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This Golden Fleece: A Journey Through Britain’s Knitted History
"A book about wool and sheep, the making of Scotland, England and farming, textile manufacture, folklore and, crucially, the essential craft of knitting." --Janice Galloway, author of Jellyfish
Over the course of a year, Esther Rutter--who grew up on a sheep farm in Suffolk, and learned to spin, weave and knit as a child--travels the length of the British Isles, to tell the story of wool's long history here.
She unearths fascinating histories of communities whose lives were shaped by wool, from the mill workers of the Border countries, to the English market towns built on profits of the wool trade, and the Highland communities cleared for sheep farming; and finds tradition and innovation intermingling in today's knitwear industries. Along the way, she explores wool's rich culture by knitting and crafting culturally significant garments from our history--among them gloves, a scarf, a baby blanket, socks and a fisherman's jumper--reminding us of the value of craft and our intimate relationship with wool.
This Golden Fleece is at once a meditation on the craft and history of knitting, and a fascinating exploration of wool's influence on our landscape, history and culture.
"Wondrous." --BBC Countryfile
"A yarn well told." --The Irish Times
"A compelling literary journey through the social history of wool in the British Isles." --Karen Lloyd, author of The Gathering Tide
"[Rutter's] stops on her journey around Britain also knit together the past and the present, the social, historical and the personal, in an altogether engaging way." --Books from Scotland
Over the course of a year, Esther Rutter--who grew up on a sheep farm in Suffolk, and learned to spin, weave and knit as a child--travels the length of the British Isles, to tell the story of wool's long history here.
She unearths fascinating histories of communities whose lives were shaped by wool, from the mill workers of the Border countries, to the English market towns built on profits of the wool trade, and the Highland communities cleared for sheep farming; and finds tradition and innovation intermingling in today's knitwear industries. Along the way, she explores wool's rich culture by knitting and crafting culturally significant garments from our history--among them gloves, a scarf, a baby blanket, socks and a fisherman's jumper--reminding us of the value of craft and our intimate relationship with wool.
This Golden Fleece is at once a meditation on the craft and history of knitting, and a fascinating exploration of wool's influence on our landscape, history and culture.
"Wondrous." --BBC Countryfile
"A yarn well told." --The Irish Times
"A compelling literary journey through the social history of wool in the British Isles." --Karen Lloyd, author of The Gathering Tide
"[Rutter's] stops on her journey around Britain also knit together the past and the present, the social, historical and the personal, in an altogether engaging way." --Books from Scotland
352 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 5, 2019
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1674 people want to read
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June 8, 2021
It is a wonderful thing when your two favourite hobbies collide. For me, this does not often happen, but a book about knitting - and not just filled with patterns to recreate - was something which I knew I needed in my life. In This Golden Fleece: A Journey Through Britain's Knitted History, Esther Rutter explores 'Britain's long love affair with wool through a year of knitting garments from around the British Isles'.
This Golden Fleece is part history, and part memoir of Rutter's journey through the length and breadth of Britain, from Shetland to the Channel Islands, 'to tell the story of wool's long history here and its influence on our language and culture.' Rutter decided to embark on this project at the beginning of a new year, longing to 'unpick Britain's woolly story'. Her entire year was to be shaped by knitting; she even gave up her office job in order to be able to devote more time to her passion.
In This Golden Fleece, Rutter delves into communities which have been shaped by wool production and commerce since the advent of the Roman era. Wool has had an enormous impact upon Britain; the likes of thriving Leeds and Bradford in West Yorkshire were built to house the growing industry, for instance. Indeed, many of the biggest wool producers in the United Kingdom are still based in this region.
On a wider scale, people have been dressing in wool for thousands of years; as Rutter writes, 'wool cocoons our families in its warmth.' Knitting is bound up in fairytales and folk stories which so many of us know, from Rumpelstiltskin to Sleeping Beauty. There are also many examples of knitting phrases in relatively common use, which can be found within the English language: 'When we want to recount a story, we spin a yarn. If we deceive, the pull the wool over people's eyes... Our terms for working wool and words intertwine.'
Rutter grew up on a sheep farm in rural Suffolk, and learnt the skills of spinning, weaving, and knitting during her childhood. Whilst spinning and weaving have fallen by the wayside somewhat for her, Rutter has always been a keen knitter, turning her hand largely to making gifts for her nearest and dearest. The projects which she decides to make and document in This Golden Fleece are largely for herself, which cheered me; I do a lot of what is known in the knitting community as 'selfish knitting', and I love seeing the specific garments which people make for themselves.
As Rutter writes, 'Today's knitting historians are to textiles what Robert Burns was to folk songs: important collectors, innovators and transcribers, embedding traditions into history by writing them down.' When deciding, as part of her project, to craft 'culturally significant garments' from across the country, she delights in learning new processes. She spends a great deal of time in faithfully recreating patterns which are as close to the historical ones she finds as possible. Rutter begins her own personal project by making a very specific pair of Dentdale gloves, which originate in the Lake District, and feature the maker's - or recipient's - name woven into the fabric. She also makes some socks with the ancient technique of nålebinding, a traditional gansey for her father which takes over 100 hours of knitting, and even makes herself a retro bikini from wool - which thankfully stands up to a day at the beach!
Rutter includes so much here. Alongside her knitting projects and her adventure across the country, she discusses knitting's involvement with protest movements; the laborious process of turning raw wool into yarn which can be knitted with; knitting in the novels of Charles Dickens and Virginia Woolf; the household industries which promoted the craft across the country; specific sheep breeds; the history of the knitting machine; and so much more. Rutter also writes at length about the ways in which she researched traditional patterns, and translated the methods of their manufacture into her own making. This Golden Fleece has an extremely broad focus, but also includes a lot of specific details, something which I particularly love in non-fiction.
I really enjoyed the time which Rutter devotes to ruminating about the different qualities and weights of wool. In the last couple of years particularly, I have really begun to consider the properties of the yarn which I purchase. I loved hearing about the specific yarns and colourways which she chose, and how she selected each one so carefully for her projects. Rutter is quick throughout to acknowledge things which, I imagine, are the case for the majority of knitters; along with the occasional boredom which can come with a long and repetitive project, she writes of our insatiable need to have a 'stash', a 'glorious hoard of yarn' and, of course, to acquire more of it than we need. Like many of us too, Rutter justifies this by adding: 'Quite often, what you're after simply isn't there, so it is with pleasure - tinged with a frisson of guilt - that you acknowledge you need to buy more.'
Like Rutter, I get an enormous amount of satisfaction when I finish a knitting project, and a great deal of pride when I am able to wear something which I have made myself. Rutter has encouraged me to try more challenging projects in future, and to look a little closer to home for my inspiration.
Rutter's prose is wonderfully meditative - much like the physical process of knitting. There is such an attention to detail throughout, which I greatly appreciated. Rutter is an intelligent and informative host into the history of knitting, and I found her prose immensely readable. The illustrations and photographs which accompany the text are valuable, and as well as showing Rutter's own lovely projects, they give an indication of the wealth of research undertaken here.
