need to be stabilized.
The loops have been stabilized with a straight knitting needle.
After stabilizing the open loops by putting them on a needle, I now needed another tool to help me grab the loose yarn and pull it through the loops on the needle. Using my nalbinding needle to sew new loops did not make sense since the loose yarn was still attached to either side of the hole and could therefore not be threaded through a nalbinding needle. Another straight needle, or a hooked needle, seemed the most useful for pulling the loose yarn through the small loops on the needle. I tried both methods – one row with a straight knitting needle and the other with a hooked knitting needle from Portugal. Both worked very well, but I could see the advantage of using a hooked needle as its form perfectly suited the grabbing and pulling motion required for drawing the loose yarn through the loop on the needle. Evidence for hooked knitting needles come from Iberia, North Africa, and Anatolia (Pomar, 2013; Bel and Ricard, 1913). It is tempting to suggest a possible connection between this ‘proto-knitting’ hypothesis and the use of hooked knitting needles in these regions, which have complex and long knitting traditions. However, much more research and evidence would be needed.
In this video, I explain why I have chosen to use a second straight knitting needle to pull the loose yarn through the loops on the needle.
In this video, I demonstrate using a hooked knitting needle from Portugal to pull the loose yarn through the loops on the needle.
The loose yarn has been “knitted” back into a looped structure that is almost identical to the rest of the fabric.
Since the loose yarn was still part of the looped structure of the fabric, there was no need to connect it to its neighboring stitch in the undamaged fabric once the loose yarn had been pulled through all of the loops on the needle. Also, it was not necessary to turn the work before starting the next row because there was no ‘working yarn’ to dictate the direction of the work. In this ‘proto-knitting’ context, all that needed to be done was pull the loose yarn back into the looped structure of the fabric. This argues for a double-pointed type of ‘proto-knitting’ needle so that the loops could be worked from either side.
In order to finally close the hole, the loops on the needle needed to be joined to the edge of the hole. The best way to do this was to sew the two together using a new piece of yarn and following the looping pattern of the fabric. This created an almost invisible seam. With more practice and skill, I think it could be possible to create a join that is almost imperceptible.
In this video, I explain what I think the best course of action is for closing up the hole.
In this video, I describe the path that the yarn on my needle needs to take in order to seamlessly close the hole.
The dark grey line represents the path that the yarn threaded through an eyed needle must take to connect the loops on the knitting needle (blue yarn on top) to the edge of the hole (blue yarn on bottom).
When sewing the hole closed, I found it easier to remove the loop from the needle right before the final pass of the nalbinding needle and yarn. This helped me see and understand the order of the crossings through the loop on the knitting needle; however, I suspect that with more experience I could make the final crossing with the loop still on the knitting needle.
In this video, I show the process for sewing the hole closed.
The mended hole blends almost seamlessly with the rest of the sock. When ‘knitting’ the loose yarn, I accidentally crossed some of the loops in the wrong direction, which is also why the fabric appears lumpy. I did not sew in the ends of the yarn used for sewing the hole closed so that it is easy to see the mending location.
While this experiment does not prove that knitting came from nalbinding, I believe it demonstrates that the motions and ideas associated with knitting today could have evolved from mending nalbound objects. Additionally, the hole I worked with in this experiment only represents one type of mending problem. There are numerous ways a sock, or other nalbound object, could be damaged. The techniques I used here may not work in all mending contexts, or I might need to modify how I use the needles and yarn to mend different kinds of holes. Further experimentation is necessary to develop a deeper understanding of mending cross-knit looped nalbound fabrics, and a close examination of the mended fabrics is also needed to analyze the structure of the mended sections in comparison to undamaged fabric.
Lastly, and most importantly, is it possible to see evidence for this type of mending in the nalbound artifacts available to us today?
When talking about the origins of knitting, nalbinding is inevitably mentioned. This is because the objects we thought were the oldest knitted artifacts were in fact made by nalbinding, not knitting.(1) This is an easy mistake to make since nalbinding can produce a fabric that looks very similar to knitted fabric. But how similar are the two crafts? And, could knitting have come from nalbinding?
In order to explore these questions, I took a nalbinding class with Helen Hart when I visited Shetland, Scotland for Shetland Wool Week 2025. After learning the basics from Helen and gaining confidence with the Oslo stitch, this YouTube video by Sanna-Mari Pihlajapiha helped me learn how to do the cross-knit looping stitch, which is also referred to as the Coptic stitch or Tarim stitch. This is the stitch that was used to make the iconic split-toed socks in crimson yarn at the Victoria & Albert (V&A) museum in London. These socks have been dated to the 4th-5th centuries CE and were found in the burial grounds of Oxyrhynchus, a Greek colony on the Nile in central Egypt (information from museum page linked in image caption below).
Nalbinding is done with a large, blunt, eyed needle made of wood, bone, or metal and a relatively short length of yarn (roughly the length of your arm). When more yarn is needed, the new length is spliced to the working length of yarn. Nalbound artifacts made of cotton, hemp, and wool have been found around the world.
Nalbinding is based on the formation of loops, which produce a variety of fabric types. There are many excellent books, blogs, and videos for how to do nalbinding (see notes below); but if you want a quick overview, this Wikipedia article is comprehensive and provides clear pictures and photos of the techniques and structures for some of the different fabric types.
The cross-knit looping stitch is very simple. It starts with a chain of stitches that can be connected for working in the round or left unconnected for working flat (as in the videos below). When working with the front side of the fabric (which appears as knitted stockinette to a knitter), a new row of loops is created by inserting the needle behind the crossed legs of the previous loop in the fabric and drawing the length of yarn through. When working with the back side of the fabric (which appears as knitted garter to a knitter), a new row of loops is created by inserting the needle under the “arms” on either side of the crossed legs of the loop so that the working yarn is pulled through in front of the crossed legs of the loop (the YouTube video by Sanna-Mari Pihlajapiha demonstrates this if you want to learn how).
Cross-knit looping from right to left working with front of fabric
Cross-knit looping from left to right working with front of fabric
Diagram of the cross-knit looping stitch as viewed from the front of the fabric. The direction of the work is going up in this diagram. Therefore, the next row of loops would be created at the top by inserting the needle behind the crossing of the loop legs. Von Stilfehler – Eigenes Werk, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=151851861
The front side of cross-knit looped fabric. Notice that it looks a lot like the front of stockinette knitting. Again, the direction of the work is going up in this photo. Von Stilfehler – Eigenes Werk, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=151570714
The back side of cross-knit looped fabric. Notice that it looks a lot like the back of stockinette knitting. Again, the direction of the work is going up in this photo. Von Stilfehler – Eigenes Werk, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=151570713
Knitting: tools, materials, technique
Tools and materials for knitting
Knitting is done with at least 2 knitting needles (if working flat), which are straight, uniformly wide, and taper to a point at one tip (double-pointed needles for working in the round have tips on both ends). Very long lengths of yarn wound into a ball are used. When more yarn is needed, a new ball of yarn is added by splicing or tying the ends of the yarn together or simply beginning to work with the new yarn leaving a bit of length to be woven in later. Knitting yarn can be made from a variety of materials including cotton, silk, and wool.
