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Knowing the Background

My social media feeds brings in a lot of knitting information every day.  It can be Pinterest, Facebook, my email, YouTube, podcasts and more.  It is so much information I don't always have time to wade through it so I select the information most interesting to me and open up posts for the Blog.  My intention is to come back to it at some later date and review it.  The topic for today's discussion came in months ago with definitions and background information from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary.  Check out their article regarding 10 knitting terms here.

There are words as a knitter I use all the time, words like knit, purl, swatch, frog and more that make perfect sense because I understand the jargon of knitting.  But until this article came in I hadn't really paid attention to how old some of these words are or where they came from.



Knit has been used in English since 1000 A.D. and came from the Old English word cnyttan which meant to tie in a knot, then proceeded to morph into the process of making a net to finally describing how one takes two needles and thread to make a fabric.  The verb began to be used as a noun in the 1500.  English have been knitting for well over 500 years the way we do today.

Or how about the cardigan sweater?  It refers to a person, in particular, the Seventh Earl of Cardigan in Wales, Lieutenant General James Thomas Brudenell.  He was known for wearing vests that were open in the front and the name cardigan stuck to that style.  Not long after it also referred to sweaters that opened in the front.



Wouldn't you know it, there was no image of Brudenell wearing his name sake! But then he was in command of the cavalry at the Charge of the Light Brigade so being depicted in military regalia does make sense.

Check out all 10 of the terms at the link above.  Who knows you just might become better enlightened about these common knitting terms and have a richer context when you use them.










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