Chloe Wong @chloewongstudio - Tumblr Blog

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bulljumpingfresco

Fresco of Bacchus adorned with grapes in front of Mount Vesuvius

#but of course

safrannoir

Hand-knotted Persian Rugs from Kerman, Iran.

(x), (x), (x) and (x)

fluentisonus

they're trying to get me to do something called ""my job"" instead of reading about medieval english poaching laws

Gorgeous work. 💜

metallic thread textile fragment with birds, japanese c. 1800.

#oh yeah

wisphunt

My final for the first year of my fashion and textile course :] fossils cardigan featuring living fossils like coelacanth and lots of dinosaur bones. Big love letter to palaeontology and natural history. Got super into my knitting machine but I wasn’t very adept with it yet so I sort of crocheted around the edges of my pieces and sewed them all together, and crocheted some edges/ribbing. The buttons are handmade from polymer clay. Used some second hand gold yarn I found in a charity shop and a whole bunch of mixed variegated wool together. My most ambitious project yet I completely just did not speak to people for that final month I was working on this 😭

Some close ups:

And my watercolour paintings this piece was based on:

#VERY cool

aeide

test weaving of penelope's tapestry on the chiusi skyphos:

reference:

there are some adjustments I need to make for tension, but I'd like to make the next version into a header band for a warp-weighted loom so I can try weaving the whole pot, including telemachus and penelope.

#OBSESSED!!!

helpimsotired

Justin McElroy talking about accessibility in live theatre (June 9, 2019)

formichi

quasi-normalcy

“Art is happening everywhere all of the time” but an awful lot of it seems to only ever happen in New York and London, doesn’t it?

findchaos

We visited an old glass factory that was converted into a park and the photos can get very surreal.

lamignonette

handweavers

"The relationship of textiles to writing is especially significant, not only for the cuneiform-like qualities of many patterns (preserved in a Hungarian term irásos, meaning 'written'), but also for the parallels between ink on papyrus and pigment on bark cloth. There is, in fact, little difference between the two. Such connections are implied in many textile terms. For example, the Indian full-colour painted and printed 'kalamkari' are so named from the Persian for pen, kalam; the wax for Indonesian batiks is delivered by a copper-bowled tulis, also meaning pen. The European term for hand-colouring of details on cloth is 'pencilling'. The Islamic term tiraz, originally denoting embroideries, came to encompass all textiles within this culture that carried inscriptions. And the patterns woven into the silks of Madagascar are acknowledged as a language: the Malagasy vocabulary for writing and preparing the loom are synonymous, while the finest stripes are zanatsoratra, literally children of the writing, or vowels. The study of textiles is, in fact, a branch of palaeography, in which deciphering and dating reveals the stories encapsulated in cloth 'handwriting'.

With or without inscriptions, textiles convey all kinds of 'texts': allegiances are expressed, promises are made (as in today's bank notes, whose value is purely conceptual), memories are preserved, new ideas are proposed. Records were kept in quipu (khipu) a method of knotting string used by the Incas and other ancient Andean cultures to keep accounts and communicate information, the oldest of which is some 4,600 years old. Many anthropological and ethnographical studies of textiles aim at teaching us how to read these cloth languages anew. The 'plot' is provided by the socially meaningful elements; the 'syntax' is the construction, often only revealed by the application of archaeological and conservation analyses. Equally, the most creative textiles of today exploit a vocabulary of fibres, dyes and techniques. Textiles can be prose or poetry, instructive or the most demanding of texts. The ways in which they are used - and reused - add more layers of meaning, all significant indicators of sensitivities that can be traced back to the Stone Age."

— Mary Schoeser, World Textiles

#WHAT I’M SAYING

emmaklee

colorwork knitting | Kaffe Fassett

just-late-roman-republic-things

The one bizarre thing to me about textiles is that warp-weighted weaving is at least 6500 years old, but our oldest knitted artifacts are only ~1000 years old, and crochet 200 years old. Even though you need less equipment to knit (two sticks) or crochet (one hook) compared to warp-weighted weaving (frame, loom weights, batting, heddles). Why the big gaps between these inventions? And why did each one appear and spread when it did?

dinosaurcharcuterie

Oooh, I know this one! Well, the knitting one. The commonly given reasons, at least.