Very simply, knitting starts by casting stitches onto a needle. These stitches look like O-shaped loops that hang from the needle. They are worked back and forth (flat knitting, as in video below) or around and around (knitting in the round) by inserting another needle with no stitches (the working needle) into the first stitch on the needle holding the stitches; wrapping the yarn around the working needle; and using the working needle to pull the yarn through the stitch. This creates a new stitch on the working needle, so the ‘old’ stitch can be slipped off of the needle on which it was sitting. When all of the stitches have been worked in this way, what had been the empty working needle is now full of stitches, and it becomes the needle holding the stitches. The process is repeated again with a fresh working needle.
Knitting flat
Diagram of loops in knitted fabric as viewed from the front (stockinette) side of the fabric. In this diagram, the working direction goes from bottom to top. The next row of stitches is made by inserting the working needle under the rounded top or head of the loop in the top row. 赤鉛筆 at Japanese Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/, via Wikimedia Commons
As a knitter venturing into nalbinding, several differences between the two crafts stand out to me at this point.
First, the structure of the loops are very different, but this can be hard to notice in the fabric of your own work. By placing the diagrams of the loop structures next to one another, it is easier to see this. One of the first things I notice is the direction of the loops – downwards for nalbinding (left) and upwards for knitting (right). The nalbinding loops are also ‘closed’ by the yarn crossing over itself and remind me very much of pretzels. In contrast, the knitting loops are ‘open’ at one end and look more like snakes winding back and forth around one another.
Second, nalbinding feels more like sewing than knitting, especially since the yarn must be pulled all the way through in order to create a new loop. This means that I am working from the tail end of the working yarn, which is why nalbinding requires short lengths of yarn. In knitting, the working yarn isn’t pulled all the way through the loop. Instead, only enough working yarn to create a new loop is pulled through the old loop. This means that I am only using the working yarn from the point where it connects to the work, which makes it possible to work with extremely long lengths of yarn organized in a ball. The two actions – pulling the yarn all the way through (nalbinding) and grabbing just enough yarn to make a new loop (knitting) – feel very different in my hands.
Nalbinding
Knitting
Third, when nalbinding with a knitter’s eye, it looks as though I am working upside down since I insert my needle behind what looks like the bottom of a knitted stitch rather than the rounded top of a knitted stitch (when working with the front/stockinette side of the fabric). Explained another way, this means that I insert my nalbinding needle and draw the yarn all the way through behind what looks to a knitter like the two ‘legs’ of the stitch (see photos below).
Fourth, what I look at when working seems quite different between the two craft technologies. In nalbinding, I must look closely at the fabric I am creating in order to make my loops because the ‘X’ created by the yarn crossing in the previous row indicates where I must insert my needle to make a new stitch (photo below at left). When knitting, my eyes focus on the stitches sitting on my needle – it is almost unnecessary for me to look at the fabric I am creating. Each stitch is quite distinct and separate from one another on the needle. Furthermore, the stitch into which I must insert my working needle appears more as an ‘O’ in contrast to nalbinding’s ‘X’ (photo below at right).
Nalbinding – the stitch is created by inserting the needle behind the ‘X’ created by the crossed legs of the stitch loop. Notice that the stitches look like upside down ‘Vs’ in the fabric, which is why the work appears upside down to me as a knitter.
Knitting – the stitch is created by inserting the right needle into the loop on the left needle, which looks like a ring or ‘O.’ Notice that the stitches look like upright ‘Vs’ in the fabric.
Lastly, when working nalbinding flat, it is possible to work back and forth along the front of the fabric using the same stitch rather than having to turn the work around and work the back using a different type of stitch as in knitting. I imagine that this flexibility would have made it easy to work the sock pattern used in the 4th-5th century sock at the V&A pictured above. How might this nalbinding characteristic have influenced the development of the sock pattern?
So, did knitting come from nalbinding?
When I first set out to write this post a week and a half ago, my answer would have been that, based on my observations outlined above, I lean more towards no. At the time, the two crafts felt very different in my hands. I couldn’t see how or why one would want to introduce multiple, straight needles into the cross-knit looping process and shift from drawing the length of the yarn all the way around a loop to only grabbing a portion of the working yarn through a loop.
However, while working with the stitch structure diagrams of the nalbound and knitted fabrics for this blog post, I began thinking about several things: one, the knitting diagram I chose shows an open loop structure; and two, the nalbinding diagram could present a twisted or crossed knit structure if worked from the opposite (starting) side as one might need to do when mending something. This raised two questions for me. How does crossed stitch knitted and cross-knit looping nalbound fabric compare? And, if I were to mend a nalbound sock with a damaged toe, thereby working from the opposite direction, would the unraveled section leave me with loops that look more like knitting?
These knit stitches are open at the bottom of the loop in contrast to the closed loops of the crossed stitch knitting at right. 赤鉛筆 at Japanese Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/, via Wikimedia Commons
This crossed stitch knitting shows loops that are closed at the bottom in contrast to the open loops of the knitting at left.
Crossed stitch knitting with one course highlighted to show similarity to cross-knit looping nalbinding at right.
Cross-knit looping nalbinding diagram turned upside down so that the loops mirror the loops in the crossed stitch knitting at left. Von Stilfehler – Eigenes Werk, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=151851861
Being a very hands-on person, I nalbound a tube to experiment, and the result was incredible. While it is impossible to pull out stitches from the working side of the tube, I found that I could unravel it from the opposite (starting) side very easily. In fact, when unraveled from the starting side, the fabric behaves just like knitted fabric leaving you with loops for every wale.
Trying unsuccessfully to unravel the nalbound tube from the working end.
After unpicking the chain at the beginning of the tube, it is very easy to unravel the work from the starting end.
I slowly unraveled several rounds while thinking about how this might translate into knitting. While doing this, I saw how the yarn passes through the top of the loop rather than wrapping around the legs of the loop. I could see how grabbing the working yarn with a tool (like a needle or hook) and pulling it through the loop as in knitting would reconstruct my fabric. This was the perspective shift for which I was looking. This provided a way to go from performing a motion more akin to sewing (nalbinding) to the type of motions familiar to me in knitting.
So, could knitting have developed out of a need to mend cross-knit looping nalbound socks? Perhaps. Would it be possible to see this in artifacts? Maybe. However, it was very difficult for me to see any differences between my nalbinding and knitting stitches in this experiment. But, there might be indicators with which I am currently unfamiliar given that I am new to nalbinding.
I started this tube with nalbinding (lower half). Then, I picked out the chain used to start the tube and unraveled several rounds before adding knitting needles and doing crossed stitch knitting. It is very hard for me to see a difference in the fabric except for the change in tension when I switched from nalbinding to knitting (larger stitches in the center were the last nalbound round, tighter stitches at the top were knitted). Both technologies produce a stitch that crosses in the same way.
A revised hypothesis for the relationship between nalbinding and knitting
It seems that I have to modify my previous opinion about knitting coming from nalbinding. While the two craft technologies seem really different from a making perspective, they seem much more related from a mending perspective. This cognitive shift also has implications for my earlier theory about pattern transference, which I discuss in my book, Keepers of the Sheep: Knitting in Morocco’s High Atlas and Beyond. If nalbinding and what I will call ‘proto-knitting’ existed side-by-side in sock making and mending, pattern transference from nalbinding to knitting socks seems even more likely. As people became more proficient with ‘proto-knitting’ for mending nalbound socks, what would it take to start making tried and true patterns with the new craft technology?
Socks knit from Hussein Mardi’s tqasher qadeem (old sock) pattern.
