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Stitches Events |
pics + vids + the story
If you missed a day at a Stitches event, you may be able to relive it here. Read the STORY, slide through the PICS, and let the VIDS happen. If it's going on in knitting, we don't want you to miss it!
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Stitches East 2005
East 2005
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Stitches Midwest 2005
Midwest 2005
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STITCHES Midwest 2006
Donald E. Stephens Convention Center
Rosemont, IL
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STITCHES Instructor video clips
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Stitches West 2005
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pics
XRX Slideshows
These fast-loading slideshows are your window
into Stitches and the Knitting Universe!
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the story
LIVE from Stitches Stories
Almost like being there. Peruse the prose inspired by the day-to-day play-by-play of Stiches Events.
Stitches East 2004
Thursday, October 7, 2004
Welcome to Stitches East 2004 by Mike Winkleman
Friday, October 8, 2004
Excuse me for one second... by Natalie Sorenson
Saturday, October 9, 2004
She's great in person, too by Natalie Sorenson
Sunday, October 10, 2004
Did I tell you I like knitters? by Natalie Sorenson
Stitches Midwest 2004
Thursday, August 20, 2004
Opening Day: Pitti Filati by Natalie Sorenson
Friday, August 20, 2004
The Market by Natalie Sorenson
Saturday, August 21, 2004
The Classes by Natalie Sorenson
Sunday, August 22, 2004
Real men donít eat quiche, but Vikings really do knit
by Natalie Sorenson
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vids
XRX Slideshows
These slick little movies will let you get a taste
of Stitches and the Knitting Universe!
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 Friday, September 23, 2005
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Market Vendors
Get to know this years vendors
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 Online Ticket Sales
Don't wait in line, click to buy online...
Purchase, Print, and Manage your tickets for the upcoming Stitches Market.
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STITCHES Exhibitors
Information on exhibiting at Stitches Events, contracts, venue information and vendor login.
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 Thursday, September 22, 2005, classes
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 Thursday, September 22, 2005
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 Web Cam
Up next:
Stitches West
February 16-19, 2006
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Timeline |
13th Century
The earliest known knitted items of a securely-known date are the knitted cushions and gloves found in the tomb of prince Fernando de la Cerda, who died in 1275 and was buried in Las Huelgas, near Burgos Spain. The tombs were opened in the 1940s, and the knit items found. Numerous other knitted garments and accessories, dating from the mid-13th century are found in many Cathedral treasuries in Spain, a century before knitted goods were found in Norhern Europe.
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Anxieties, Presidential
Piloting the new nation through the shoals of its new independence only temporarily alleviated anxieties over plantation knitting, and President George Washington persisted: "And can Lucy find sufficient employment in the Kitchen? It was expected her leisure hours, of which I conceive she must have very many from Cooking, would be employed in knitting, of which Peter and Sarah do too little."
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 Beads!
Beads! Big, chunky, tiny, delicate; wood, metal, acrylic, glass; strung, sewn, fused, crocheted, knit: fashion dictates beads.
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 Blumenthal, Isidor born
Isidor Blumenthal is born in Ansonia Connecticut, to Joseph and Gussie Blumenthal, the oldest of eight children. He attends a one-room schoolhouse and at age 10 moves to New York City where his father is in the dry goods [notions, variety goods, yarns, threads, fabrics] business. His company, Orchard Yarn and Thread Company is today known as Lion Brand Yarns.
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Bourgeois, Ann born
Ann Bourgeois is born, the first of three children to Kate and David Shoenberg, in Cambridge, England. Learns to knit when she has an ear ache - eight years later.
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Busy Knitter, Part 2
Elizabeth Zimmerman's "The Busy Knitter 2" Elizabeth Zimmermann's 12-part television series features the Norwegian Drop-shoulder Sweater.
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Busy Knitter, The
First PBS television knitting series, "The Busy Knitter" airs: a twelve part series on how to knit a circular raglan cadigan.