I was hoping that I would learn a lot from This Golden Fleece, and I absolutely did. From the wider history of knitting in the British Isles to very intricate details about the craft in different locations, I was enthralled from beginning to end by Rutter's exploration. Of course, This Golden Fleece is a relatively niche book, but it would be an excellent choice for any knitter, whether a real beginner, or an advanced maker. I believe that it also offers much to the cultural historian, knitting fan or otherwise, and is an important piece of research on one of the industries which built so much of Britain.
I am so pleased that I was able to pick up a copy of This Golden Fleece; perhaps ironically, I did so on the day I received my first Covid vaccine, and my arm was too sore to physically knit. I really appreciated Rutter's excellent book, and very much look forward to whatever she writes next.
This Golden Fleece is part history, and part memoir of Rutter's journey through the length and breadth of Britain, from Shetland to the Channel Islands, 'to tell the story of wool's long history here and its influence on our language and culture.' Rutter decided to embark on this project at the beginning of a new year, longing to 'unpick Britain's woolly story'. Her entire year was to be shaped by knitting; she even gave up her office job in order to be able to devote more time to her passion.
In This Golden Fleece, Rutter delves into communities which have been shaped by wool production and commerce since the advent of the Roman era. Wool has had an enormous impact upon Britain; the likes of thriving Leeds and Bradford in West Yorkshire were built to house the growing industry, for instance. Indeed, many of the biggest wool producers in the United Kingdom are still based in this region.
On a wider scale, people have been dressing in wool for thousands of years; as Rutter writes, 'wool cocoons our families in its warmth.' Knitting is bound up in fairytales and folk stories which so many of us know, from Rumpelstiltskin to Sleeping Beauty. There are also many examples of knitting phrases in relatively common use, which can be found within the English language: 'When we want to recount a story, we spin a yarn. If we deceive, the pull the wool over people's eyes... Our terms for working wool and words intertwine.'
Rutter grew up on a sheep farm in rural Suffolk, and learnt the skills of spinning, weaving, and knitting during her childhood. Whilst spinning and weaving have fallen by the wayside somewhat for her, Rutter has always been a keen knitter, turning her hand largely to making gifts for her nearest and dearest. The projects which she decides to make and document in This Golden Fleece are largely for herself, which cheered me; I do a lot of what is known in the knitting community as 'selfish knitting', and I love seeing the specific garments which people make for themselves.
As Rutter writes, 'Today's knitting historians are to textiles what Robert Burns was to folk songs: important collectors, innovators and transcribers, embedding traditions into history by writing them down.' When deciding, as part of her project, to craft 'culturally significant garments' from across the country, she delights in learning new processes. She spends a great deal of time in faithfully recreating patterns which are as close to the historical ones she finds as possible. Rutter begins her own personal project by making a very specific pair of Dentdale gloves, which originate in the Lake District, and feature the maker's - or recipient's - name woven into the fabric. She also makes some socks with the ancient technique of nålebinding, a traditional gansey for her father which takes over 100 hours of knitting, and even makes herself a retro bikini from wool - which thankfully stands up to a day at the beach!
Rutter includes so much here. Alongside her knitting projects and her adventure across the country, she discusses knitting's involvement with protest movements; the laborious process of turning raw wool into yarn which can be knitted with; knitting in the novels of Charles Dickens and Virginia Woolf; the household industries which promoted the craft across the country; specific sheep breeds; the history of the knitting machine; and so much more. Rutter also writes at length about the ways in which she researched traditional patterns, and translated the methods of their manufacture into her own making. This Golden Fleece has an extremely broad focus, but also includes a lot of specific details, something which I particularly love in non-fiction.
I really enjoyed the time which Rutter devotes to ruminating about the different qualities and weights of wool. In the last couple of years particularly, I have really begun to consider the properties of the yarn which I purchase. I loved hearing about the specific yarns and colourways which she chose, and how she selected each one so carefully for her projects. Rutter is quick throughout to acknowledge things which, I imagine, are the case for the majority of knitters; along with the occasional boredom which can come with a long and repetitive project, she writes of our insatiable need to have a 'stash', a 'glorious hoard of yarn' and, of course, to acquire more of it than we need. Like many of us too, Rutter justifies this by adding: 'Quite often, what you're after simply isn't there, so it is with pleasure - tinged with a frisson of guilt - that you acknowledge you need to buy more.'
Like Rutter, I get an enormous amount of satisfaction when I finish a knitting project, and a great deal of pride when I am able to wear something which I have made myself. Rutter has encouraged me to try more challenging projects in future, and to look a little closer to home for my inspiration.
Rutter's prose is wonderfully meditative - much like the physical process of knitting. There is such an attention to detail throughout, which I greatly appreciated. Rutter is an intelligent and informative host into the history of knitting, and I found her prose immensely readable. The illustrations and photographs which accompany the text are valuable, and as well as showing Rutter's own lovely projects, they give an indication of the wealth of research undertaken here.
I was hoping that I would learn a lot from This Golden Fleece, and I absolutely did. From the wider history of knitting in the British Isles to very intricate details about the craft in different locations, I was enthralled from beginning to end by Rutter's exploration. Of course, This Golden Fleece is a relatively niche book, but it would be an excellent choice for any knitter, whether a real beginner, or an advanced maker. I believe that it also offers much to the cultural historian, knitting fan or otherwise, and is an important piece of research on one of the industries which built so much of Britain.
I am so pleased that I was able to pick up a copy of This Golden Fleece; perhaps ironically, I did so on the day I received my first Covid vaccine, and my arm was too sore to physically knit. I really appreciated Rutter's excellent book, and very much look forward to whatever she writes next.
January 26, 2020
There was a lot of buzz on knitting Twitter when Esther Rutter's This Golden Fleece: A Journey Through Britain's Knitted History was published in the autumn. I thought the book, chronicling a year spent researching various aspects of the history of knitting in Britain and knitting projects to match, sounded interesting enough for me to put it on my wish list for Christmas, and to get round to reading it a lot quicker than often happens for books on my TBR pile.
I found myself rather underwhelmed. First and foremost, just as my measure of a good walking boot is whether or not it reminds me why I love walking, I expected a book about knitting to remind me of the pleasure of using yarn and needles to create something, and this didn't; Rutter doesn't actually devote much space to talking about her own knitting, and when she does it's all about the technicalities (needle types and sizes, stitch patterns, techniques) and not about the actual experience of knitting.
I also felt that the historical aspects of the book were often rather shallow; while I enjoyed Rutter's descriptions of her visits to archives and museums, and her conversations with people who are still using traditional machinery and techniques, a lot of the historical content felt like paraphrased secondary material, and much of it covered areas that have already been extensively written about by knitters such as Susan Crawford and Kate Davies. Rutter's approach to the history of textile production also feels extremely uncritical; where Crawford and particularly Davies look critically at the working conditions of the people, particularly women, employed in the textile industries of Britain, and the economic factors that drove the rise of mass-production and decline in hand-made clothing, these are much less a feature of Rutter's narrative. I would also really have liked her to have looked at the ways knitting traditions are being adapted and carried forward into the 21st century; despite mentions of Ravelry and yarn festivals, I didn't get any sense of knitting as the vibrant, living craft I know it to be, rather than a historical curiosity.