My theory for pattern transference is based on similarities between the nalbound socks at the V&A Museum and the tqasher qadeem (old style socks) Hussein Mardi taught me to make. As you can see in the photos above, the nalbound socks at the V&A Museum (left) and the Moroccan tqasher qadeem (right) are similar in their structure. Both were made from the toe to the heel and then up to complete the leg shaft. If you look closely, you can see a seam right before the ankle. Also, notice that the sole is worked to the very back of the heel before the heel is turned so that the work can continue up past the ankle and around the leg. This sole appears as a ‘tongue’ reaching from the back of the arch to the heel. Lastly, both the Egyptian nalbound and Moroccan knit socks are finished with a length of cord so that the top of the sock can be secured by wrapping it around the leg. The similarities in the construction of these two socks is striking and raises the possibility that the order of operations for making the Egyptian nalbound socks may have influenced the Moroccan knitted socks. However, this is highly speculative at this stage.
It is very difficult to prove whether knitting really came from nalbinding or that these two types of socks are related without archaeological, historical, or artistic evidence to back up these claims. Nevertheless, my experiences and observations have shown me that it could be possible to arrive at knitting from nalbinding, and I now have a better understanding of the two technologies in comparison. This will undoubtedly help me as I continue to research knitting history and practice. Our understanding of both nalbinding and knitting will likely evolve as more artifacts and information come to light; and one day, I will have to refine my ideas again.
Moroccan tqasher qadeem (old style socks). The ones on the left were made by me. The ones on the right were made by my teacher, Hussein Mardi.
Notes
(1) Socks and textile fragments with a looped structure resembling knitting were found at Dura Europos in Syria and various sites in Egypt. These pieces were dated to the early centuries of the common era and were thought to be the earliest evidence for knitting. However, in 1895, Louise Schinnerer determined that the socks from Egypt were not knit but made with a single-needle looping technique popularly known as nalbinding in English, which is derived from the Norwegian word, Nålbinding (Classen-Büttner, p.10).
In his book, A History of Hand Knitting, Richard Rutt states that nalbinding probably gave way to knitting between 500 and 1200 CE (p.39).
What is the earliest evidence for knitting? This is a question whose answer will evolve over time as interest in knitting research grows and brings more material to light. Many books that cover this topic (including my own – Keepers of the Sheep: Knitting in Morocco’s High Atlas and Beyond) follow in the footsteps of Richard Rutt, who has written one of the most comprehensive books on the history of hand-knitting to-date. While this book is essential reading for anyone interested in this topic, several decades have passed since its publication. Advances have been made in fields both directly and indirectly related to knitting, which could help us bring more nuance to our understanding of the subject. This nuance, in turn, will help to point us down new avenues of inquiry. As with anything having to do with the sciences, it’s important to re-evaluate the initial work carried out by the pioneers of early knitting research and to consider how those findings may be confirmed, refined, or updated.
In his book, A History of Hand Knitting, Rutt states that the “earliest pieces of true hand knitting now known to us come from Islamic Egypt” (p.32). These pieces include a number of blue and white stockings knit in cotton from the toe up. The dating of these artifacts is often based on contemporary finds rather than chemical analysis, which means that the dates provided are conjectural. Rutt shares that museum authorities approximate the 1200s to 1500s for dating these stockings (p.35). These socks and other knit fragments are generally associated with the Fatimid (909-1171 CE), Ayyubid (1171-1250/60), and Mamluk (1250-1517) periods of Egyptian history. During these periods, Egypt was a cosmopolitan center of trade that attracted diverse people from around the Mediterranean, West Asia, and beyond – a topic I am focusing on in this project.
Not included in Rutt’s book are tube belts that appear to have been made by knitting – possibly with a knitting frame or knitting needles. Rutt was likely unaware of these objects because very little – or nothing at all – had been published about these pieces when he was writing his book. One of these belts (inventory number AF 6027), which is at the Louvre in Paris, France, has been chemically dated to 420-600 CE. Not only does the chemical dating provide a firm date range, it also makes this belt the oldest known example of knitting. Unfortunately, the exact provenance of this knitted tube is unknown, but it is believed to have come from Egypt.
A fragment of a similar belt (object number 15/2010) is at the Museum für Byzantische Kunst in Berlin, Germany. Unlike the Louvre belt, it is a solid reddish color; but otherwise, it appears to be similar in structure and appearance to the Louvre belt. The Berlin belt came from Arsinoe/Crokodilopolis, Egypt and is believed to date to the 4th-11th centuries CE; however, it has not been chemically dated like the one at the Louvre. Its dating is based on comparable knitted tube belts from Fustat and Qasr Ibrim (also in Egypt) that were found in 11th century CE stratigraphic layers.
Identification number 15/2010. Credit: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Skulpturensammlung und Museum für Byzantinische Kunst / Antje Voigt CC BY-SA 4.0
According to Gudrun Böttcher, who analyzed the Berlin belt fragment, the stitches were each lifted over two consecutive rows of yarn and was likely done on a knitting board or frame with nails (Finneiser, Linscheid, and Pehlivanian, pp.90-91). This type of knitting, referred to as compound knitting, can also be done on needles, as illustrated by Marianne Erikson in her book, Textiles in Egypt: 200-1500 A.D. in Swedish Museum Collections (p.234-235). To-date, no knitting tools have been found to confirm or deny knitting with needles or a frame, and the structure of the fabric does not readily indicate the tools used to make it.
The use of these knitted tubes as belts is based on finds dating to the 8th-10th centuries CE from Nag el-Sheima and Old Dongola in Nubia. At these sites, knitted tubes were found in graves where the deceased wore them as belts (Finneiser, Linscheid, and Pehlivanian, p.91). This information is intriguing when considered alongside the ethnographic material provided in Alfred Bel and Prosper Ricard’s pamphlet, Le travail de la laine à Tlemcen, in which they describe women knitting tubular belts with five hooked needles in Tlemcen, Algeria in the early 20th century (pp.243-244).
For my book, Keepers of the Sheep: Knitting in Morocco’s High Atlas and Beyond, as well as an article for Piecework magazine, I recreated these belts, known as tekka manqusa, based on Bel and Ricard’s descriptions (Waggener, pp.134-137). The resulting belts (shown below) look similar to the earlier knitted tube belts found in Egypt and Nubia. However, the early 20th century Algerian belt differs in that it was made using a simple knit stitch (as described by Bel and Ricard) rather than the compound knit stitch described by Böttcher.
While I do not have information on exactly how the belts from the Nubian graves were used, Bel and Ricard note that in Algeria the belts were used to hold up pants (p.243). Based on my experience recreating the belts, I can attest that they are stretchy just like our modern elastic waistbands and would have been a comfortable way to secure one’s pants. While difficult to prove without an unbroken chain of evidence, I believe it is reasonable to speculate that the knitted Algerian belts are related to the knitted Egyptian and Nubian belts. As I discuss in my book, the entirety of northern Africa was (and still is) connected by a network of overland trade routes, some of which have been in use for hundreds if not thousands of years (pp.110-112). It is very likely that knitted tube belts and the techniques for making them spread throughout the region stretching from Egypt to Morocco.
Tekka manqusa inspired by Bel and Ricard’s account and the tube belt fragments from Qasr Ibrim at the British Museum (photo above). Pattern in Piecework Magazine, Spring 2022
Tekka manqusa inspired by Bel and Ricard’s account. This belt was modified by using thicker yarn and a mosaic knitting pattern from Rosa Pomar’s book, Portuguese Knitting. It is intended to recognize the relationship between the Iberian peninsula and the Maghreb. The pattern is in Keepers of the Sheep: Knitting in Morocco’s High Atlas and Beyond.
