Lost Arts studio

A lot of the fiber arts I enjoy are things like tatting, netmaking, chair caning, and even weaving, where people will come up to me when I demonstrate and solemnly tell me, "That's a lost art."

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Location: SW Outer Nowhere, Michigan, United States

On the Internet, nobody knows you're a chicken. (With apologies to Peter Steiner.)



10 August 2006

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!

2 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

Hi,

Just wondering which trip to the Highlands that first quote is from. The first one in 1842?

Thank you!

6:41 PM  
Blogger Alwen said...

It's not really possible to tell from what is quoted.

The quote comes from "The Private Life of Queen Victoria by One of Her Majesty's Servants", page 166, published in the US as "The Private Life of Queen Victoria: by a member of the Royal household", http://books.google.com/books?id=Iu9VAAAAYAAJ

The full quote says

"Only in knitting was Her Majesty ever awkward, and she acknowledges herself, with a hearty laugh, the justice of a remark made by an old peasant woman, who, unaware of the Queen's personality, picked up a scrap of knitting that Her Majesty had done, and curtly remarked that she pitied her "gude mon" if he got no better made stockings than that."

5:10 PM  

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