Rutter's decision to structure the book as a series of journeys, one per month, each with a linked project, also doesn't do the book any favours; the result is a rather saggy narrative, where similar themes recur again and again across different chapters without being clearly linked; so there are many similiarities between the ganseys of the East Coast, in February's chapter, and the guernseys, jerseys and knit-frocks of the Channel Islands and Cornwall, in August; socks first appear in the form of Highland stockings in April, then are returned to in July with both machine-knitted stockings (which links to frame knitting in the Borders, in May) and the nålbinded Coppergate sock from Viking York and then again in October with Welsh funeral stockings. With some exceptions (particularly the chapter on Shetland and Rutter's visit to Shetland Wool Week), there isn't enough differentiation between the knitting traditions of most of the places Rutter visits to really make the structure work (and in some chapters the geographical link is almost non-existent; March's chapter, 'Revolutionary Knitting', combines a visit to Edinburgh Yarn Festival with a trip to London, Madame Defarge and Virginia Woolf, and the distinctly non-traditional project of a pussyhat).
Although the book is illustrated, the choice of illustrations seems rather random (and the illustrations aren't captioned or referenced in the text, so you have to flip to the list of illustrations at the front to check what you're looking at). In particular, Rutter specifically mentions a sampler scarf she was inspired by when visting the Shetland Museum, but although there are pictures of other items in the museum there are no pictures of the scarf, and the chapter on Monmouth caps only includes a close-up plate of Rutter's own replica; I had to google to find out what a Monmouth cap actually looked like.
This Golden Fleece has its moments of interest; I particularly liked the chapter on Shetland, I think because Shetland does have such a distinctive knitwear tradition, and Rutter's visit, for Shetland Wool Week, also taps in to modern knitting culture in a way most of her other trips don't. Overall, though, I found it a real curate's egg of a book, and despite all of the marketing being aimed at knitters I suspect it might work better for non-knitters, or perhaps people who used to knit; as a serious knitter myself, and someone who is steeped in the knitting world, I couldn't help thinking that so much of what Rutter writes about has been done already, and done better, by other knitters.
I found myself rather underwhelmed. First and foremost, just as my measure of a good walking boot is whether or not it reminds me why I love walking, I expected a book about knitting to remind me of the pleasure of using yarn and needles to create something, and this didn't; Rutter doesn't actually devote much space to talking about her own knitting, and when she does it's all about the technicalities (needle types and sizes, stitch patterns, techniques) and not about the actual experience of knitting.
I also felt that the historical aspects of the book were often rather shallow; while I enjoyed Rutter's descriptions of her visits to archives and museums, and her conversations with people who are still using traditional machinery and techniques, a lot of the historical content felt like paraphrased secondary material, and much of it covered areas that have already been extensively written about by knitters such as Susan Crawford and Kate Davies. Rutter's approach to the history of textile production also feels extremely uncritical; where Crawford and particularly Davies look critically at the working conditions of the people, particularly women, employed in the textile industries of Britain, and the economic factors that drove the rise of mass-production and decline in hand-made clothing, these are much less a feature of Rutter's narrative. I would also really have liked her to have looked at the ways knitting traditions are being adapted and carried forward into the 21st century; despite mentions of Ravelry and yarn festivals, I didn't get any sense of knitting as the vibrant, living craft I know it to be, rather than a historical curiosity.
Rutter's decision to structure the book as a series of journeys, one per month, each with a linked project, also doesn't do the book any favours; the result is a rather saggy narrative, where similar themes recur again and again across different chapters without being clearly linked; so there are many similiarities between the ganseys of the East Coast, in February's chapter, and the guernseys, jerseys and knit-frocks of the Channel Islands and Cornwall, in August; socks first appear in the form of Highland stockings in April, then are returned to in July with both machine-knitted stockings (which links to frame knitting in the Borders, in May) and the nålbinded Coppergate sock from Viking York and then again in October with Welsh funeral stockings. With some exceptions (particularly the chapter on Shetland and Rutter's visit to Shetland Wool Week), there isn't enough differentiation between the knitting traditions of most of the places Rutter visits to really make the structure work (and in some chapters the geographical link is almost non-existent; March's chapter, 'Revolutionary Knitting', combines a visit to Edinburgh Yarn Festival with a trip to London, Madame Defarge and Virginia Woolf, and the distinctly non-traditional project of a pussyhat).
Although the book is illustrated, the choice of illustrations seems rather random (and the illustrations aren't captioned or referenced in the text, so you have to flip to the list of illustrations at the front to check what you're looking at). In particular, Rutter specifically mentions a sampler scarf she was inspired by when visting the Shetland Museum, but although there are pictures of other items in the museum there are no pictures of the scarf, and the chapter on Monmouth caps only includes a close-up plate of Rutter's own replica; I had to google to find out what a Monmouth cap actually looked like.
This Golden Fleece has its moments of interest; I particularly liked the chapter on Shetland, I think because Shetland does have such a distinctive knitwear tradition, and Rutter's visit, for Shetland Wool Week, also taps in to modern knitting culture in a way most of her other trips don't. Overall, though, I found it a real curate's egg of a book, and despite all of the marketing being aimed at knitters I suspect it might work better for non-knitters, or perhaps people who used to knit; as a serious knitter myself, and someone who is steeped in the knitting world, I couldn't help thinking that so much of what Rutter writes about has been done already, and done better, by other knitters.
January 20, 2020
I’m glad Mel wrote her 2-star review, because it was interesting to find such an opposing view to my own! I knew from the book’s inside jacket flap, that this book would be a middle class educated woman’s account of knitting and links to real places: is that really such a problem that the author took time off to really enjoy and absorb? I thought those Dentdale glove stitches looked sooo tiny and intricate, they’d have taken any knitter more than a month to knit. Plus she confesses that she’s no perfectionist and gets bored easily.
I saw this book as a psychological study of knitting and what it means to be a knitter. Even in contrast to a meticulous engineering friend who’s nothing like her; I gained a lot of self knowledge as a knitter myself, and what it may mean to knit—what we get out of knitting, reading this book.
The author challenges herself all the time: whether to try new techniques or new garments.
My main takeaway from this book, is the language link to knitting. Wow, so many phrases, words, events tied up to what we say around knitting actions. Soooo interesting. Could not put this book down!
I saw this book as a psychological study of knitting and what it means to be a knitter. Even in contrast to a meticulous engineering friend who’s nothing like her; I gained a lot of self knowledge as a knitter myself, and what it may mean to knit—what we get out of knitting, reading this book.
The author challenges herself all the time: whether to try new techniques or new garments.
My main takeaway from this book, is the language link to knitting. Wow, so many phrases, words, events tied up to what we say around knitting actions. Soooo interesting. Could not put this book down!
January 19, 2020
Growing up on a sheep farm in Suffolk and learning to spin weave and knit, meant that Esther Rutter has had wool running through her fingers since childhood. She has been a knitter for years and has had a fascination in the history of wool and the part it has played in the history of the UK.
However, no one had written about it from the behind a pair of needles. Moving to Scotland a few years ago meant there was a career gap and she seized the opportunity to do some research in the knitters.
Little did she know that it would be a journey around all of the UK, from the southern Channel islands of Jersey and Guernsey, across to Wales and back to the fens before heading north to Scotland. Each place that she visits is the opportunity to start a new knitting project so you hear and see in the photos the garments that she made, from funeral socks to a pussy hat, gloves to a cricket jumper and even knits herself a yellow bikini. She has another go at spinning again, with her mum re-teaching her some of the skills that she had long forgotten and knits a gansey for her father that uses a good couple of kilos of wool.