In comparison to the highly decorated knitted socks from medieval Egypt, these knitted tube belts are rather plain. This might be one reason they were not attention-grabbing in the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries when they were unearthed. With thousands of objects to catalog and analyze, it’s understandable that certain pieces might take precedence over others. However, these humble pieces of knitting could reveal much about the history of knitting. They certainly provide evidence for the “simple knitting” that likely would have pre-dated the intricately patterned knitted pieces of the medieval period.
Intriguingly, there is an even more humble piece of knitting at the Ashmolean museum in Oxford (accession number AN1941.1170). As far as I am aware, it has not been included in any book on knitting history, which is unsurprising given its very unremarkable appearance. It is an undyed, wool fragment in what appears to be garter stitch (alternating rows of knit and purl stitches created by knitting back and forth). One side has what looks like a selvedge edge made by slipping the first stitch when knitting flat. According to the museum, this piece is associated with Egypt’s Byzantine period, giving it a date range of 395-641 CE, which places it in competition with the Louvre belt for oldest known piece of knitting. However, I do not know if it has been chemically analyzed, and its exact provenance appears to be unknown. Nevertheless, this unassuming knit fragment raises questions – the most prominent one being: was it indeed knit flat? An unresolved issue for knitting history is whether flat knitting or knitting-in-the-round came first. Richard Rutt hypothesizes that circular knitting was probably first (p.23), and the tubular belts argue strongly for this. But, if the Ashmolean piece really was knit flat and came from the same time period as the Louvre belt, then flat knitting was known early on in the history of the craft and we really aren’t any closer to answering the which came first question.
While many knitting books often note the lack of evidence for early knitting and tend to cite the same examples, there are probably more pieces – like the humble fragments mentioned here – sitting in museum collections around the world. I suspect that as knitting gains acceptance as a field of research, we will begin to hear more about a diversity of knitting evidence that has been waiting patiently in museum drawers.
References
Bel, A. and Ricard, P. (1913) Le travail de la laine à Tlemcen. Alger: Typographie Adolphe Jourdan.
Erikson, M. (1997) Textiles in Egypt, 200-1500 A.D. in Swedish Museum Collections. Göteborg: Röhsska Museet.
Finneiser, K., Linscheid, P., Pehlivanian, M. (2010) Georg Schweinfurth: Pionier der Textilarchäologie und Afrikaforscher. Berlin: Skulpturensammlung und Museum für Byzantinische Kunst.
Rutt, R. (1987) A History of Hand Knitting. Loveland, CO: Interweave Press.
Waggener, I. (2020) Keepers of the Sheep: Knitting in Morocco’s High Atlas and Beyond. Houston, TX: 106 Meters from the Road.
Back in November, I went to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford to see a few textiles in their collection that are not on display. Before my appointment, I toured the textile room (Gallery 5, Floor -1) where I was very excited to see two fabric scraps (below) with a unique type of embroidery that I had learned about while living in Yerevan, Armenia.
Embroidered Tab – Ashmolean Museum – Oxford
Embroidered Slipper Toe – Ashmolean Museum – Oxford
In Armenia, this type of embroidery is known as Մարաշի ասեղնագործություն (Marashi aseghnagortsutyun – Marash embroidery). It is named after the region with which it is associated in the southeastern corner of modern Turkey (now Kahramanmaraş). In the past, this area had a significant Armenian population and was once part of the medieval Armenian kingdom of Cilicia.
There are two types of Marash embroidery – flat (հարթակար – hartakar) and woven (հյուսված կար – hyusvats kar).* The woven type of Marash embroidery (pictured below) is quite complex. The stitches are formed by creating a herringbone stitch foundation through which the thread is then woven. This method of stitching and weaving creates a cross-type structure that can stand on its own as a design element or be repeated over and over again to create lines, curves, and fields.
Marash embroidery by Ruzanna Grigoryan
Marash embroidery by Ruzanna Grigoryan
Marash embroidery by Ruzanna Grigoryan
In Marash, woven embroidery was used to decorate a variety of textile products including clothing, curtains, tablecloths, bed covers, and other textiles for the home. In general, this type of embroidery was done by women both in the home and in workshops. The objects they made were used within the family but were also traded to lands both near and far.
National Museum of Armenian Ethnography, Sardarapat
National Museum of Armenian Ethnography, Sardarapat
National Museum of Armenian Ethnography, Sardarapat
The pieces of woven embroidery (below) at the Ashmolean date to the late 1200s to early 1300s CE (brown tab) and 1250 to 1517 CE (slipper toe). They were found in Egypt and may have been imported or made in Egypt by Armenians living there. Fustat, and later Cairo, were metropolitan cities with diverse inhabitants from many parts of the world. The Armenians had been living in these cities and other parts of Egypt since the early centuries of the Common Era, working as architects, scholars, merchants, soldiers, government officials, and even viziers (or wazirs) – a high-ranking political advisor, minister, or counselor. In fact, the last century (11th to 12th century CE) of the Fatimid caliphate, which was administered from Cairo, is sometimes referred to as the ‘Armenian period’ because of the six leaders of Armenian descent who essentially controlled the empire through the position of wazir.
Tab detail – Ashmolean Museum – Oxford
Embroidered Tab – Ashmolean Museum – Oxford (EA1993.240)
Embroidered Slipper Toe – Ashmolean Museum – Oxford (EA1984.360)
Slipper detail – Ashmolean Museum – Oxford
The Armenian presence is attested in the historical record, and objects with possible links to Armenian craftsmanship (like these embroidered pieces) do appear in archaeological excavations and museum collections. However, it is very difficult to identify exactly who made an object and to determine exactly how that object came to be in the place it was found. Nevertheless, the fact that there were substantial Armenian communities living in Egypt in the medieval period means it is possible that these objects were embroidered by Armenian hands in Egypt.
* NOTE: The Armenian language is divided into two main dialects – Eastern and Western. There are many other dialects within these two branches. Moreover, the Armenian people, like so many people around the world, were multilingual – often speaking other languages such as Greek, Arabic, Turkish, and/or Persian. For this reason, some may refer to these stitches by other names. The names used here are in the Eastern Armenian dialect common in Yerevan today.
Two posts ago (here), I wrote about how I learned of tarriwin; my experience trying to find tarriwin knitters; and my hypothesis for the knitting technique used in making them. Following that post (here), I wrote about tarriwin knitting and how it might help to untangle the history of knitting. Now, I’d like to share some thoughts about photography and the important role it plays in helping to understand and recreate craft practices, like tarriwin knitting, that are on the decline or have already disappeared.
Photographic evidence
Photos are an invaluable source for historic textiles, especially knitted textiles. In the past, knitting knowledge was passed orally from person to person through demonstration and explanation. It was a widespread skill that likely did not garner much attention because it was so commonplace. Moreover, the garments made by knitting were often utilitarian and not necessarily highly visible, as in the case of leg warmers and socks in Morocco. Would you feel compelled to write or share about the mass-produced socks in your drawer today? Probably not. For this reason, knitted clothing and accessories did not often capture the attention of early artists, travel writers, or ethnographers. If they did make note of knitted items, they usually wrote just a line or two and did not provide much detailed description.