Firstly, you don't just need two sticks. You need at least two (fairly) identically sized, (fairly) identically weighted, straight, smooth sticks that are strong enough to carry the weight of what you're making. Which isn't impossible to do with bronze age technology, but it's gonna take time or money. And every time you change gauge of thread, or want a different tightness of fabric from the same artisan, you need a new size of needles. A loom is more flexible about these things. Nalbinding, which looks very similar and fills a similar niche, is more flexible about these things and uses way less resources.

Secondly, it's probably older than the 12th century sock find. That thing has colorwork and a shortrow heel. Not something you do instinctually, not something you figure out on your first or second or fourth attempt if you've never seen it done. So we know it's older. We also know from contextual evidence that it doesn't show up in texts or art or myths before the Middle Ages, so... Not hugely older. It's hard to find archaeological evidence because almost every part of knitting, until fairly recently, was made of material that loves to decay. And if you were to find a knitting needle... It's a pointy stick. Made of wood, maybe bone. Even in the context of lying in a dwelling, that could be many, many things. Loom weights are slightly easier to categorize.

Then there's the fact that most knitted garments, while wonderfully stretchy and drapey, have a tendency to wear out fast. (It's why most commercial sock yarns these days tend to be reinforced with nylon.) Since the panels are made of one continuous thread without knotting off, you get a hole bigger than what can be easily mended much more quickly. So you need incentive to choose it over other, older, proven methods.

just-late-roman-republic-things

Good points, and when you mentioned "thread" something clicked for me - it's really hard to knit thread, i.e. laceweight yarn or thinner, into solid fabric. You need needles no bigger than toothpicks, which break easily even if they're solid steel, and if the size is even just 1mm off it'll make the fabric too stiff or too loose. And every knitter will need a different size of needles to produce a particular gauge of fabric, and you can't have more than one knitter work on the same fabric at once. It may also be slower and harder on your hands than weaving, since there's no way to form "sheds" and knit multiple stitches at once with only Neolithic tools.

So: Harder, and probably slower to work. Fragile tools, which are probably difficult to make in standardized sizes. Hard to get a consistent gauge you can price for the market. Like you said, these issues aren't impossible, but they might make it less economical, and less likely to become popular.

It's probably not a coincidence that our earliest knitted artifacts are socks, which are A) more durable than most knitted clothes, B) normally knit with heavier yarn than thread, and C) an item much more suited to knitting than weaving, so there's a stronger incentive.

I don't know much about how durable knitting is compared to weaving, but I'm not sure if that'd be a big factor in limiting its spread. Either kind of fabric can be felted for strength, and you can reinforce knitting with heel stitch or duplicate stitch, even years after you made the object. (My socks start wearing thin after about 6-8 years, and reinforcing an old sock takes about an hour.) But if this is easier to do on woven fabric, I'd be delighted to learn about that, too!

amymon-arachne

Weaving is also faster and takes up less yarn, since the threads are all running parallel to each other and not making loops. Plain weave is fast compared to knitting or crochet.

When you have to produce all textile goods for your family, of course you’re going to go for economy. I saw somewhere that it would generally take two or three hand-spinners to produce enough yarn for one weaver, so I can’t imagine how that would translate to knitting or crochet which use a lot more yarn.

Also, worn out woven fabric can be cut down and repurposed into other useful items, while knitting and crochet would come apart if you tried to cut it.

So it makes sense that knitting and crochet would take longer to gain popularity, since they take up more resources.

just-late-roman-republic-things

These are also great points, thank you! (Also, the work on your blog is beautiful!)

chromatographic

As a multicrafter I'm going to point out another thing here, too! We've talked a bit about how woven items are efficient, but naalbinding, more than knitting, is truly an efficient use of your resources in conjunction with weaving.