I thought that this was a very interesting take on the cultural history of our country. It was the woollen trade that made our country rich at the time and those financial influence affected all aspects of peoples lives. As well as the history, the author is prepared to make the things that she is finding out about and talk to the people who are keeping this little bit of our culture alive. I am not a knitter, (my wife is though) and it is something that has never really appealed as a hobby. Rutter has a strong narrative in the and I found this to be a fascinating book nonetheless. 3.5 stars
However, no one had written about it from the behind a pair of needles. Moving to Scotland a few years ago meant there was a career gap and she seized the opportunity to do some research in the knitters.
Little did she know that it would be a journey around all of the UK, from the southern Channel islands of Jersey and Guernsey, across to Wales and back to the fens before heading north to Scotland. Each place that she visits is the opportunity to start a new knitting project so you hear and see in the photos the garments that she made, from funeral socks to a pussy hat, gloves to a cricket jumper and even knits herself a yellow bikini. She has another go at spinning again, with her mum re-teaching her some of the skills that she had long forgotten and knits a gansey for her father that uses a good couple of kilos of wool.
I thought that this was a very interesting take on the cultural history of our country. It was the woollen trade that made our country rich at the time and those financial influence affected all aspects of peoples lives. As well as the history, the author is prepared to make the things that she is finding out about and talk to the people who are keeping this little bit of our culture alive. I am not a knitter, (my wife is though) and it is something that has never really appealed as a hobby. Rutter has a strong narrative in the and I found this to be a fascinating book nonetheless. 3.5 stars
January 13, 2020
My first DNF of the year! My boss bought this for me for a Christmas present as he knows I'm a knitter who loves history. But I just found it annoying. There was too much of the author in it. First of all I'm not sure WHY she took a year off work to do this. She knitted 5 things and visited a few archives for each one? Last year I knitted 35 projects, worked full time, and edited my book.
It kinda reeks of wealth & privilege when you can take a whole year off work with not even a month's notice and still be able to eat and pay your rent. It just seems so far removed from the hard working knitters of the past she writes about. I was hoping for a book like Shelaugh Fraser's Cheeses of England, where she travelled around and found instances of the local things as they were now and describes how they were. But instead there were many personal details about the author, then a few paragraphs thrown in of history (without references) and then detailing a couple of archive visits. No real history and nearly everything from secondary sources. So the history felt too weak, whereas the knitting was way too detailed. It explained everything in a lot of detail, like it seemed like a book that was aimed at knitters so you wouldn't need to mention all the things that she did. As that got a bit dull too.
I think if you are a literary middle class person with a passing interest in knitting or history this might be something you would enjoy but if you are truly passionate about either you'll find it frustrating.
It kinda reeks of wealth & privilege when you can take a whole year off work with not even a month's notice and still be able to eat and pay your rent. It just seems so far removed from the hard working knitters of the past she writes about. I was hoping for a book like Shelaugh Fraser's Cheeses of England, where she travelled around and found instances of the local things as they were now and describes how they were. But instead there were many personal details about the author, then a few paragraphs thrown in of history (without references) and then detailing a couple of archive visits. No real history and nearly everything from secondary sources. So the history felt too weak, whereas the knitting was way too detailed. It explained everything in a lot of detail, like it seemed like a book that was aimed at knitters so you wouldn't need to mention all the things that she did. As that got a bit dull too.
I think if you are a literary middle class person with a passing interest in knitting or history this might be something you would enjoy but if you are truly passionate about either you'll find it frustrating.
March 24, 2024
An adventure in handmade clothes, this year has seen me craft a pair of gloves, two jumpers, Highland stockings, a bikini, a nålebound sock, two scarves, three hats, and begin a baby’s hap. It has also been a year of collecting stories: of women, knitters, farmers, spinners. Tales of fisher lassies and cap makers, designers and artists, nuns and mechanics. Knitting’s history is everywhere, in mountain landscapes and industrial estates, sprawling cities and tiny villages. It is an old craft--and a new one, its banner raised by legions of knitters and designers for whom it is more than ‘just a hobby’. For many knitters, this craft has self-defining, life-affirming power. (289)
After recently enjoying Vanishing Fleece, I ventured to its counterpart across the pond, This Golden Fleece. The culture of British wool and handicrafts is quite different from America. Rutter journeys to historical sites, discusses breeds of sheep that were introduced by Vikings, and knits items that have been made continuously for centuries. Yet, it lacked a single thread--or yarn, if you will--running through the whole book to bring it together.
Being American, a lot of the items Rutter made were new to me, or things I hadn’t seen in real life. While knitting is a popular activity, it doesn’t have the same geographical or historical ties here. Wool was a major export of the British Isles for centuries, and each region of Britain has its own claim to woolly fame, from jerseys/guernseys (Channel Islands) to Fair Isle colorwork to Shetland lace.
While not a straightforward history of knitting, This Golden Fleece provides a wealth of tidbits that made me want to read a book on the history of knitting. The US prohibited international trade of knitting patterns during WWII due to spying concerns. K2tog tbl and ssk look a bit suspicious to the uninitiated! I did enjoy hearing about her childhood on a sheep farm, and how she learned to spin from her mother at a young age, and learned to knit from her friend’s mother. Rutter did take some time off hand knitting to learn spinning and machine knitting, which was really interesting.
This Golden Fleece reads more like a collection of essays than a cohesive yearlong project book. Each chapter covers roughly a month of her yearlong mission, centered on projects varying from Dentdale gloves to a cricket sweater to a nålebound sock from an archaeological dig. I didn’t get the impression that Rutter really planned everything out beforehand, for example deciding to start with the ancient technique of nålbinding and ending up with a pink cat-ear hat at a protest. She skips around geographically, too, which can be a little disorienting. In some portion, Rutter loses the “journey through Britain’s knitted history” to talk at length about tricoteuses in the French Revolution. Fascinating, indeed, but quite off-topic. I’ve noticed several other reviews claiming Rutter doesn’t use primary sources. She does. Her works cited runs over 10 pages and includes a wealth of primary sources, as does the main text. To require more from a book about a craft largely done by poor, illiterate women is ahistorical.
Overall, This Golden Fleece wasn’t quite as enjoyable for me as Vanishing Fleece, though it has a more hopeful tone overall. Rutter doesn’t mention the Prince of Wales’s campaign for British wool, but according to Clara Parkes, that campaign did help the ancient industry. Vanishing Fleece captured the personalities Clara Parkes encountered, bringing the US wool industry to life. Rutter doesn’t quite do the same. Glimpses come through, but few substantial encounters. Since she got to meet so many artisans and historians in her journey, I wish she’d included more anecdotes. It made an enjoyable companion as I logged inches on the second sleeve of my current WIP, a cardigan worked in fingering weight yarn because I love nothing so much as suffering. Cardigans are also named for a place, being a town in Wales also lending its name to the sister breed of my dog.