As industrially produced knitted clothing took over and lifestyles and preferences changed – affecting the transmission of craft practices – certain knitting traditions quietly slipped away in some parts of the world. When knitters pass on without teaching their skills to the next generation, we are left with only remnants from which to reconstruct the tradition. While knitted objects themselves are very important, they don’t provide much information about how they were used or worn or the contexts of that use. For this reason, depictions of those objects are crucial for bringing those objects to life. Early photographs are a gold mine for this type of information. While some photos are clearly staged, others depict people in everyday situations wearing their everyday clothes. While staged photos often lack context, they still provide documentary evidence for how an article looked and was worn. Staged and candid photos of tarriwin, coupled with what little was written about them, give us a fuller picture of the tarriwin knitting tradition in Morocco’s Middle Atlas Mountains.
The photo above was taken by Margaret Bourke-White and published by Life Magazine in 1943. The description of the photo (here) highlights the fact that these three men are goumiers, or Moroccan soldiers, in the French army during WWII who are posing with their weapons during a training exercise. While it’s hard not to focus on the blade in the one man’s mouth, my eyes are drawn to and linger on their leg warmers. The man on the right wears solid colored leg warmers while the men sitting next to him wear striped ones. Those leg warmers were likely knit by the men who are wearing them, so an alternative title for the photo could be, “Three Moroccan Knitters.”
As I’ve mentioned in previous work, Amazigh men were often the knitters in Morocco. In the High Atlas mountains, men knit leg warmers for themselves, which they called targhiwin in their dialect of the Amazigh language. These targhiwin could be decorated with black and white patterns or stripes (see my book, Keepers of the Sheep: Knitting in Morocco’s High Atlas and Beyond). In the Middle Atlas mountains, men also knit leg warmers, which they called tarriwin in their dialect of the Amazigh language. Unlike in the High Atlas, Middle Atlas men knit tarriwin for the women in their families, as well. While leg warmers for men were more subdued – like the solid colored and striped leg warmers seen on the goumiers above – Middle Atlas tarriwin for women were often very colorful and highly decorated. The knitters used an intarsia-in-the-round technique to accomplish some of the patterns.
What photos can show us
Recently, I came across a treasure trove of tarriwin photos from the Jean Besancenot archive at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, France. There are 1,770 photos in the collection, and I sifted through all of them to find tarriwin evidence (unfortunately, you can’t rely on tags to pull up every photo with knitting in it! The goumiers above are a case in point). I looked into getting permission to share some of the photos here, but the reproduction cost is higher than I can afford to pay for this self-funded blog (we’re talking hundreds of dollars for only a year’s worth of sharing). However, these photos are amazing, and I really want you to be able to enjoy them, so I am providing links to some of the best ones. I hope you click through to view them! Moreover, these photos demonstrate the kind of information that can be gleaned from a single image. Taken together with other images, this corpus of material can provide a more well-rounded understanding of a knitting tradition than just a few lines of writing.
Numéro d’inventaire: 428 – This photo shows three women and two children riding on two mules. All three women are wearing tarriwin. It’s interesting to note that the younger women are wearing the complexly decorated tarriwin that I have been writing about while the older woman is wearing plain white tarriwin. This raises some questions: Were colorful tarriwin only worn by younger women of child-bearing age? Did the solid white tarriwin worn by the older woman indicate something about her status? Or, maybe those were the only clean tarriwin she had that day? Where were these people going? Were they dressed for a special occasion, or is this their everyday attire?
Numéro d’inventaire: 321 – This photo shows a woman doing laundry in a stream or river. I believe this photo is significant because it shows that tarriwin were worn as part of everyday attire. The woman in the photo most likely did not put on her finest garments to wash clothes. Perhaps she had an even nicer pair of tarriwin for special occasions? Perhaps the tarriwin she’s wearing were a practice pair whose pattern isn’t as refined as others? Unlike some of Besancenot’s other photos, this one does not seem staged. It is very natural and candid.
Numéro d’inventaire: 415 – This photo shows men and women participating in an ahidous performance. Although it’s hard to see the tarriwin worn by two of the women, this photo demonstrates that tarriwin were part of festive attire. It also shows that not everyone wore them, as one of the women appears to have bare legs. The ahidous is a type of collective performance that marks special celebrations – such as weddings, naming ceremonies, a significant full moon, or visitors who have come from far away. It involves a line of musician-dancers who stand shoulder-to-shoulder while preforming songs – often based on oral poetry traditions- accompanied by a frame drum called the allun. For more information about the ahidous, see Cynthia J. Becker’s book, Amazigh Arts in Morocco: Women Shaping Berber Identity, chapter 3.
Numéro d’inventaire: 338 – This photo shows three different tarriwin laid out on a decorated piece of wood – possibly a door? It clearly shows the variety of patterns that were created for tarriwin. The examples on the left and right incorporate the design element that Richard Rutt noted about medieval Egyptian knitting in his book, A History of Handknitting (see this post for more details). In this design element, two stitches sit one above the other in the same wale (see the black and white checkered triangles at the top of the tarriwin and the white zig-zag motif of the tarriwin on the left). The tarriwin in the middle shows the ‘seam’ that is indicative of knitting in the round. The clarity of this photo makes it possible to count stitches, see the direction of knitting, and compare the patterns to those in other textile crafts such as weaving.
One tool in the textile researcher’s toolkit
I can’t help imagining those goumiers in the Bourke-White photo above with knitting needles in their hands working on the complex patterns of the tarriwin in Besancenot’s photos and gifting them to the women in their lives. I think most people today would consider intarsia-in-the-round to be a fairly advanced knitting technique, which means that those goumiers were likely highly skilled knitters. While we can’t definitively say that those three men knit intarsia-in-the-round tarriwin, acknowledging their possible connection to the knitting tradition depicted in the Besancenot photos compels us to consider the multi-dimensionality of Moroccan men and to confront our own stereotypes about who were and are knitters.
Collectively, these photos are invaluable for illuminating the Middle Atlas tarriwin tradition. A more detailed study of tarriwin in museum and private collections would yield valuable information about the construction techniques used in their creation. Interviews with those who remember seeing, wearing, or making tarriwin are crucial for confirming what information is available through ethnographic and travel accounts, photographs, and illustrations. While I had no luck in finding people who could answer my questions about tarriwin, it is possible that there is a great-grandfather or grandmother out there who still has memories of this beautiful and unique knitting tradition. But, time is running out to speak with them.
If you’d like to try your hand at the pinwheel tarriwin motif, see my free intarsia-in-the-round guide here and my pattern for the Middle Atlas skirt here (with step-by-step photo guide). There is a gauntlet pattern in my book, Keepers of the Sheep: Knitting in Morocco’s High Atlas and Beyond, that also uses the same technique. I have published these products to raise awareness about Moroccan knitting with the aim of increasing the consideration and inclusion of Moroccan knitting traditions in future history of knitting research.
The history of knitting has intrigued me since my early 20s when my mom gave me Nancy Bush’s book, Folk Socks: The History and Techniques of Handknitted Footwear, for my birthday. It was in the pages of Folk Socks that I first learned about knitting in northern Africa. Nancy’s medieval Egyptian sock pattern was one of the first written sock patterns I ever followed. It was a formative experience recreating an object that knitters generations before me had made. Knitting had always made me feel connected to the past and to other knitters, but making Nancy’s Mamluke Socks (pp. 76-78) made the world of medieval Egypt just that much more tangible.
