This is a simple little bag, based on an example I worked in preparation for my Interweave Knitting Traditions article in Spring 2013, Medieval Masterpieces: The Purses of Sion.

Traditionally this type of color pattern is knitted in dark indigo blue cotton against an unbleached white background. This bag takes approximately 80-100 yards of unbleached white and somewhat less of the dark blue, which isn’t used in every round.

Colors and yardage (all yardages are approximate!)

These stockings are modeled after the surviving plain, knee-length knitted stockings of late 15th- and early 16th-century western Europe. They follow a very period style of construction, including the “common heel.” If someone dropped these stockings through a time warp into the mid-16th century, I don’t think anyone picking them up would find ...

These stockings were inspired by a number of surviving Islamic stockings from the 11th to 13th century. There seem to be basically two styles of these stockings: one is predominantly blue and patterned all over in white, the other (this one) is predominantly white with several (often 5) bands of pattern in specific locations.

This is a modern “translation” of the second-oldest known printed sock pattern. It’s from The Knitting Teacher’s Assistant, a short textbook for grammar schools, first published in 1817 in London. Immediately popular, it was reprinted many times over the next sixty years, both by J. Hatchard (the original publishers) and others. The sock “formu...

This is the pattern I give beginning knitters when I teach a “historical knitting” class. While circular needles were only invented in the early 20th century, knitting “in the round” is probably the earliest form of knitting, dating back to the 1200s in Europe and at least 200 years earlier in the Islamic countries around the Mediterranean.

This is a pattern for a modern replica of the 17th-century knitted woolen pouch found with the Gunnister bog burial, unearthed in 1951. The body called “Gunnister Man” was found in a peat bog in the Shetland Islands, where he probably died in about 1690, based on the dates of a few coins found in this purse.

These stockings take (alas!) just a little more yarn than two 4-ounce skeins of Lamb’s Pride Superwash. My second pair was out of KnitPicks Wool of the Andes, which comes in 2-ounce skeins, and I needed part of a fifth skein to finish two stockings.

This is a pattern I give to people who already know the basics of knitting when I teach a “historical knitting” class. While circular needles were only invented in the early 20th century, knitting “in the round” is probably the earliest form of knitting, dating back to the 1200s in Europe and at least 200 years earlier in the Islamic countries ...