Research: Medieval Egyptian Knitting

When Egyptians Walk

At some point in 2008, prior to LPT that year, I started digging for medieval-documentable sock patterns. I didn't expect it to be easy, but the knitters of the world haven't let me down yet - I found an excellent blog showing these stockings, a pattern, and construction, dye, and find notes.

In 2008, the page was completely beyond me. And then I practiced, and researched, and practiced, and researched some more.

I've written several sets of notes on my experiences with this project in general, and this pattern in specific, in several different places. As I work toward getting all my thoughts in one place, I'll try to do justice to this topic.

I'm setting up my notes in two separate blogs:

• This one is research notes, suitable for reworking into classes or documentation on these projects.
• The other one is real-time iterations I've created, with project photos. 

Research Notes
I feel like every time I try to say something definitive about these stockings besides what I’ve done, I find a new piece of information that contradicts, or at least spins, what I previously had.

The earliest known knitted items are thought to be (Crusades-driven) grave finds that made their way to Fustat, a major trade port in Egypt that was also the capital of the country through 1168 CE.

Later knitted items (13th century) were produced by Muslim knitters in Spain for Spanish Christian royal families – and those items were found buried in royal family tombs in monasteries. By the 14th century, knitted things were in common use all throughout Europe, made by all classes of people and constructed of all available fibers.

I’ve seen photos of two variations in this stocking style.

Commonalities: 

• Definitely knitted (as opposed to questionable identifications involving fabric created via naalbinding)
• Worked from the toe, up
• Intricately color-worked
• Cotton, dyed blue or bleached white
• Same trade-routes/ discovery 

Differences:

• Heels: afterthought vs short-row
• Toe cast-on method: magic-loop vs ??
• Color work banding: primarily white with color-work bands, and the other was entirely color-work in bands

Construction

Material

The yarn for the stockings and color swatch is Cotton Carpet Warp 8/4 from Halcyon Yarn. The colors are 104/58 Ivory and 117/5 Navy Blue.


Cotton was known to many cultures throughout our Period, including Europe. The original sock was constructed of cotton yarn in a yarn gauge close to 28 wraps per inch (wpi), which can be determined by measuring the number of stitches in a 1” by 1” square. For this project, I’ve used rug warp cotton in the same weight, which matched the needle size recommended in the pattern I used, in addition to being a common “sock weight.”

The original sock was determined to be made of cotton in off-white and dark indigo blue. Natural dyestuffs in Egypt would have been mostly limited to madder and indigo, and sometimes weld.

Cotton is a cellulose material, same as linen, so while it does accept dyes initially, most colors fades quickly to pale or pastel shades from washing and exposure to sun. The common exceptions to this general rule are indigo and madder which have unique properties and aggressive dyeing procedures.

Tools

Knitting needles feature a point at one or both ends and an even, smooth shaft. The earliest work of knitting would have been completed using double pointed needles, working in a spiral.

This project utilized a set of five dpns in size US 2, being 2.75 mm on the metric scale. Some care must be taken in the modern selection of knitting needles because at the fine and heavy ends of the spectrum, the US numbers do not share a 1:1 gradation relationship with the metric measurement.

A tool often referenced by researchers of Egyptian and folk knitting has a crochet hook on one end and a knitting needle point on the other. The modern name appears to be “knook.” I haven’t found an older name for the tool, nor an indication whether they were used in pairs or separately. They are mundanely sold individually or in a set of consecutive sizes.

This is an invaluable tool for knitting work for a few functions:

• Pick up loops during the cast-on process - where loops are formed in the working yarn and transferred to the needle in a way that holds each loop separate from the ones before and after.
• Pick up stitches that fell from a needle. A hook can grab the loose stitch and “walk” it back up the “laddered” gap left behind when it unraveled (imagine a run in nylon stockings).
• Weave in loose strings at the conclusion of a project’s construction.

Techniques

I'll probably provide links for these, since they're common enough to modern knitters, but will not be familiar to non-knitters. The work here did not appear to be different in any discernable way from the modern finished result, even if the way of working it has changed over time - for example in the popular shift to Victorian (English, aka "throw") from Continental (European, aka "pick-up").

• Cast on
• Bind off
• Stranded knitting
• Number of unique pattern motifs.
• Level of detail within each pattern motif.
• Finish work beyond simply weaving in the tails.
• Color work bands.
• Color work from the toe-up - more complex than cuff-down because of the lack of stitches holding the needles in place while juggling two strands plus their tails.

Quality Notes

I occasionally catch myself musing about the quality of extant pieces - for all that they are visibly deteriorated from actual centuries of neglect and decay, the remaining fabric shows care and expertise. Factors I consider while in this headspace include:

• Drape of the fabric. Tight knitting will hang more stiffly than loose knitting. Drape is directly affected by matching the needle gauge to the yarn gauge, and the tension used by the knitter during the process of working the pattern.
• Texture of colorwork areas. Colorwork features loose threads floating on the wrong side of the work. If the threads are too taut or slack, one or both of the two stitches connected to them may sink or bulge.
• Overall texture of the fabric. In any textile, changes in texture may be caused by changes in tension (perhaps looser when starting and tighter when stopping a work session), imperfections in the yarn, and careless pauses with a needle stabbed through the fabric. Consistency of texture within specific-pattern areas. For example, the Diapered Diamonds “pucker” differently than the Zig Zag and the straight-knit sections.
• Pattern consistency. Subtle mistakes in following the pattern may manifest as anything from an odd patch in the work to a band that looks reasonable for the pattern but doesn’t match the rest of the section. Charted patterns are commonly worked using repeated rows, so if one row is off, it could shift the whole pattern.
• Spaces between needles. In circular knitting using double pointed needles, twisted or ladder-like gaps may develop between the end of one needle and the beginning of the next. As the relative position of each needle in relation to the orientation of the fabric may not frequently (if ever) change during the course of a project, any holes or distortions may track along a straight line.
• Seam where the pattern begins and ends. A charted colorwork pattern may not feature seamless joins since there is a definite beginning and end of the design. The point where one pattern row ends and another begins should have the same texture as the rest of the overall piece.
• New color joins. There should be no right-side indication of where a new thread was introduced to the work. Incorrect color additions may feature the same textural imperfections as are found in colorwork areas.
• Finish work. Loose ends should be hidden or arrayed decoratively.

References and Citations