Rutter did take a year off work for this project, and didn’t need to crowdfund it like Parkes did. She doesn’t advocate that her readers do the same, so I find it unfair to judge her for how she chooses to live her life. (There’s something to be said for privileged/wealthy people giving up unnecessary income rather than stockpiling it, too.) Yet, I found myself wanting a critique of contemporary knitting culture, which is a huge distinction from historical knitting culture, where people made handknit garments for a living and were often exploited in the process. Almost no one makes a living by handknitting now. The money is largely in patterns and hand-dyeing. Knitting is no longer practical: it’s always cheaper and faster to purchase a machine-made garment than to handmake one. Knitting occurs in leisure time, only available to those who have the space in their days to spend hours upon hours making something by hand, assembling a garment and weaving its fabric simultaneously, stitch by stitch. Knitting of the eco-friendly variety is most often enormously expensive, though this may be slightly different in England than in the US (I've heard yarn is sold at grocery stores in Iceland...). The historical dress community largely overlooks knitting, as its most popular creators focus on sewing, many not even knowing how to knit. My mom, accomplished at sewing rather than knitting, recalls the days when patterns, fabric, and notions could cost less than a finished garment, making the time involved the only “expensive” part of homemade clothing (if you buy the capitalist mantra that time is money). Now, fabric stores are mostly consumed by quilting fabrics, with a dearth of apparel fabrics. Yarn stores are full of specialty yarns in a rainbow’s rainbow of colors, giving a wide choices of textiles, but they are often costly. The softest yarn I’ve ever held was a $98 skein of silk fingering weight yarn with as many yards. It did not come home with me.
Overall, I’d recommend This Golden Fleece to anyone looking for an accessible book about knitting and history in Great Britain. Rutter’s largest privilege is having geographic access to the history, via undigitized rare books and papers, and sheep farms and knitting factories within reasonable reach. Many of the sources she consults are unavailable to me, and I appreciate the chance to glean (or wool-gather) some of their knowledge without having to travel overseas. It’s not a perfect book, and would have benefited from a strong throughline and a firmer editing hand, but I did enjoy it and tuck away bits of interesting information. As someone who learned most of her knitting skills from the internet, since no one in my family knits (until I gained a new family member via marriage), it was rather lovely to feel connected to the ancient skill of knitting.
After recently enjoying Vanishing Fleece, I ventured to its counterpart across the pond, This Golden Fleece. The culture of British wool and handicrafts is quite different from America. Rutter journeys to historical sites, discusses breeds of sheep that were introduced by Vikings, and knits items that have been made continuously for centuries. Yet, it lacked a single thread--or yarn, if you will--running through the whole book to bring it together.
Being American, a lot of the items Rutter made were new to me, or things I hadn’t seen in real life. While knitting is a popular activity, it doesn’t have the same geographical or historical ties here. Wool was a major export of the British Isles for centuries, and each region of Britain has its own claim to woolly fame, from jerseys/guernseys (Channel Islands) to Fair Isle colorwork to Shetland lace.
While not a straightforward history of knitting, This Golden Fleece provides a wealth of tidbits that made me want to read a book on the history of knitting. The US prohibited international trade of knitting patterns during WWII due to spying concerns. K2tog tbl and ssk look a bit suspicious to the uninitiated! I did enjoy hearing about her childhood on a sheep farm, and how she learned to spin from her mother at a young age, and learned to knit from her friend’s mother. Rutter did take some time off hand knitting to learn spinning and machine knitting, which was really interesting.
This Golden Fleece reads more like a collection of essays than a cohesive yearlong project book. Each chapter covers roughly a month of her yearlong mission, centered on projects varying from Dentdale gloves to a cricket sweater to a nålebound sock from an archaeological dig. I didn’t get the impression that Rutter really planned everything out beforehand, for example deciding to start with the ancient technique of nålbinding and ending up with a pink cat-ear hat at a protest. She skips around geographically, too, which can be a little disorienting. In some portion, Rutter loses the “journey through Britain’s knitted history” to talk at length about tricoteuses in the French Revolution. Fascinating, indeed, but quite off-topic. I’ve noticed several other reviews claiming Rutter doesn’t use primary sources. She does. Her works cited runs over 10 pages and includes a wealth of primary sources, as does the main text. To require more from a book about a craft largely done by poor, illiterate women is ahistorical.
Overall, This Golden Fleece wasn’t quite as enjoyable for me as Vanishing Fleece, though it has a more hopeful tone overall. Rutter doesn’t mention the Prince of Wales’s campaign for British wool, but according to Clara Parkes, that campaign did help the ancient industry. Vanishing Fleece captured the personalities Clara Parkes encountered, bringing the US wool industry to life. Rutter doesn’t quite do the same. Glimpses come through, but few substantial encounters. Since she got to meet so many artisans and historians in her journey, I wish she’d included more anecdotes. It made an enjoyable companion as I logged inches on the second sleeve of my current WIP, a cardigan worked in fingering weight yarn because I love nothing so much as suffering. Cardigans are also named for a place, being a town in Wales also lending its name to the sister breed of my dog.
Rutter did take a year off work for this project, and didn’t need to crowdfund it like Parkes did. She doesn’t advocate that her readers do the same, so I find it unfair to judge her for how she chooses to live her life. (There’s something to be said for privileged/wealthy people giving up unnecessary income rather than stockpiling it, too.) Yet, I found myself wanting a critique of contemporary knitting culture, which is a huge distinction from historical knitting culture, where people made handknit garments for a living and were often exploited in the process. Almost no one makes a living by handknitting now. The money is largely in patterns and hand-dyeing. Knitting is no longer practical: it’s always cheaper and faster to purchase a machine-made garment than to handmake one. Knitting occurs in leisure time, only available to those who have the space in their days to spend hours upon hours making something by hand, assembling a garment and weaving its fabric simultaneously, stitch by stitch. Knitting of the eco-friendly variety is most often enormously expensive, though this may be slightly different in England than in the US (I've heard yarn is sold at grocery stores in Iceland...). The historical dress community largely overlooks knitting, as its most popular creators focus on sewing, many not even knowing how to knit. My mom, accomplished at sewing rather than knitting, recalls the days when patterns, fabric, and notions could cost less than a finished garment, making the time involved the only “expensive” part of homemade clothing (if you buy the capitalist mantra that time is money). Now, fabric stores are mostly consumed by quilting fabrics, with a dearth of apparel fabrics. Yarn stores are full of specialty yarns in a rainbow’s rainbow of colors, giving a wide choices of textiles, but they are often costly. The softest yarn I’ve ever held was a $98 skein of silk fingering weight yarn with as many yards. It did not come home with me.
Overall, I’d recommend This Golden Fleece to anyone looking for an accessible book about knitting and history in Great Britain. Rutter’s largest privilege is having geographic access to the history, via undigitized rare books and papers, and sheep farms and knitting factories within reasonable reach. Many of the sources she consults are unavailable to me, and I appreciate the chance to glean (or wool-gather) some of their knowledge without having to travel overseas. It’s not a perfect book, and would have benefited from a strong throughline and a firmer editing hand, but I did enjoy it and tuck away bits of interesting information. As someone who learned most of her knitting skills from the internet, since no one in my family knits (until I gained a new family member via marriage), it was rather lovely to feel connected to the ancient skill of knitting.
October 11, 2022
This was an absolute joy to read.
Esther's journey across the British Isles looking into the history of knitting, spinning and weaving is fascinating and informative. The stories of the communities and people involved are so diverse and different yet their creative talent, whether by choice or by need unites them.
