Knitting America: A Glorious Heritage from Warm Socks to High Art

Synopsis

A Glorious Heritage from Warm Socks to High ArtWars and warm socks! Perils and purls! High treason and high art! Here is the history of knitting in America in all its many-stranded, multicolored glory.Knitter and scholar Susan M. Strawn unravels knitting history from pilgrims to pioneers, immigrants to native people, through war and peace. With more than 300 color and black-and-white images of knitters and knitwear, this is a story packed with much ado about knitting Also included are 20 historical knitting patterns—a Jamestown-era cap, Victorian silk gloves and miser’s purse, a Civil War soldier’s stockings, Zoar mittens, Red Cross socks and wristlets, and more vintage lace, shawl, scarf, and sweater patterns you can recreate today. “This meticulously researched look at knitting in America, from Colonial times to the present, earns an honored place on the bookshelf next to A History of Hand Knitting and No Idle Hands. Thing is, it’s so visually interesting, you’re going to want to leave it out on the coffee table instead. The illustrations tell the story as vividly as the text. . . . It’s a must-have for fiber historians.”
—Yarn Market News “Susan has placed the history of knitting within the context of American history, so we can clearly see how knitting is intertwined with such subjects as geography, migration, politics, economics, female emancipation, and evolving social mores. She has traced how a melting pot of knitting traditions found their way into American culture via vast waves of immigration, expanded opportunity for travel, and technology.”—Melanie Falick, author of Knitting in America