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Casting on and Casting off enter the language
Casting on and casting off are among the 80-odd senses which evolved for cast, originally meaning the simple action “throw...”
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Charles I loses head but not knitted shirt
The long struggle between king and parliament in 1649 took the life of Charles I, who was convicted of treason and beheaded. He may have lost his head, but not his shirt: the knitted shirt he wore on the day of his execution now hangs in a museum in London.
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 Chin, Lily born
Lily Chin is born in the Bronx, New York City, on the 3rd of March, 1962, the third child of Chinese immigrants and their first born in the U.S. Lily's mom passes on the love of handcrafts to her (Lily's words!) brat.
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 Detjen, Amy born
Amy Detjen is born in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, the thrid child of Bob and Emma Jane Detjen.
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Dozen pair of knitted stockings, ten pounds of tobacco
Virginia's assembly established a spinning school and agreed to a premium of ten pounds of tobacco for each dozen pairs of worsted or woolen stockings knit from yarn spun in the colony.
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Earliest Examples of Wool Knitting in Northern Europe
Knitted fragments from the late 14th Century, found in London excavations, are among the oldest examples of wool knitting found in northern Europe. The fragments are in stockinette stitch and show increases and decreases. Source: "Textiles and Clothing: Medieval Finds from Excavations in London" by Elisabeth Crowfoot, Frances Pritchard and Kay Staniland, Museum of London.
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Eckman, Edie born
Edie Eckman is born, the fourth and youngest child of Edith and Frank Lindsey in Griffin, Georgia. Lives in the same house all her life, with her maternal grandmother, and next door to her paternal grandparents.
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Fair Isle fashion
The Prince of Wales wears a Fair Isle jersey at St. Andrews, Scotland (hallowed ground to golfers) in 1921 - and a new fashion is born. Sixteen years later, as Edward VIII he will abdicate the throne for American Mrs. Wallis Simpson, the woman he loves.
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 Florodora bags
Here are elegant, beautiful, intricate bags, knit in garter stitch with beads simply placed between stitches. All shaping comes not through increasing and decreasing the number of stitches, but by the number of beads between them. These bags are simply executed, yet wonderfully conceived, and have a marvelous feel as the beads roll—seem to flow—over the hand...
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 Flynn, Sue born
Sue Flynn is born on the 17th of April, Easter Sunday, 1949, in Melbourne Australia, the second child of John and Patricia Monaghan and the kid sister to brother Peter. The Monaghans migrated from Ireland Two generations before Sue's father was born and began a new life Down Under farming and breeding sheep.
>>Sue Flynn's wool and designs are available from The Mannings on StitchesMarket.com.
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Galeskas, Beverly born
Beverly Galeskas is born, the second of five children, to Larry and Elma Allbaugh, in Bellingham, Washington. Raised on a dairy farm, on her first day of school, Beverly is told by her teacher, "Can't you be quiet like your brother?" She's still talking!
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 Great Scot Argyler, The
Tired of all the little bobbins tangling up when she began knitting Argyles in college, Anne L. Macdonald "put them in a shoe box! I had divided it up
with cardboard strips that I glued to the sides. Then I decided to
get a patent...."
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 Guernsey or Gansey?
In the 16th century, the people of the Channel Islands of Guernsey, Jersey, Alderney and Sark fell on hard times..
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 Historical roots of knitting
Knitting is a humble craft, easily pursued by people of all walks of life. The necessary tools are negligible: yarn and a set of two or more needles, pointed at one or both ends. The process is simple, consisting of little more than forming interlocking loops from a continuous strand of yarn...
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Hosiery established
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Idle Hands poem
In works of labor or of skill
I would be busy too;
For Satan finds some mischief still
For idle hands to do.
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Industrious Knitting
Industry won laurels as the most prized colonial virtue, and industrious knitting was a prescribed accomplishment of a "good dame..."
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 Kagan, Sasha born
Sasha Kagan is born in St. Albans, Hertfortshire, United Kingdom, July 21, 1945, the first and only child of a Russian father and an English mother. At about the age of four she begins knitting doll clothes...