Esther looks at everything from sheep breeds to funeral stockings to fisherman folklore.
Although I'm more of a crocheter than a knitter (knitting for me is occasional and can be a fretful experience!), I got so much from this book and loved it.
Highly recommended for any crafter.
Esther's journey across the British Isles looking into the history of knitting, spinning and weaving is fascinating and informative. The stories of the communities and people involved are so diverse and different yet their creative talent, whether by choice or by need unites them.
Esther looks at everything from sheep breeds to funeral stockings to fisherman folklore.
Although I'm more of a crocheter than a knitter (knitting for me is occasional and can be a fretful experience!), I got so much from this book and loved it.
Highly recommended for any crafter.
October 11, 2019
I started this book with trepidation - it came so highly rated and was about a topic I am really interested, so surely it would be a disappointment? I needn't have worried - this is a wonderful read and probably my favourite book of the year so far.
Unlike many 'I took a year off to do something and write a book about it' books, Rutter does not let sharing her life get in the way of telling us about knitting history. Rather she shares her obvious love for the craft (and for yarn - if you are a spinner you will probably enjoy this book too). The writing is unpretentious, but contains some gems such as "As we trundle north, a smoke-grey smirr of cloud drapes itself like a shawl across the sky, the sunset’s final golden flash bookended between it and the heavy dark mass of the mainland" and describing a train journey as "the entire length of England has passed in a Dopplered blur".
Rutter doesn't profess to be an expert - she is on a learning journey that she shares with the reader. I myself am a knitter, and lover of yarn and textile history, but I think this book would appeal to non-crafters alike if they are fans of the 'literary non-fiction' genre.
Unlike many 'I took a year off to do something and write a book about it' books, Rutter does not let sharing her life get in the way of telling us about knitting history. Rather she shares her obvious love for the craft (and for yarn - if you are a spinner you will probably enjoy this book too). The writing is unpretentious, but contains some gems such as "As we trundle north, a smoke-grey smirr of cloud drapes itself like a shawl across the sky, the sunset’s final golden flash bookended between it and the heavy dark mass of the mainland" and describing a train journey as "the entire length of England has passed in a Dopplered blur".
Rutter doesn't profess to be an expert - she is on a learning journey that she shares with the reader. I myself am a knitter, and lover of yarn and textile history, but I think this book would appeal to non-crafters alike if they are fans of the 'literary non-fiction' genre.
December 2, 2019
Fantastic book! I thoroughly enjoyed reading this! Absolutely fascinating if you're into the history of knitting and fibre arts in Britain. It was very solid the whole way through, and beautifully heartfelt.
April 16, 2024
Well researched, but too much unnecessary detail.
July 19, 2025
I’m 😭😭😭 “Knitting is an exercise in exploring and interpreting the world.” I adored this book’s exploration of knitting’s relationship to language, landscape, labour, and gender. The analysis of knitting in 19th and 20th century literature felt like reading some of my favourite books for the first time. This line about Mrs Ramsay in To the Lighthouse (!!!): “she continued to knit, and sat upright, it was thus she felt herself; and this self having shed its attachments was free for the strangest adventures.”
August 12, 2022
This is for me a good 3.5 stars. While it is a bit meandering and messy within the basic organisation of chapters corresponding to each month of a year spent exploring geographic knitting traditions in the UK, there are bursts of detail that captured my interest and kept me going. This was enough for me. I was sufficiently interested in the snippets about the experience and history of local knitting to keep going.
The narrative, however, could have been more strongly constructed as a quest if the thread between chapters had been strengthened and more connections made. At the end, Rutter comments about the seeming tension between tradition, or authenticity, and living culture and practice. It’s a useful insight from the year. I’d have liked more focused attention on such learning.
The narrative, however, could have been more strongly constructed as a quest if the thread between chapters had been strengthened and more connections made. At the end, Rutter comments about the seeming tension between tradition, or authenticity, and living culture and practice. It’s a useful insight from the year. I’d have liked more focused attention on such learning.
February 26, 2020
This is an interesting trek through the history of sheep, wool, and knitting in Britain, with many enjoyable stops along the way - but also some "are we there yet?" moments.
I learned a lot of tidbits that are interesting. For instance, knitters from Dent "called their ball of wool a clew, and wound it around the thropple - a goose's windpipe filled with dried peas. Should a ball of wool fall to the floor, the sound of the thropple could be followed even in the dark of a candlelit cottage" (35). That's good stuff. There have been occasions when I could have used a noisier ball of yarn.
Rutter also has a passage about ship's sails that reminded me of some details I've heard Judith Mackenzie talk about. When a group of people reproduced a Viking-era sail in the 1990s...
While the narrative construct of learning about historic knitted garments and then visiting those places and making an item from a historic pattern was interesting in theory, it often lost its shine in the telling. For one thing, it was astonishing to me how little Rutter knew about knitting, given the advanced patterns she took on. There's something to be said for not knowing what you don't know, but she seemed to have no clue about how to match needle size to yarn or purpose. Also, the book was very unevenly illustrated. We needed more photos - and captions, too, please! (The photos in the main text were completely uncaptioned and one had to cross reference the table of contents to have any idea what was going on.) I think a strong editing hand could have helped shore up these detractions from the narrative; the final product had a bit of a self-published vibe (though it wasn't).
I adore the book jacket design, though. And I am inspired to move my Sanquhar glove kit further up in my project queue. They are similar to the Dentgale gloves she mentions early in the book.
I learned a lot of tidbits that are interesting. For instance, knitters from Dent "called their ball of wool a clew, and wound it around the thropple - a goose's windpipe filled with dried peas. Should a ball of wool fall to the floor, the sound of the thropple could be followed even in the dark of a candlelit cottage" (35). That's good stuff. There have been occasions when I could have used a noisier ball of yarn.
Rutter also has a passage about ship's sails that reminded me of some details I've heard Judith Mackenzie talk about. When a group of people reproduced a Viking-era sail in the 1990s...
It was no small task. The sail needed to measure 85 square metres; such a large piece of cloth required the fleece of 2,000 comparatively rare villsau and spaelsau sheep. Sorting the fibres took four people six months; spinning them into some 165,000 metres of yarn and then weaving them into a sail took more than two years. The sail needed to be strong enough to bear the brunt of Arctic gales, the tensioned pull of wind against rigging. Too heavy and it cannot be raised by hand; too light, and it cannot withstand the weather. It must flex enough to fill with air, but not bend so much, or be so flat, that it cannot propel the boat. The spinners' and the weavers' skills are paramount to ensure sailing success, twisting threads to just the right degree and weaving the resulting yarn into a cloth dense, flexible and strong. As they worked, Lightfoot and her team realized the importance of Viking women in producing these sails; the ships were truly a communal resource and responsibility. The resulting sail was able to propel a replica Viking ship around 10 per cent faster in an upwind direction than a modern sail (100).
While the narrative construct of learning about historic knitted garments and then visiting those places and making an item from a historic pattern was interesting in theory, it often lost its shine in the telling. For one thing, it was astonishing to me how little Rutter knew about knitting, given the advanced patterns she took on. There's something to be said for not knowing what you don't know, but she seemed to have no clue about how to match needle size to yarn or purpose. Also, the book was very unevenly illustrated. We needed more photos - and captions, too, please! (The photos in the main text were completely uncaptioned and one had to cross reference the table of contents to have any idea what was going on.) I think a strong editing hand could have helped shore up these detractions from the narrative; the final product had a bit of a self-published vibe (though it wasn't).