Naalbinding, as mentioned above, is much older than knitting! It uses what is essentially a single large-eyed needle similar to a tapestry needle. A type of needle that you could also use while making your weavings. But additionally, while knitting and crochet are ideal for using a long, single length of yarn, Naalbinding excels at using shorter lengths of yarn - If I use anything longer than 3 ft (about 1m) I run into problems very quickly.

Now when you're weaving? Any loom is going to have waste yarn in the warp - this is how it holds the tension needed to weave. Even on the small table looms I've worked with these scraps can be about 1-2 ft of yarn - a great size for Naalbinding, but extremely difficult to use for knitting or crochet. It's very efficient to take these weaving ends - yarn and thread that's already been worked heavily to simply get into yarn for the weaving! - and use them for naalbinding.

We don't really weave socks because, well. They're a tube. And not just a tube, but to be comfortable, it's a closed tube! With a curvy end! and decreases! This would be really hard to make via weaving, which excels in Flat Rectangles (see: why a lot of Ancient clothing was Flat Rectangles with Fancy Pinning) and simpler shapes.

Even knitting has some issues with socks - though I'm fairly sure knitted socks are going to be more comfortable than naalbound ones, as the fabric has a more even drape. It's not just two even sticks of the same size that you need for knitting a tube - it's a minimum of four. Usually five!

It's also easier to make increases and decreases in naalbinding than knitting, IMO. A closed tube is honestly ideal for the craft, especially if you are fitting it to yourself or a close relative as a mitten or a sock. Like, say, when you're both crafting next to the campfire and every row or two you can hold up the item against their body, and be sure you're on the right track for the fit.

Naalbinding is slower than knitting, overall, but in a more resource poor society it makes a lot more use of those scraps of yarn that you've already put hours and hours of work into making. And they won't go to waste.

milkweedman

One thing--stick rounding tools are ancient, and have been around since the stone age.

Unsurprisingly they are made of stone. You put a slightly oversized stick there and rub the stone along it until it fits into the groove with no gaps. This one was for arrow shafts (source: https://sandiegoarchaeology.org/artifact-of-the-week-shaft-straightener/)

Here's another one, repurposed from a stone axe:

Source: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/357166805_New_Data_for_Research_on_the_Early_Bronze_Age_in_Northern_Poland_2350-1600_BC. Figure 4, page 481.

But you could make these to produce any diameter, and use either sticks or split wood. (As a woodworker myself I'd go for split wood--easier to do in bulk and stronger due to avoiding the pith).

Meaning needles, including 5+ set dpns, would have been well within the technological grasp of, at the very latest, neolithic peoples. Not that they did--i'm just saying, making wooden knitting needles would not have been a hardship at all, including sets of different gauges. And we know stone age peoples had knowledge of the wood they were using; certainly enough to know what species of tree to use. So, split some green ash, round and smooth it on your shaft straightener, whittle the end to a nice point, smooth that on the rock also, let dry a while, and repeat as needed. A lot of modern wooden needles are made from softwood (looking at you, knitpicks laminated birch needles that snapped as soon as I touched them), so remember that hardwood needles would be much much stronger and less delicate. Finer gauge wooden needles still are always going to be somewhat delicate, but theyre usable for a lot of people, so I don't think they should be ruled out by any means.

Personally ive always thought knitting and crochet were developed later because they are less intuitive. Like, braiding plaits and språng are both only one or two steps removed from weaving, nalbinding may well have started as the very simple blanket stitch/button hole stitch, which is something you can easily stumble into with basic sewing... but I could never see knitting fit into that sort of organic progression. Crochet from nalbinding is compelling because they both involve making loops rather than manipulating straight strands, but the actual mechanics seem very different to me (I've only dabbled in nalbinding though--would love to know what an experienced nalbinder would say)