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 Khmeleva, Galina born
Galina The Terrible is born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), Russia, the second in a family of three girls to Olympiada and Aleksander Khmeleva. Galina earns her "terrible" nickname later in life, but as a child she loves to play with cats, rabbits, and pick wild berries and mushrooms...
Galina will be posting her biography next week, as soon as she returns from her workshop tour...
In the meantime, you'll enjoy Skaska!
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 Knitter of the Year, 1999
Knitter's Magazine recognizes Rosemary Marino of Minnesota as Knitter of the Year, 1999, for her work with needy children. Lion Brand Yarns, the Knitter of the Year Award sponsor, presents Rosie with a $1000 prize...
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 Knitter's Almanac
"Knitter's Almanac," Elizabeth Zimmermann's second book is published. With a project and essay for each month of the knitter's year, twelve seamless, tearless knittings serve as the focus for Elizabethan wit and wisdom. The illustrated "Appendix of Possibly Unfamiliar Terms and Idiosyncractic Procedures in the Foregoing Text" is worth much more than the modest price of this Dover publication.
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 Knitter's Magazine is published
Knitter's Magazine makes it's debut in 1984 in the fashion capital of the Midwest, Sioux Falls, South Dakota. "Knitter's has been a wonderful journey for all of us, " writes Publisher Alexis Xenakis in the Premiere issue...
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 Knitting Around
Elizabeth Zimmermann's fourth Book, "Knitting Around," and video series appear. "Knitting Around" alternates technique and design with 'Digressions,' Elizabeth’s not-to-be-missed reflections on her life - from childhood in England to the schoolhouse in Wisconsin.
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Knitting bounty
With the scarcity of materials dictating the necessity to stimulate textile manufacture, many townships set quotas for spinners ... or tendered bounties for items woven or knit ("There shall be paid out of ye Publick Treasury of this Colony... for every pair of silk stockings, weighing four ounces, ten shillings.".
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 Knitting Camp
Elizabeth Zimmerman's Knitting Camp No.1 convenes in Shell Lake, Wisconsin, the nation's first knitting gathering.
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Knitting enters the language
As you might expect, the present meaning of knit has a shorter history than the one for sew. After all, wearing fabrics rather than pieced hides is comparatively recent...
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 Knitting frame threatens hand knitting
In the 1550’s Reverend Lee invented the knitting frame. The frame threatened and eventually nearly destroyed the hand knitting economy...
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Knitting Glossary
Elizabeth Zimmermann's "The Knitting Glossary" is taped.
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Knitting Guilds
Most early knitters of the British Isles were men. Their craft was promoted by and prospered under the knitting guilds which Queen Elizabeth I established. Knitters of the Channel Islands were commissioned to knit hosiery and gloves for use at court and for sale on the continent.
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Knitting Guilds, Past and Present
From the 12th Century to present, how guilds function.
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Knitting needles
The homemaker, thus released from the tedium of yarn production, occupied her time with ornamental and decorative needlework, purchansing her knitting needles ...
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Knitting nooks
One nonagenarian remembers the cozy knitting nook so commonplace to the colonial home...
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Knitting origins
Where did it all begin—this simple interlooping which intrigues us so? We cannot be certain..
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Knitting reaches Shetland
Knitting reaches The Shetland Islands by way of Scotland in the 1500s. In the centuries that follow, due to the abundance of fine wool, knitting develops into a major cottage industry. Alice Starmore's books celebrate the long tradition of Shetland knitters.
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Knitting school - a first?
“In Newport, Elizabeth Allen dispensed with ornamental work and stuck to her knitting (and reading): ‘Living in the Widow Bristow’s house, on the Point, Propose to keep a School for Reading and Knitting, and will be much oblig’d to those who will favor her with Instruction of their children.’”— Newport Mercury, June 27, 1768
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Knitting wages
Knitters [dyers, combers, weavers, and spinners] were so essential by the end of the seventeenth century a knitter could receive half a crown for a pair of "coarse yarn stockings..."