Over a decade later, I was living in Morocco when I learned of an indigenous knitting tradition in the Atlas mountains. Remembering what I had read in Nancy’s book, I couldn’t help but wonder if the Moroccan tradition might be related to the medieval Egyptian tradition. After all, medieval Spain also produced very complex and beautifully knitted objects. And, what lies between Spain and Egypt? Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya. It seems highly unlikely that knitting just skipped over most of the northern half of Africa to arrive in the Iberian peninsula (or vice versa). Living in Niger (2010-2012) had taught me about trade routes and the migration of people, ideas, and goods throughout the northern half of the African continent – not to mention the fact that people had been migrating between Iberia and the Maghreb (western North Africa) for centuries. It didn’t seem too far fetched to me that if knitting was happening in medieval Egypt and Spain, then it was probably also happening in medieval Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. And so, I set out to connect Moroccan knitting to medieval Egyptian knitting by working backwards in time from the ethnographic collections and writings of French colonialists in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia to the material evidence from medieval Egypt. You can read about this work in my book, Keepers of the Sheep: Knitting in Morocco’s High Atlas and Beyond.
The fact that there are people in Morocco who still know how to knit in the old way is special indeed. These knitters learned to knit from their elders, who learned from theirs, going back who knows how far. If their tradition is related to that of medieval Egypt and Spain, then they are a living link between the past and the present. I do not mean to imply that their knitting tradition was passed down unchanged over the centuries. Changes undoubtedly took place, since culture always evolves. But, it’s possible that some techniques and styles survived. What insight might these northern African knitters bring to the silent objects of northern Africa’s past? What can they and their knitting knowledge teach us about the history of their homelands and the connectivity between that homeland and other lands and peoples? Might these knitters and their knitting tradition contribute to piecing together a more nuanced understanding of interactions between the peoples of Africa, Europe, and beyond?
Why Heritage Knitting Techniques Matter
I believe that knitting techniques and styles can act as signatures of particular places and the people within those places. The way a person knits the toe or heel of a sock is kind of like the way a person shapes a ceramic pot or a stone tool. In archaeology, pots, tools, and the techniques for making them define cultural influences and are used to map possible migration, interaction, and exchange. Can knitting be used in the same way? Being able to map particular knitting techniques might help us ‘see’ ancient networks of interaction. However, in order to do this, we have to document what I call ‘old style,’ ‘heritage,’ or ‘indigenous’ knitting techniques (how to identify and what to call this kind of knitting is a whole other topic for debate). What I am referring to is the type of knitting people did before the dissemination of written knitting patterns, enforced colonial craft education, and YouTube.* Collaborating with those who still posses this type of knowledge and examining knitted artifacts from the past can help us better understand knitting styles and how they may (or may not) have influenced one another. The more information we have from these sources, the more reliable and clearer the picture will be.
Hand knit socks from Armenia (left) and Morocco’s High Atlas mountains (right) showing differences in toe and heel structure.
This is me learning to knit մասիկներ (masikner) – a type of slipper sock common in Armenia and other western Asian countries – from my teacher in northern Armenia.
Moroccan Knitters Today
Unfortunately, the number of people who still posses these ‘old style’ skills is rapidly diminishing. Access to mass-produced products, changes in fashion, and changes in lifestyle affecting craft transmission are contributing to the rapid disappearance of indigenous knitting practices like that of Morocco. When I lived there, it took several trips from my home in Rabat to the High Atlas mountains to find people who still knit in the old way. In the end, thanks to help from artisans with the Anou, I was able to locate knitters in one particular valley of the High Atlas that had remained fairly isolated until relatively recently. All of the knitters I worked with in that valley were elderly, and they no longer produced the same range of products their forebears had made. They still knit socks, but pants, sweaters, leg warmers, hats, and mittens seemed to have fallen out of their repertoire. Some didn’t even knit anymore.
This is a photo of me (left) learning to knit High Atlas sirwal (pants). Faces are not shown to respect the request of those in the photo.
Me in my just finished sirwal. This was the first pair of sirwal my teacher (man on right in photo at left) had made since 1970.
The situation in the Middle Atlas was more acute. After learning about the colorful, tessellating leg warmers Middle Atlas Amazigh men made for their brides, I tried on a number of occasions to locate ‘old style’ knitters but had no luck. In the end, I had to rely on objects at the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris and very limited anecdotes from colonial ethnographers and artists to develop a hypothesis for how the distinctive Middle Atlas leg warmers were knit. The motif used for women’s leg warmers is very important because a particular knitting technique is needed to achieve the design: intarsia-in-the-round. While intarsia is known and used in other parts of the world, the way in which it is executed in the Middle Atlas leg warmers is unique, as far as I know. This represents a major ‘signature’ that could help us better understand the development and dissemination of knitting across northern Africa.
A Middle Atlas motif inspired by leg warmers from the Middle Atlas mountains of Morocco applied to a skirt. The technique is intarsia-in-the-round and was developed as a hypothesis for how this motif may have been executed.
Middle Atlas Knitting and Medieval Egyptian Knitted Fragments
Intriguingly, a design element of Middle Atlas leg warmers echos a design element in medieval Egyptian knitted artifacts. In his seminal book, A History of Hand Knitting, Richard Rutt describes fragments that bear a “design peculiarity” in which the “unit of design is not the single stitch, roughly square (as in Fair Isle knitting), but… a unit of two stitches, one above the other in the same wale” (see p.37 for description and p. 38 for charted design). A similar design element can be seen in Middle Atlas leg warmers at the Musée du Quai Branly (see objects 71.1996.22.3.1-2 and 71.1937.34.3.1-2).
Another interesting parallel is the use of stranded and intarsia-in-the-round design elements in medieval Egyptian knitting. Richard Rutt believed that the use of intarsia in these pieces indicated that they had been knitted flat (p.37). However, the intarsia-in-the-round technique employed by Middle Atlas knitters encourages us to revisit this idea. In fact, intarsia-in-the-round is also used by knitters from western Asian knitting traditions, albeit in a different way (see Priscilla Gibson-Robert’s book, Ethnic Socks and Stockings: A Compendium of Eastern Design and Technique. For possible connections between western Asian and northern African knitting see my post here). In my opinion, both the doubled unit of design in the same wale and the use of intarsia in the round in medieval Egyptian and Middle Atlas knitting are interesting ‘signatures’ that warrant further investigation.
Finally, the Middle Atlas leg warmer motifs are strikingly similar to those on a fragment at the Whitworth Museum in Manchester (inventory number T.1968.438). According to Anne-Marie Decker, the piece was made by nalbinding using an intarsia technique. While she says the provenance is unknown, it is assumed to be from Coptic Egypt. This colorful fragment and the Middle Atlas leg warmers could shed light on the shift from nalbinding to knitting as well as interactions across northern Africa.
Spreading the Word About Middle Atlas Knitting
It would be best to hear and learn from Middle Atlas knitters themselves; however, there appear to be very few, if none at all, left. I believe that this unique and beautiful knitting tradition deserves to be recognized alongside other popular traditions like Fair Isle, Cowichan, and Nordic knitting. Since very little information is available about Moroccan knitting in general, I am making my notes for the Middle Atlas intarsia-in-the-round motif available here in the hopes of spreading the word about Moroccan knitting; encouraging its revival and study; and promoting Moroccan skills and knowledge in knitting history research. These notes first appeared in my Middle Atlas Skirt Pattern, which includes a step-by-step guide to intarsia-in-the-round (with photos). You can purchase it here. As a self-funded, independent researcher with no institutional connections, pattern sales help me cover the costs associated with my work. If you do purchase the pattern, thank you very much for investing in my research on the history and practice of knitting in northern Africa and western Asia. If you don’t want to purchase the pattern but would still like to support my writing, please consider sending me a tip via Ko-fi. Thank you!
