Knitting casts off its dowdy image

by Lucy Lethbridge

Knitwear has had something of a bad press in recent decades. It's been associated with woollies; with make do and mend; with the clack, clack of granny's knitting needles at work on a pair of baby booties or a balaclava for the boys at the Front. It has been considered altogether too close to its artisan origins to be truly chic.

And yet wool, with its twin attributes of warmth and weatherproofness, is indispensable to everyday life in the colder reaches of Europe. And knitted fabrics are the most elastic of all the traditional fabrics - which accounts for their early use in stockings. One of the most moving objects I have ever seen in an exhibition was a baby's knitted jersey, found in the mud of the Thames at low tide; it had been made around 1550 and you could see every stitch. At the time of writing, on a miserable January day in London, I am wearing three woollen garments: a pair of warm socks, a thin cashmere jersey - and to top it all off, a functional, if unflattering, cardigan in a traditional cable-stitch pattern. I am also wearing a pair of sheepskin boots - so altogether, in my attire, the centuries-old European hegemony of sheep in trade and agriculture is represented from head to toe.

There are happy signs of knitting revival. The drive for authenticity, for fabrics that are natural, hard-wearing and not created from chemicals, has seen a revival in the attractions of wool. Julia Roberts is a keen knitter and so is Winona Ryder. Knitting devotees say that the rhythmic process is calming and the product satisfying. And there is a lot more that can be achieved by a pair of needles than a shapeless cardi. The French designer Sonia Rykiel, for example, is known as the "Knitwear Queen" for her stylish jumpers made of the finest wool jersey in the matelot style or with a knitted corselage. The achingly fashionable Welsh designer Julien Macdonald started his career making beautiful creations in wool - feather light, cobwebby fragments that wouldn't provide insulation against a faint breeze in midsummer. It was being taught to knit by his mother that sparked Macdonald's passion for wool work: by the age of thirteen he was making elaborate cardigans for grateful members of his family.

Knitting circles, once associated with long evenings with no telly, have undergone a huge revival. My friend Claudia hosts one in Oxford once a week and is making one of those long trailing scarves that appears to have neither beginning nor end - she says there is something extremely pleasurable in chatting and doing at the same time. One of the pioneer knitting clubs is iknit and it can give you lots of information and advice: email info@iknit.org.uk. In East London, the Cast Off Knitting Club hosts exhibitions and courses and Rachel and Louise who run it can even teach you how to spin your own yarn: email them at knitting@castoff.info - or just drop in to their premises at 260 Globe Road, Bethnal Green, London E2 (Tuesday-Saturday 12-7pm). Or try logging into Knitchicks, a comprehensive website of courses, patterns and ideas: www.knitchicks.co.uk. The old-fashioned knitting circle has been transformed by the web into a cyber-circle of enthusiasts swapping patterns, pictures and creative ideas. There are dozens of, slightly obsessive, knitting blogs and podcasts: try Yarnharlot or Worsted Witch; I even found a blog by a woman in the Lake District who knitted the moulting fur of her collie dog into eccentric garments for her grateful friends.

A visit to the V&A costume collections is, as always, inspiring. Among the exhibits is a fourth-century Egyptian sock, and an apprentice's cap made of thick, felted wool, dating from the mid- seventeenth century. One of the interesting things about knitwear is that its principles, even with the introduction of knitting machines, have not changed since the first knitter strung some yarn on a pair of needles. The V&A also have an extraordinarily intricate jumper from Fair Isle made in the 1920s. This celebrated style of knitting, with its complicated geometric patterns, was made popular by the Prince of Wales, later Edward VIII. After centuries dipping in and out of obscurity, the style still thrives - in fact knitwear is the chief craft and export of Fair Isle still. Second only to oil, knitting is also the chief production of the Shetland Isles - wool from Shetland sheep being renowned for its hardiness. If you're prepared to brave the cold, the Shetland Museum in Lerwick, capital of the islands, has a magnificent collection of traditional woollen garments, including the cap, stockings and mittens found in a 17th century grave in Gunnister - the earliest surviving examples of Shetland knitting. Bill Bankes-Jones, artistic director of Tête-à-Tête, the innovative London opera company, was so entranced by the creativity and imagination of the knitters that he encountered on a trip to the islands that he commissioned a new opera Prometheus Unbound inspired by their ancient knitting songs and featuring a chorus of singing jerseys.

Although the countries of southern Europe have rich traditions of knitting, particularly in silk and linen yarns, it is to the inclement north that one looks for the hardy inspiration of the shaggy mountain sheep and goat. Not surprisingly, given their proximity and ancient links, the designs on Norwegian knitting are strikingly similar to Fair Isle ones; they are distinguished by their famous pewter buttons. In the Baltic countries regions and parishes can be identified by the intricate designs on their woollen mittens. In Estonia, for example, there are thousands of different stitches - including the gloriously named "pole-cat paws", "frog's thighs", "elk-antlers" and "swallow tail". In Ireland, the famous sweaters of the Aran Islands incorporate symbolic stitches such as the honeycomb - symbol of the hardworking bee, and the basket stitch to represent the fisherman's plentiful basket. The lanolin-rich wool of sheep or goats such as the alpaca, makes their wool ideal for the blustery wet climes of coastal communities; the Aran sweater (geansai in Irish Gaelic), one of which can last for generations, is knitted with unscoured wool that retains all those weather-proof natural oils.

With oil prices and heating bills on the rise, what better way to stave off the winter weather than taking a tip from the fishermen of Europe and putting on an extra layer? Better still, you could acquire a pair of needles and get knitting yourself. The range of yarns (try bamboo - no, it's true! I have a pair of bamboo socks to prove it) is immense, as are the stitches, the styles, the creative possibilities. As any keen knitter will tell you, it is an addiction - without a hangover.

© Lucy Lethbridge. All views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to the European Commission.