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 Knitting Without Tears
- 1971 "Knitting Without Tears," Elizabeth's first book, introduces her basic methods of knitting and their application in the construction of seamless sweaters and knitted accessories. Endlessly variable, the sweater designs are sized by the knitter who does simple computations based on chest measurements. If every treader's eyes are not dry, then surely they are bemisted with tears of pleasure, not of frustration.
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 Knitting Workshop
Elizabeth Zimmermann's video series and book "Knitting Workshop" taped and published. Designed as the companion to a video series of the same name, Knitting Workshop is a concentrated knitter's digest. The prose is a bit less expansive, but the shaping and knitting principles are highlighted and stressed.
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 KnitU is launched
KnitU, the Knitting Universe's premier mailing list is launched by XRX, Inc, the parent company of Knitter's Magazine. Amy Detjen, known affectionately as List Mom, reigns supreme in the mailing list community as the KnitU Dean. KnitU brings together the close-knit knitting community from around the world: top designers like Lily M. Chin, authors like Meg Swansen and Sally Melville, hand dyers like Cherryl Potter and Luisa Gelenter, and over 4,500 knitters - beginners, advanced, and somewhere-in-between...
Join KnitU!
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Larking not allowed
To assure that young lookouts performed constructively while keeping their eyes peeled for errant sheep, the township of Andover, Massachussetts, adjudged knitting a productive substitute for "larking about ..."
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 Latvian Mittens published
Latvian Mittens published: textile tradition, Latvian culture, excquisite mitten designs, history, and folklore.
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Leapman, Melissa born
Melissa Leapman is born, the older of two children to Barbara and Herschel Leapman in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She loves classical music and studies the piano as a child.
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 Macdonald, Anne L. born
August 20, 1920 - Anne L. Macdonald, author of No Idle Hands, The Social History of Knitting is born Anne Loraine Lineberger in Long Beach, California.
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 Macdonald, Anne L., biography
Anne Macdonald, as well as being an historian, is a patent-holding inventor, which gives her a special insight into the problems faced by other mechanically inclined women who rejected - and disproved - society’s antiquated stereotype of helplessly inept womanhood...
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Madame Therese Defarge
Madame Therese Defarge, the wife of a wine shop keeper during the French Revolution, is one of the most famous knitters in literature....
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Mail order blues, Colonial America
Then, as now, there were hazards to "Mail order." One customer who ordered "knitted hose to wear under others" found some of them "damnified in the voyage," and returned them to be dyed, while others proved "too large in the calf."
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 Mondragon, Rick born; Biography
Rick Mondragon is born on May 22, 1957, in Alamosa, Colorado, the second child in a family of seven children.
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Musical knitters
François Couperin (le grand) publishes "Les tricoteuses" as part of the 23e ordre of his Quatriéme livre de piéces de clavecin (Paris, 1730).
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Nimon, Bev born
Bev Nimon is born, the first of three children to John and Edna Kennedy, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She's an only child for ten years, and a tomboy.
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No Idle Hands published
No Idle Hands, The Social History of American Knitting by Anne L. Macdonald is published. A historian and lifelong knitter, Anne Macdonald expertly guides readers on a revealing tour of history of knitting in America...
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Oberle, Cheryl born
Cheryl Oberle is born, the only child of Ralph and Jane Goughnour, in Denver, Colorado. A precocious child, Cheryl spends all of Kindergarten in the corner - to keep her from 'helping' the other kids doing their coloring.
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Presidential burr, A
Despite the fact that the Washingtons, like other wealthy Americans, ordered hosiery from London merchants as well as depending upon local production, stockings remained a presidential burr: "The deficiency of Stockings is another instance of the villainy of those I have about me, for, as you justly observe, it is impossible for that lame Peter and Sarah's work could amount to no more than 60 pair."