*Written patterns, colonial craft education, and YouTube also have their role to play in the development and practice of knitting. They are very much a part of knitting’s story and illuminate the ways in which people interact and share/spread ideas. They too are worthy of study and are needed for a complete picture of the craft.
When I was doing research for my book, Keepers of the Sheep: Knitting in Morocco’s High Atlas and Beyond, I came across a beautiful pair of leg warmers in the book Berber Costumes of Morocco by Frieda Sorber and Marie-Rose Rabaté. The complex tessellating pattern was intriguing and reminded me of the patterns decorating objects I had seen while living in Niger. The knitter in me wanted to know how the leg warmers had been made, but I was also curious about the knitters themselves and the history and contexts in which the leg warmers had been made and used. Since I was living in Morocco, I immediately set out to find knitters in the Middle Atlas who might be able to help me.
Unfortunately, my trips to the Middle Atlas, where I talked with artisans and residents, were fruitless. No one seemed to know how the leg warmers were made, and some didn’t even know about them. It seemed that this knitting tradition had declined with changes in fashion and eventually disappeared when the last knitters passed sometime in the first half of the 20th century CE. Nevertheless, there could still be people out there who were raised with this knitting tradition and still have memories of it. I just never managed to meet them.
Being too curious for my own good, I couldn’t just let go of these leg warmers. Over the course of a year, I developed a hypothesis for how the leg warmers might have been knit based on many hours of experimental knitting informed by photos of leg warmers (example – inventory no. 71.1996.22.2.1-2) in the Musée du Quai Branly collection in Paris and a photo (inventory no. PP0227604) from their archive depicting a man in the Middle Atlas knitting what are likely leg warmers (use the inventory numbers and search bar on the Musée du Quai Branly collections page).
The best way to produce the tessellating pattern proved to be intarsia-in-the-round, which was confirmed by the photo of the man knitting in the Musée du Quai Branly archive as well as photos of the inside of leg warmers at the same museum. Having never knit intarsia before, much less in-the-round, it took me many months to figure out just how to do one line of diamonds in the pattern – never mind trying to get the diamond pattern to repeat over and over again. And so, I developed the gauntlet glove pattern available in the book I wrote, which only requires one line of diamonds.
While I was pleased with having figured out the single row of diamonds, my brain was not satisfied. I really wanted to be able to make the diamond pattern repeat over and over again, as it does in the leg warmers, without creating gaps in my knitting. But, life has a way of distracting you. This project was put on the back burner as COVID-19 hit the world and I was swept up with relocating from Morocco to the USA and then Armenia. Once in Armenia, I hit the ground running doing research for a new book about knitting in Armenia (working title, Knitting at the Crossroads: A Journey with Knitting in Armenia).
Fast forward to last year (2025), and I finally could no longer ignore the itch to revisit Middle Atlas intarsia-in-the-round. I didn’t feel like knitting leg warmers because I knew that I likely wouldn’t finish the second one given my busy schedule and long list of work for my Armenia book. I dislike putting time and effort into something that winds up unfinished and unusable, so I decided to knit a skirt. I reasoned that a tube skirt is similar in shape to a leg warmer and, although it would require more bobbins, I would have a ready-to-wear garment at the end of it and no need to knit a second one (famous last words).
After introducing the bobbins, I was slightly horrified by my decision to apply this technique to anything wider than my leg. My knitting was a mass of yarn that looked as if it would seize up into a giant tangle the minute I moved it. What was I thinking? I would never be able to wrestle this into a completed garment. However, that itch to figure it out was now a full blown flaming rash, so I plodded onwards. I knew that it should work since I had successfully created the gauntlet pattern. I just needed to calm down and be methodical. And so, it began. The first row of diamonds came out as expected, but the second row took several tries to figure out. There were definitely moments when I questioned my sanity, but I eventually figured out how to transition to the second row and the third row. By this point, I had a clear idea of the order of operations. The knitting became easier and easier. Dare I say, it almost became as relaxing as knitting a simple garter stitch scarf? Before I knew it, the skirt was done.
As soon as I bound off my stitches, I wanted to keep working with the motif. I had grand ideas to design a sweater, but I just didn’t have the time, and my reserve of patience was in sore need of refilling. So, I decided to add the motif to the Molly Cocoknits sweater. I really love Julie’s method of knitting sweaters. I am petite-ish, but my shoulders are broad and straight for my frame, which often makes for ill-fitting necklines. However, with the Cocoknits method, I have been able to produce sweaters that fit my shoulders well. Anyway, I opted to shorten the Molly and only increased to a number of stitches that would accommodate the motif and my middle. Although I had thought about doing an all-over design, I chose to do only a line of diamonds at the hem. This left me with lots of leftover yarn so, of course, I immediately cast on for a second skirt (because I needed to test what I had learned to make sure I had really learned it, right?).
Between the first and second skirt, I began developing a written pattern for the skirt and a step-by-step instructional guide for how to do intarsia-in-the-round for this particular motif. Readers of my first book will know that I strive to find a happy medium between oral tradition and written patterns. My grandmother, who taught me to knit when I was 5 years old, does not use written patterns. She might look at the pictures in knitting pattern books for the ideas, but she never follows the instructions. Instead, she knits a gauge swatch and uses calculations and her own experience with knitting to create the sweater she wants. Although I had strayed very far from this style of knitting, and had even become a fairly militant gauge swatch knitter who followed written patterns to the letter, my work with shepherd-knitters in the High Atlas mountains of Morocco re-introduced me to the beauty and freedom of an oral knitting tradition. It blew my mind and did wonders for building my self-confidence as a knitter. I wanted to capture that same feeling in my pattern.
And so, the Middle Atlas Skirt pattern with notes for intarsia-in-the-round was born. Unlike most conventional knitting patterns that require you to get gauge and tell you exactly how many stitches to cast on, increase, etc., this pattern only requires one gauge swatch (using whatever needles and yarn you have on hand) and your waist and hip measurements. A table walks you step-by-step through the calculations necessary to produce a skirt that will fit your body shape. Once those numbers are determined, they are added to the pattern, which has blanks for your specific numbers. While some might groan at the thought of doing math, I have tried my best to walk you through it with clear and simple directions and formatting. The amount of time it takes to knit your swatch, measure your body, and figure out your numbers takes as much time as knitting gauge swatches for a conventional pattern – possibly less if you are like me and waste hours, if not days, trying to get gauge with dozens of little squares of knitting. The beauty of this style of knitting is that you can use any size needles and yarn (although it works best with yarns in the DK and worsted weights). Moreover, since the intarsia-in-the-round motif does not use much of any one color, it is great for yarn stash busting.
If you are interested in giving this skirt and intarsia-in-the-round a try, you can find my pattern on Ravelry (I am working on adding it to my Etsy page and will update here once that’s done). I am always happy to see what you do with my work, so please do tag me on Instagram (@waggens_ho) or send me an email (see the ‘Contact’ button at the top of this web site). As a self-funded, independent researcher, pattern sales help me cover the costs associated with my work. If you do purchase the pattern, thank you very much for investing in my research! If you don’t want to purchase the pattern but would still like to support my writing, please consider sending me a tip via Ko-fi. Thanks!
