Queen Victoria Knits!

I hereby appoint myself the blog authority on Queen Victoria and knitting. Why? Because I did a couple of cursory Google searches and blog searches and didn't find a thing!

Instead of doing any knitting myself, I re-read my copy of Alan Hardy's Queen Victoria was Amused, which pretty much refutes the stern "We are not amused" caricature that is all that's left of Queen Vic, over 100 years after her death. It's an enjoyable little book, and really brings the good queen alive.

And I found knitting citations! When she visited the Scottish Highlands

". . .she acknowledges herself, with a hearty laugh, the justice of a remark made by an old peasant woman, who . . . picked up a scrap of knitting that Her Majesty had done, and curtly observed that she pitied the 'gude mon' if he got no better made stockings than that."

Towards the end of the book, it describes

". . .the Queen's motherly interest in [Prince Arthur], knitting him mittens and giving him a retriever dog."

Unfortunately, since it's a biography and not a knitting book, there aren't any pictures of her knitting or of knitted items!

I'll probably go post on the Yahoo Historic Knit list and ask if anyone knows the whereabouts of any of Queen Victoria's knitting. My knitting-historical interest antennae are all pricked up tonight!