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Purl enters the language
Like the more general term stitch, purl was applied to knitting relatively late in its (literally) rich history. Originally denoting embroidery done with pure gold or silver thread in the 16th century, the meaning of purl was soon extended to ornamental bordering or edging, and then to frilling to form a ruff or pleat. Only in the 1800’s was it extended to knitting, reflecting the furrow or “seam” caused by purl stitches.
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 Queen Elizabeth rejects patent
Queen Elizabeth in 1570 rejects William Lee's patent application [for a stocking machine] rationalizing,
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Ready-to-knit consignment
Martha Ballard's staggering industry ["combining flad," "collecting herbs," spinning wool, making nightcaps, knitting stockings,] transforms her diary into a frontier epic...
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Rosen, Evie, recognized by Time Magazine
Knitters hearts quicken a bit when they see Evie Rosen's photo in the June 3, 1996 Issue of Time Magazine. Time recognizes her work with Warm Up America with these words...
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School requirements, Quaker
When the Quaker Westtown School opened in 1799, required equipment was "a pair of Scissors, Thread-case, Thimble, Work-bag, and some plain sewing or knitting to begin with."
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Shetlands as dowry
The Shetland s, a windswept group of islands off the Northeast ofScotland, home of the Shetalnd Sheepdog, and warm woolies, have a colorful history. When Margaret of Denmark married King James III of Scotland , the royal family of Denmark mortgaged The Shetland Islands in 1468 to pay off her dowry. Her husband, who ruled from 1460-1488, lost his life in a power struggle with his nobles.
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Solomon, Leslye born
Leslye Solomon is born, the second child of Mary and Roland, in Randallstown, Maryland. Loves riding her bike to the knit shop where she quietly sits with the shoplady while all her friends are going to the movies or the bowling alley.
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 Starmore, Alice born
Alice Starmore is born on the Isle of Lewis, on January 6, 1952, the second child of her Western Isles family. The daughter of a knitter, Alice receives a Wisnton Churchill Fellowship and travels to Scandinavia for two months in 1978. The result of her study, Scandinavian Knitwear, begins a long line of beautiful books celebrating knitting. Today she still lives and works on the wind-swept isle of her youth.
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Starting a rumor
Aristocrat Eliza Edmondst in 1856 describes Fair Isle patterns in her book Sketches and Tales of the Shetland Islands - and begins the rumor of a Fair Isles Spanish provenance. The Spanish galleon El Gran Griffon of The Great Armada was shipwrecked on the island in 1588.
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Stitch enters the language
Stitch has equally primitive semantic roots as knit. Its original sense was “pointed” or, as a verb, “to stick...”
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Stocking machine advertisement
An ad appeared in the Virginia Gazette in 1771 for "a newly invented instrument for knitted, knotted, double looped work, to make Stockings, Breeches Pieces, or Silk Gloves, Cotton or Worsted, together or Separated." Colonists were tempted but restrained by the cost.
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Stocking machine invention
In the latter part of the sixteenth century, Englishman William Lee, annoyed by his fiancée's preocccupation with knitting during the courtship but grateful for her financial support (from knitting) during marriage, scrutinized her nimble fingers as she knit stockings in the round, then imitated the operation in a "stocking machine" whose products he called "William Lee hosen."
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Stocking machine reaches America
Some textile historians mark 1818 as the year when the first stocking machine made it to America secreted in a cargo of salt to escape detection and consequent steep fine.
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Stockings fit for a queen
In 1837 Arthur Anderson presents fine Shetland stockings to Queen Victoria. It's not certain what effect this marketing effort produced.
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Stockings, Colonial
Sponsors of the Massachussetts Bay Colony supplied voyagers with several knit "peare" of "coarse woolen stockings," ... "knit hose" (which may have been hand knit) and several "Red knit caps," the latter, when paired with a "Wastecoate of green cotton bound about with red tape," assured a colorful Salem colonist.