The oldest evidence for knitting, thus far, comes from medieval Egypt. These intriguing pieces, which range from technically simple to very advanced leave knitters and researchers with much to consider: Who knit these objects? How did they use them? How did knitting spread? How do these early knitting traditions relate to knitting practices today?
By analyzing the structure of these knit objects and considering their historical and cultural contexts, we can develop a more nuanced understanding of the story of knitting – and of the medieval world in general. Medieval Egypt was a diverse place that was home to many people from different corners of the world including peoples from around the Mediterranean, Anatolia, the Caucasus, the Arabian peninsula, and Iran. Moreover, it was a cultural hub that attracted merchants, artisans, and thinkers from places far and wide.
A knit fragment at the British Museum in London (EA72266) likely dating to Egypt’s Fatimid period and a pair of socks at the History Museum of Armenia in Yerevan (inventory number 1203) both bear a geometric bird motif that encourages us to consider the diversity of medieval Egypt and how that world may have shaped the development and practice of knitting. You can read more about my project to untangle the story of this knitted fragment and its motif and what this might tell us about the story of knitting in the latest Archaeological Textiles Review (no. 67, 2025).
Example schema of bird motif found on knitted and woven textiles from medieval Egypt and modern Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Iran. Light grey represents the main color; dark grey the contrast color; and light grey the optional contrast color (image: Irene Waggener)
Check out the full issue here. Download my article below:
Armine Gasparyan, a knitter from Hadrut, taught me how to graft stitches together without a tapestry needle. She uses this technique to finish inserted sock heels. As with grafting with a tapestry needle, you will need to have an equal number of stitches on each needle in order to carry out the steps correctly. After you have completed the last stitch, you can push the yarn through to the inside of the heel using the tip of your knitting needle, or you can use a crochet hook to pull it through to the inside.
Armine works at the Hadrut Creative Center in Yerevan, Armenia where she teaches knitting, weaving, and other crafts to refugee children from Hadrut as well as their peers from Yerevan. The center was originally based in the town of Hadrut in Nagorno-Karabakh, but it was relocated to Stepanakert after the 44-Day War in 2020. Soon after, a branch was opened in Yerevan and other locations around Armenia to provide a gathering space for refugees from Hadrut to maintain ties with their community, dialect, and culture. Since the exodus of Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh during the most recent war in 2023, the center’s headquarters in Stepanakert has relocated to Yerevan.
In the past, hand-knit socks were an important part of attire and cultural life for people in Hadrut. Women knit dozens of socks to include in their dowries and for their family members to wear and give as gifts. However, like in other parts of the world, old-style knitting began to decline with the introduction of factory-made clothing and changing fashions. Ira Tamrazyan, the director of the center, noticed that younger women in Hadrut were not knitting the old-style socks that her grandmother used to knit. In order to preserve this style of knitting, she decided to teach a handful of women, who in turn could teach the next generation of knitters through the Hadrut Creative Center’s classes. Armine was one of her students and is now a knitting teacher at the center. Armine welcomes students from around the world who visit the center while on vacation in Yerevan. Please reach out to the center if you are interested in learning directly with Armine and her fellow Hadrut Creative Center teachers in Armenia.
Left to Right: Armine Gasparyan, Irene Waggener, Ira Tamrazyan.
Keepers of the Sheep: Knitting in Morocco’s High Atlas and Beyond documents the knitting tradition of shepherds in Morocco’s High Atlas mountains. It is the culmination of three years of research, interviews, participant observation, and writing. Seven essays and thirteen patterns give the reader a glimpse of life in a High Atlas village and the important role knitting once played there. The book also explores the history of knitting in Morocco taking the reader backwards in time from Morocco, through Algeria, into Spain and Tunisia, and eventually Egypt, where historians believe knitting may have originated. Despite North Africa’s deep connection to knitting, very little has been written about this corner of the knitting world. Keepers of the Sheep: Knitting in Morocco’s High Atlas and Beyond fills this gap by presenting what remains of an age old knitting tradition and examining the available historical and artifactual evidence – some of which has not been shared in knitting books before. Included in the book are patterns from High Atlas shepherds, contemporary designs inspired by the High Atlas, and others recreated from historical accounts and artifacts. This book brings to life a North African knitting tradition that has all but disappeared.
I am extremely grateful to the shepherds with whom I worked and hope this book fulfills their wish to pass on their knowledge to future generations. As requested by the shepherds, a portion of the proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to their village’s women’s co-operative, Cooperative Ibilou. Without the welcoming support and encouragement of Cooperative Ibilou’s members, I never would have met their husbands, fathers, uncles, and brothers who are the knitters of their village. The cooperative will use the funds for projects that will benefit the entire community.
Find This Book
(Update April 2026) This book is currently sold out!A very big “thank you” to everyone who purchased a copy. Your support makes my work possible and contributes to the community of Timloukine whose members were integral to the creation of this book. I am currently working to secure the image reproduction rights from museums in order to make a PDF version of the book. This will be available via my Etsy Shop and Ravelry page. Follow my blog (at bottom of page) or follow me on Instagram for updates.
This book was self-published in order to ensure that a portion of its sales went to Cooperative Ibilou as requested by the knitters who collaborated with me. If you are a publisher who is interested in working with us to make a second edition available, please contact me here.
Rosa Pomar, Retrosaria Rosa Pomar, “There are knitting books and knitting books and if I had to choose one very special book from our shop I would choose this one. Maybe it’s because I love the history of knitting as much as knitting itself, maybe because I had the pleasure of meeting (Irene) during her research, maybe because Irene’s book reveals men knitting wool trousers using a new (to me and I bet for you too) way of carrying your yarn when working stripes.”
Rachel Atkinson, Daughter of a Shepherd, in reference to Hussein Mardi’s Tqasher Jadeed/New Socks pattern – “The pattern is designed to fit the individual foot and have to say, I think they’re the best fitting socks I’ve ever made!”
Paula Spranger, Retrosaria Serafina, “The book is even better than I thought. It’s so interesting to read and the patterns are wonderful.”
Jenny Dean, author of Wild Colour, “Beautiful and clearly the result of much painstaking research and experimentation. It’s the ideal combination of the practical and informative with plenty of background and historical detail.”
Erin Pirro, Morehouse Farm Merino, “Fantastic narrative of an amazing place and it’s rich wool craft traditions. I’ve gotten to experience just the basics first hand and am thrilled to have Irene take us behind the scenes. I cast on the Shabka/Trellis Socks as soon as the book arrived and am learning some amazing new techniques! It’s so freeing to have the directions result in a project that fits instead of just following and counting, following and hoping. I can’t wait to give a second copy to a dear friend. Thank you Irene – this isn’t just a story, it’s the heritage of our craft.”
Laura-Lee, Etsy Customer, “By any criteria, this book is top-drawer. It’s a wonderful ethnographic study; the photographs are worthy of an award all by themselves; the knitting patterns are interesting and clearly written. It would be of interest to anthropologists, knitters, and anyone who enjoys owning a beautiful book.”
Katherine, Etsy Customer, “Love this book! We live in Morocco at the moment and it is so fun to read the essays and learn about the cultural and historic aspect of the patterns. I have not seen any books like this. The pictures are beautiful. Can’t wait to try out the patterns. Should be a fun gift for anyone that loves textiles and crafting. Awesome job, Irene!”
Emily, Etsy Customer, “Wow. Blown away by this book and the care that went into making it, and how it honors the amazing humans who make up the book. Cannot wait to cast on some socks!! Thank you. This book will be a treasure to reference for generations to come.”
106 Meters from the Road 