I adore the book jacket design, though. And I am inspired to move my Sanquhar glove kit further up in my project queue. They are similar to the Dentgale gloves she mentions early in the book.
January 17, 2020
This is a fascinating and extremely well written book, travelling the length and breadth of Britain to discover the sheep, landscapes, social and economic history of the knitters who created wealth and warmth for generations of people.
The link between literature and wool was unexpected; " We weave a tale" and "spin a yarn" revealing so much of the life in homes reliant on creating knitted goods. It is so easy to imagine the small rooms lit by not much more than the fire, needles or spinning wheel working away and stories being told to the family to pass away the time.
Book Club gasped 'KNITTING' when I shared with them what I had read this month but another member of the group held her copy of 'This Golden Fleece' up and endorsed the book too. She had been lucky enough to be given it for Christmas with a hank of pure yarn. My copy is now headed for America where my daughter-in-law; a very keen knitter, will I think be enthralled by it too.
The link between literature and wool was unexpected; " We weave a tale" and "spin a yarn" revealing so much of the life in homes reliant on creating knitted goods. It is so easy to imagine the small rooms lit by not much more than the fire, needles or spinning wheel working away and stories being told to the family to pass away the time.
Book Club gasped 'KNITTING' when I shared with them what I had read this month but another member of the group held her copy of 'This Golden Fleece' up and endorsed the book too. She had been lucky enough to be given it for Christmas with a hank of pure yarn. My copy is now headed for America where my daughter-in-law; a very keen knitter, will I think be enthralled by it too.
November 17, 2020
What I wrote to the author on her Instagram page: I’ve just finished your book and it’s one of my favourite books I’ve read in 2020. I’m a songwriter and was so inspired by all of the rich language in your book that I wrote a song about a herring girl who falls in love with a fisherman who washes up on the beach. While she watches him sleep, she knits him stockings and a gansey. Obviously, given how long it would actually take to knit those garments, the listener realises this is a fantastical story. Anyhow, you’ve made me fall in love with wool and knitting again! Thank you!
February 3, 2022
After reading mixed reviews for this book I was a bit dubious about whether or not I would enjoy it. However I really really loved it. Very informative about the history of the knitting craft but also pleasant, easy reading
February 2, 2020
I really enjoyed this book. It was entertaining and informative.
January 23, 2022
Lovely descriptions of the excitements and frustrations of knitting.
February 11, 2025
Although some of the details passed me by as a non knitter I found this very interesting.
April 2, 2023
What a fantastic book! So much research, knowledge, and love for wool!
September 6, 2025
Although this book contained a lot of really interesting history, it was a struggle to read due to the million tangents the author went on, the lack of clear structure, and the author's way of over-describing everything like a child in a creative writing class.
April 18, 2023
Reading is very time and place for me. It was something special to enjoy this one while watching sheep walk by... As a knitter I’m so thankful this book was written!
September 21, 2020
Written in the current trend of travel/history/random subject book, that the book becomes as much a memoir as an account of its target subject, as we go with the author on their travels of research, be it actually travelling to other places, or researching in archives, libraries and on the internet. I don't mind it, as the writer's passion for the subject can be quite infectious, but I know some people find this style distracting. I actually came across this book via the York Festival of Ideas online talks (this being the year of covid 19) and I found Esther Rutter so enthusiastic and inspiring that I wanted to grab needles and yarn immediately and start knitting. Which is saying something, because I don't knit.
So, as a non knitter, I can say I really enjoyed this book, although some of the knitting terminology did go over my head. But I don't think you need to knit to enjoy this. Rutter puts herself in an enviable position of taking a year out from the drudgery of real life to research the history of British knitting, knit some relevant projects and travel to all these wonderful places around the British Isles - oh, I am jealous. Although this tags on to one of my irritations with the book (and an issue I have with a lot of books). Where are the maps? I do love a good map.
The history and social history is fascinating. I didn't realise just how much knitting and wool is embedded in our history - and I'm not naive to our history to begin with. I am also amazed by the talent of knitters through the centuries - women who after gutting herring could walk about town whilst knitting. Just... wow. And actually reading about the process of shearing, then preparing and spinning the raw wool so that it becomes a ball of wool someone can start knitting with. The man hours involved between the sheep growing a fleece and you putting a wooly jumper on is massive compared to the cost of clothing. Not that this is a revelation. I used to make my own clothes (dressmaking not knitting) so I do have an inkling. I also found the chapter on ganseys very interesting, and how those sailors knitted jumpers had patterns particular to area and family knitted in to them.
There is a lot of word history in this - obviously a passion - which can occasionally feel too much or irrelevant, and it does jump about a bit with the history, so for someone like me who is new to all this knitting, my head got a little jumbled. But it is overall a great read. I just want to finish with something I loved, right at the start when she is talking about a farm they lived on when she was a child, and meeting neighbouring farmer for the first time, his comments to them "If I see a sheep, I have to have it" (I imagine this with a Welsh accent). It sets up the book - this is going to be about a lot of people obsessed with all things woolly. And a wonderful thing it is too.
So, as a non knitter, I can say I really enjoyed this book, although some of the knitting terminology did go over my head. But I don't think you need to knit to enjoy this. Rutter puts herself in an enviable position of taking a year out from the drudgery of real life to research the history of British knitting, knit some relevant projects and travel to all these wonderful places around the British Isles - oh, I am jealous. Although this tags on to one of my irritations with the book (and an issue I have with a lot of books). Where are the maps? I do love a good map.
The history and social history is fascinating. I didn't realise just how much knitting and wool is embedded in our history - and I'm not naive to our history to begin with. I am also amazed by the talent of knitters through the centuries - women who after gutting herring could walk about town whilst knitting. Just... wow. And actually reading about the process of shearing, then preparing and spinning the raw wool so that it becomes a ball of wool someone can start knitting with. The man hours involved between the sheep growing a fleece and you putting a wooly jumper on is massive compared to the cost of clothing. Not that this is a revelation. I used to make my own clothes (dressmaking not knitting) so I do have an inkling. I also found the chapter on ganseys very interesting, and how those sailors knitted jumpers had patterns particular to area and family knitted in to them.
There is a lot of word history in this - obviously a passion - which can occasionally feel too much or irrelevant, and it does jump about a bit with the history, so for someone like me who is new to all this knitting, my head got a little jumbled. But it is overall a great read. I just want to finish with something I loved, right at the start when she is talking about a farm they lived on when she was a child, and meeting neighbouring farmer for the first time, his comments to them "If I see a sheep, I have to have it" (I imagine this with a Welsh accent). It sets up the book - this is going to be about a lot of people obsessed with all things woolly. And a wonderful thing it is too.
July 2, 2023
The author using her own experiences, "knitted" a history of knitting in Britain. The connections she made through knitting were excellent and eye opening. She was down to earth and very readable. I would re-read this book again and again.
The book made me add to my list of items, and knitted techniques that I would like to try and learn.