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 Swansen, Meg born
Meg Swansen is born to Elizabeth and Arnold Zimmermann in 1942, New York City, New York.
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Tea party knitting, Dutch Colonial
[Under the pseudonym Diedrich Knickerbocker, Washington Irving wrote A History of New York (1809).] The book chronicled early Dutch society, recounted tea parties where "the young ladies seated themselves demurely in their rush bottom chairs and knit their own woolen stockings... behaving in all things like decent well-educated damsels" and relished ogling stockings of "blue worsted, with magnificent red clocks [embroiedred embellishments]... to display a well-turned ankle"...
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The War Effort
knitting for the soldiers fighting overseas.
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 Thomas, Nancy J. born
Nancy J. Thomas is currently editor of Knitter's Magazine and style director for a number of knitting related books published by Knitter's Magazine...
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 Upitis, Lizbeth born; Biography
Lizbeth Upitis born to Arthur and Dorothea Lewis in Canton, Ohio, the third and last child, ("the spoiled youngest daughter.") Lizbeth learns to knit when a senior in high school.
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 Vesterheim Norwegian American Museum founded
Visitors to the picturesque Northeast Iowa community of Decorah cross the threshold of Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum into a world of nautical daring, prairie plunder, deep-seated faith, and knitted artifacts, reliving the saga of the Norwegian immigrants' life in America, their 'vesterheim,' their western home.
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Washington, George frets about knitting
Conducting plantation affairs by correspondece with his manager, President George Washington fretted about knitting as well as farming, and once charged, "Doll at the Ferry must be taught to Knit... otherwise (if suffered to be idle) many more will walk in her steps."
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White work craze
Indian cotton, which reached Europe in the 1730s, created a craze of lace. This "white work" produces fine, beautiful examples of the lacemaker's art.
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Williams, Joyce born
Joyce Williams is born, the fourth in line of six children, to Josephine and Emil Keil in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Joyce learns to knit as a seven-year-old during the war, knitting for the British military.
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Woman's work is never done
Women in all colonies were paragons of remarkable diligence and sallied forth with
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 Wool Gathering published
Newsletter #1, which is now called Wool Gathering, appears as well as a steady stream of designs in magazines.
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Woolen Act of 1699
Parliament's threatening 1699 Woolen Act forbids transportation of wool or wool products in America...
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 Wooly Boards
Even a gentle bath - that relaxing ritual enjoyed by knitter and knittee alike - can leave woollies in a vulnerable state...
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Zilboorg, Anna born
Anna Zilboorg is born, the second child of the notorious psychiatrist Gregory Zilboorg and Ray Zilboorg, in New York City. She attends Dalton School in its wildly progressive days. A Quaker High School education leads to Radcliffe, a Harvard Ph.D. in 1968, and teaching at M.I.T. until setting out on a pilgrimage in 1976. Now a hermit in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
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Zimmermann, Elizabeth begins mail order business
Elizabeth Zimmermann knits first US Aran sweater for Vogue Patterns. Byline leads to the beginning of a mail-order business.
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 Zimmermann, Elizabeth born
Elizabeth Zimmermann born just outside London on 9 Aug 1910. Spends summers in Cornwall.
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Zimmermann, Elizabeth enters Akademie
Elizabeth Zimmermann enters the Akadamie art school in Munich, Bavaria.
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Zimmermann, Elizabeth enters boarding school
Elizabeth Zimmermann enters boarding school in Lausanne, Switzerland
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Zimmermann, Elizabeth first editorial
Elizabeth Zimmermann sells first sweater designs (Norwegian pullovers) to Woman's Day. Big double-page spread.
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 Zimmermann, Elizabeth learns to knit
Elizabeth's family moves to Birchington. Elizabeth is taught to knit "continental style" by Swiss governess; then forbidden to knit the "German" way by British governess.
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Zimmermann, Elizabeth meets Arnold
Elizabeth Zimmernann meets her future husband, Arnold Zimmermann, who was apprenticing as a brewmaster.
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