Meandering along the Wool Roads, we might peer into courtyards and windows over the shoulders of knitters, we catch village folk walking and knitting along the hillside paths that follow the sheep’s direction. What are they knitting? Most are making practical items needed by their families – socks, hats and sweaters, for example. But looking at the intricacy and the care taken in many of the designs, we know that there is more to be found here than sheer serviceability.
In Eastern Europe, women and girls might be knitting to show off their skill in a knitting contest. In Peru, men may be purling patterns into their hats that telegraph to onlookers their marital status. In the Baltics, a young woman in ages past knit in preparation for the dowry needed to marry and start a family. It was important for her neighbors to see her value through her skill with the needles – her skill would be taken into account in marriage proposals.
A book on the folk magic inherent in knitting could be organized by common milestones of human life all over the world rather than by geographic region. Knitted gifts of clothing accompany major rites of passage in the human life cycle such as birth, engagement and marriage. In courtyards and in front of cottages, we might find women knitting tokens with particular motifs to be exchanged in engagement rituals – an eve-before-marriage tunic of wool, marriage stockings for the occasion, a wedding blanket for a new couple or mittens to give to a new mother-in-law.
Looking at only those milestones, we would miss the markers of emotional life particularly recognized by women in their needlework. These are more likely to be about relationships and their wishes for their friends and loved ones – knitted ribbons for girlhood companions, knitted silk pincushions to offer to best girlfriends, knitted belts for friends and cousins trying to conceive or to protect a pregnancy, wraps for newborn babies, jumpers (sweaters) with motifs to protect mates in dangerous professions (e.g., sailor, ship captain, fisherman).
Men are also present on the Wool Road – Arab traders who taught knitting wherever they went; solo shepherds on stilts in Landes, France knitting to as they guarded the wealth, the flock; sailors knitting socks to keep their own feet warm (even when wet) when out to sea for months on end – all of these we see as we look for stories along the Wool Roads.