One-needle knitting brings forth intricacies
Bangor Daily News - September 26 2006
I never know what’s going to come in off the street and grab my needleworking attention. Earlier this summer it was a friend from Orono bearing a scrap of intricately worked off-white yarn she said was an example of nalbinding - this is the English spelling, there are other variations, such as naalbinding and nalbindning - or one-needle knitting. She said Bill Coperthwaite of Machiasport had made that little scrap of nalbinding. Coperthwaite, a builder, designer and writer, is known for living in a yurt, seeking a simpler way of life and fashioning things by hand from wood and other materials.Well, nalbinding was news to me, so I did what anyone would do when confronted with such an oddity - a Web search. This is what I learned: Apparently, before people learned to knit on two needles, they used one - and it had an eye - just like a sewing needle. Or at least that’s what textile historians have ascertained after examining and studying the few ancient pieces of nalbinding still in existence. [more]
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