Knitting is a craft with a long and venerable history. It is basically making loops out of a length of wool using two pins to form the loops which are then threaded through each other to create fabric. History does not relate whether the adjective "loopy," denoting at best eccentricity and at worst madness derives from knitting or knitters. It is a fact, though, that once the knitting bug bites, you are lost forever and well on the way to becoming a woolaholic.
Wool Shops: Gone but Not Forgotten
When I was a child, one of my very favourite outings was to be taken to a wool shop by my grandmother. Gran was a crocheter, not a knitter – and what a crocheter! It's more than forty years since she died, but shawls and blankets crocheted by her are still amongst my most cherished possessions.
The dialogue in wool shops was mysterious; the vocabulary of wool is a specialised one. I can still remember feeling a sense of awe when little old ladies discussed four ply and Patons Fingering (this was a special thin baby wool with a shiny thread running through it). How little I knew of this complex, female world of wool.
