The Loving Stitch by Heather Nicholson

Author:Heather Nicholson [Nicholson, Heather]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781869405489
Publisher: Auckland University Press
Published: 2012-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

THE END OF THE 1980S KNITTING GOLD RUSH

The knitting gold rush had spread from London in the late 1970s, reaching its peak in 1985 when 22 million kilograms of hand knitting yarn worth £335,000,000 were sold in Britain.12 Three years later, British spinning mills were closing down and only one mill was left in Holland. Yarn shops closed in Britain, the United States and Australia and 15 to 40 per cent less yarn was sold in European knitting countries than in 1985. Almost simultaneously, craft spinning and weaving’s worldwide twenty-year run of popularity came to an end and club membership fell as people moved away to embroidery and quilt-making. In New Zealand, sales of hand-knitting yarn were between 1986 and 1993. Here, the recession of 1987 lingered on and on, further discouraging knitters from buying expensive yarns. What caused the sudden failure? Essentially, the knitting bandwagon ground to a halt because the industry neglected to look where it was going.

Much of the popular success of fashion knitting in the 1980s came from the use of brightly coloured, fancy yarns that could be knitted quickly into loose tops decorated with areas of colour. The sales of smoothly spun crepe and worsted yarns dropped away as keen knitters turned from the challenge of complex pattern stitches to colour knitting in stocking stitch. Many knitters were pleased to find that the new, softly spun and textured yarns, unlike firmly spun yarns, did not show up stitching mistakes.

Manufacturers were delighted with the wonderful fashion windfall and yarn designers kept inventing brighter, thicker and fancier and more complex yarns, with new designs appearing every few months. Yarns with every sort of fibre and texture appeared, with knops and knobs, slubs and gimps, bouclés and clouds, marls and heather mixtures, feathers, ribbons and loops. Yarn lovers who simply wanted to possess and handle each beautiful yarn would buy a single expensive ball of each fancy yarn. These were often displayed in decorative baskets, until the owner could bring herself to actually use the yarn.

Knitters found that many yarns which were sensuously beautiful in the ball or skein were based on non-resilient synthetics and cottons, so were difficult to knit and, disappointingly, when worked into a solid fabric lost their unique character. Thinking knitters soon found that expensively ornate yarns looked at their best when used sparingly as highlights, and worked surprisingly well with hand-spun, hand dyed yarn. As commercial yarns grew more elaborate, they became more expensive, until even the most addicted yarn lovers gave up buying them. Some suppliers then used attractive but cheap fibres for their yarns but, although these looked good when new, they did not stand up to normal wear and washing. Finally, the world market was flooded with so much fancy yarn that knitters could absorb no more.

New Zealand suppliers still rely on mothers to provide their customers by teaching their daughters to knit. The knitting gold rush collapse occurred partly because the trade had allowed several generations of knitters to think they could operate solely on basic mother’s-knee skills.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.