🧶 The Story of Knitting – A Thread Through Time🧦

Humans, for as long as they’ve roamed the Earth, have needed to stay warm, protect their skin, and cover their bodies. In hot places, they needed clothes to shield them from the sun ☀️; in cold places, they needed softness and warmth ❄️. So they turned to the world around them 🌍. Some people used skins and furs, but others got creative with the fleece and fibers nature offered.

🧦 Around 1,500 years ago, Egyptians made cotton socks 🧦 —with very fun design, with split toes 👣 — perfect for wearing with the reed sandals they made. 🤝They weren’t woven. They weren’t sewn. They were… knitted.

People who study ancient civilizations discovered them buried in the dust of time. These socks are one of the earliest known examples of true knitting —and they’re still sparking curiosity today! 🤔 When did people begin knitting I wondered the other day ?

High in the Andes Mountains, people collect fluffy fleece from alpacas 🦙. In India, where climate is warm they twist and spin soft clouds of cotton 🌱. In the Arctic, people use the warm underwool of muskoxen called qiviut.

In China, where silk was first discovered over 5,000 years ago, it was a royal secret for centuries. 👑Legend says it was discovered when a Chinese empress dropped a cocoon into her tea and saw the simmaring thread begin to unravel. 🍵🐛 One silkworm spins a single thread nearly 1 kilometer long to make its cocoon! That’s as long as 10 soccer fields lined up end to end!🧵✨But the thread is super thin—so fine you can barely see it, and it takes about 2,000–3,000 cocoons to make just 50g of silk. 😲 That’s why silk has always been precious and was once worth its weight in gold.

🌐 Depending on where you lived, the Earth offered different gifts. But no matter the fiber—animal, plant, or even bark—human hands found ways to twist, spin, and tie.

First, humans learned to twist fiber into thread. Then, they discovered how to weave—by crisscrossing threads over and under each other. To help with this, they built a tool called a loom.

🔲 A loom is like a frame or wooden grid that holds threads tight, like the strings of a harp 🎼 or a spider’s web 🕸️. One set of threads goes up and down, and the other weaves side to side, making strong cloth for shirts, blankets, and bags. 📜 Weaving came long before knitting, and it was one of the very first ways people turned thread into fabric.

But then came something new… something loopier and more flexible. 🌱🧶 Knitting didn’t need a frame or two sets of threads. It used just one long string, and a clever way of pulling loops through loops, again and again. And best of all… knitting could be done anywhere! 🧺✈️🪑 On a mountain trail, by a campfire, in a quiet room, or while waiting for tea to boil. You didn’t need to carry a big loom or set anything up. Just yarn, needles (or even fingers!), and your two hands

🧶And the name that comes from the Old English word “cnyttan”, which meant “to tie in a knot.” 👉 So every knitted sock, is really a chain of tiny knots, each holding the next.

✨ Knitting wasn’t just useful—it became a reason people do invent and experiment. In different plces around the world people carved tools for knitting from whatever they had. 🦴 Bones 🪵 Wooden twigs 🐚 Even ivory or shells

In some places, people didn’t use needles at all—they knitted with their fingers or used a looping hook like in nalbinding, an ancient cousin of knitting. Today, we have many kinds of tools for knitting.

🪡 Straight needles — for scarves, flat cloth 🧦 Double-pointed needles — for socks and tubes 🌀 Circular needles — for hats or big round cloth 🖐️ Our fingers — because your hands can be the best tools of all!

And just like tools evolved, people began playing with loops… making patterns and becoming more creative with knitting! These patterns weren’t just pretty. In some places, they held meaning. 🇳🇴 In Norway, traditional knitted mittens have snowflake patterns—each family had its own design, like a fingerprint.🏰 In medieval Europe, knitting guilds were powerful—and at first, only men were allowed to join. They trained for years to master complex knitting! Before they could become masters, they had to complete a final masterpiece, called a masterwork. 🧶

Today, we might begin just like early humans did—loop by loop, knot by knot. 🧵 You can make a bracelet, necklace, or a belt with finger knitting. Or begin your first scarf, and add a few rows every day. 🧶

I wonder... 🐑🦙 How does wool become yarn? Whether it’s a sheep in Scotland or an alpaca in Peru, what steps are needed to clean, spin, and dye the fiber?

🌿 With what other plant fibers do people knit? Could people knit with bamboo? Hemp? Nettle? What does it feel like?

🗺️ What fibers are used for knitting around the world today? Could we make a map showing where we find alpaca, qiviut, cotton, flax, or silk?

With Montessori joy,

Vanina 😊