Old knitting tools

A while ago I came across the knitting belt. I want to share that information with you here.

On the Shetland Islands women used to knit while doing other work and chores. Yes, that sounds like a dream. But how do you knit and work at the same time? You need two hands for knitting and how do you want to do your other work?

Well, they sometimes used a knitting belt. Here is a picture of this belt.

That belt held one needle in a leather cussion that had holes to poke the needle into and that way only one needles needed to be moved and held.

I do not want to claim that I know a lot about the knitting belt, but I am curious about it and hope for comments of any of you who can add some information.

One other tool was a knitting sheath, shown on the sight Old & Interesting, linked below.

I also found this fellow blogger, who shows the work with a selfmade sheath in a video. His blog you find here: A Fisherman Knits and the video is here.

Google helped me to find some more information on the topic. Look here: Old & Interesting and here Pine Cone Lodge and many more places.

The information is of historic value, right. And it is - for some people - the way that knitting is done. But what good is that for everyone else to know?

Well, I guess, knowing more about the different types of knitting and the methods people have come up with, help us to understand more about knitting.

I know several knitters, acutally, who claim that they move one needle only and the other is just held in position (with long needles: clamped under the arm) and that works perfectly fine. It is not much different than working with a sheath, really.

These methods can also be really practical when you suffer from some kind of problem and are looking for a way to knit anyways, because if you are a knitter than you really want to knit.

I know with a lot of people that especially when they knit a lot or knit bigger pieces they have pain in their shoulders or neck and often have pain in the wrists.

I am pretty sure, a lot of that painful condition can be cured by using a knitting belt or sheath or something simmilar.

Me, personally, I work with circular needles instead of long straight needles. They make the knitting rest in my lap easier and there is not as much leverage. But that is not the cure for everybody.

There was also this report of that boy who inveted a knitting frame or cradle of some sort for his grandmother but google just fails me and I can not find it again.


I do want to stress that I do not know the two sights I linked above. I do not know the owners of the pages and I do not have background knowledge to back or question the information there. I just want to collect information here and if you know anything else or find other sights with information: let everybody know!

I also want to stress that I only collected links to the pages. I do not claim that any of their content was mine.

But I do want to draw your attetion to that blog I linked above: A Fisherman Knits That man has collected and worded so much technical knowledge that I got lost browsing his blog. One final link here:  Wood for knitting sheath because that fits the topic. And then I strongly recommend to search out more information on his blog!