I delighted in learning the history of knitting in Britain, some British culture, different knitting techniques, different garments, different sheep breeds, and the British knitting terms.
Some of my favorite quotes:
pg 6-"Wool cocoons our families in its warmth."
pg6- "A woollen thread runs back several thousand years through British history."
pg 14- "Women who spin, knit, and weave are legend,..."
pg 14- "It's not only the tales we tell, but how we tell them."
pg-14-15 " We weave narratives as weave cloth, and our words for them are bound together."
pg 16 - " A knitters hands are those of an artist, deft and often quicker-thinking than the conscious mind."
pg 16- "Memory exists in the body as well as the mind."
pg 26- "I am reminded that knitting is fundamentally about binding together. Not only binding wool to wool, but wool to sheep and sheep to place."
pg 82- " Knitting is an exercise in exploring and interpreting the world."
pg 226 "'A dyebath is a glorified cup of tea,' says Julia Billings, a professional yarn dyer..."
pg 230- Felix: 'I have this idea that we live for the specialness of weekends, holidays and art galleries, that we think all the resto of our time and environment is a bit of crap.' "Knitting can help us connect, add meaning, deepen our understanding. "
pg 256- "Knitting patterns record friendships and connections, knitting people together through their craft."
pg 257- "Knitting for babies exerts one of the strongest pulls between a knitter and her needles."
"Knitting welcomes new life, the stitches in these garments trapping tiny pockets of air to warm, comfort, and protect."
pg. 277- "Making presents, whether knitted or not, is more complicated than buying gifts."
pg 289 - " Whilst knitting undoubtedly has many traditions,'tradition' itself is a fraught word divides opinion."
"We seek origins and earlier inspirations, drawing on archives and memories and ideas handed down to us from sources specific, shadowy and singular."
Summary: (https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...)
"Rutter tells a good yarn as she tours the sheepier parts of Britain and teaches herself knitting via YouTube.
When Vanessa Bell painted her sister, Virginia Woolf, in 1912 she didn’t give her eyes, although she did supply her with knitting needles and what looks like the beginnings of a reddish-pink scarf huddled in her lap. Woolf, it transpires, was far from being the only member of the Bloomsbury group who liked to spend her downtime plaining and purling. Younger brother Adrian had recently taken up the craft and, by the outbreak of war two years later, Lytton Strachey was busy “knitting mufflers for our soldier and sailor lads”, thrilling to the thought of the tender male bodies he might be warming with his busy fingers. As for Woolf’s novels, they are stuffed with women plying their pins. One academic has totted them up, and discovered that in her fictions there are more females who knit than write.
Like all north Atlantic communities, Britain has depended for millennia on wool as a source of warmth and wealth, and Esther Rutter follows this thread by travelling around the sheepier parts of Britain, from Shetland to Guernsey and Norfolk to Monmouth. She is a likable guide with a good eye for a story. The fact, for instance, that when the Romans brought their sparkling Mediterranean hillside sheep to our damp, woody isles, they furnished them with little macs to stop them getting grubby. Or the pleasing symmetry that in 1193 Richard the Lionheart was ransomed from the Holy Roman Emperor largely through the profits from the Cotswold Lion, a Gloucestershire sheep that grew its own magnificently curly mane. Then there’s the way that in 1814 the agricultural writer John Shirreff described Shetland sheep as being particularly “kindly”. Although he was probably referring to the delicate touch of their fleece, it is irresistible to imagine Shirreff being pressed to stay for a cup of tea by a group of hospitable quadrupeds.
Virginia Woolf by Vanessa Bell, 1912.
The beginnings of a scarf … Virginia Woolf by Vanessa Bell, 1912. Photograph: National Portrait Gallery London/The Estate of Vanessa Bell, courtesy of Henrietta Garnett
As Rutter crisscrosses Britain in search of woolly arcana, she undertakes her own practical research. As a country child in the 90s with a crafty mum, she used to enjoy knitting presents for her friends, including an “oboe warmer” (it was meant to be a scarf but she ran out of time). Now in her 30s, she sets out to revive her old skills and learn new ones. This is antiquarianism with a modern twist. Thanks to the internet, Rutter is able to buy rare heritage yarns online and access practical tutorials in forgotten techniques via YouTube, which acts as a deft-fingered virtual grandmother to a new generation of crafters.
As muscle memory returns old skills to her fingertips, Rutter begins to add observations of her own. The idea, for example, that knitting clothes for oneself – let alone for a loved one – is an unnervingly intimate act. Undertaking to knit a 1950s bikini requires her to measure her body in ways that go far beyond a vague “I’m a big size 10” . What is the length from her crotch to her navel? Which tension of stitch will produce a bandeau top that is firm enough to support her breasts? For the record, Rutter’s woolly two-piece works. When sea-tested in rough Northumberland waves, it neither droops, rides up nor takes in water.
This Golden Fleece is the latest addition to the publishing trend for books in which clever youngish people write about an activity that until recently would have seemed either square or niche – making cakes, or flying hawks. Revisiting activities you enjoyed when you were young is actually a neat way of structuring a piece of popular non-fiction. So, in the case of knitting, Rutter gives us material culture combined with social history, memoir, oral testimony, travel writing and then adds a bit of heft with some light archival work. There’s literary criticism in the mix, too – her broader point about Bloomsbury’s penchant for knitting is that it cuts across our perception of these militant modernists as great chuckers-out of inherited forms and styles. But what also seems to come with the territory of this kind of book is a tendency to overwrite. Her text at times positively sags with the weight of her carefully gathered word hoard: nep and slub, niddy-noddy, and three crimps to the inch.
Even so, she remains good on the textile variations in knitting, the way that local patterns show up even within such apparently fixed practices as Fair Isle, Aran or Guernsey. For instance, a gansey (originally from Guernsey in the Channel Islands) from northerly Scarborough is uniquely marked by a yoke of double moss stitch step-stitched to the shoulders. A few miles up the Yorkshire coast at Whitby, one gansey variation incorporates 199 zigzags to echo the steps that link the harbour to the abbey on the clifftop. Even on Guernsey itself, the atmosphere is that of a knitted tower of Babel. As sailors over the centuries fetched up on the tiny island to repair and restock their kit, they added their favourite stitches to the mix, giving their second skins the touch of both home and away."
The book made me add to my list of items, and knitted techniques that I would like to try and learn.
I delighted in learning the history of knitting in Britain, some British culture, different knitting techniques, different garments, different sheep breeds, and the British knitting terms.
Some of my favorite quotes:
pg 6-"Wool cocoons our families in its warmth."
pg6- "A woollen thread runs back several thousand years through British history."
pg 14- "Women who spin, knit, and weave are legend,..."
pg 14- "It's not only the tales we tell, but how we tell them."
pg-14-15 " We weave narratives as weave cloth, and our words for them are bound together."
pg 16 - " A knitters hands are those of an artist, deft and often quicker-thinking than the conscious mind."
pg 16- "Memory exists in the body as well as the mind."
pg 26- "I am reminded that knitting is fundamentally about binding together. Not only binding wool to wool, but wool to sheep and sheep to place."
pg 82- " Knitting is an exercise in exploring and interpreting the world."
pg 226 "'A dyebath is a glorified cup of tea,' says Julia Billings, a professional yarn dyer..."
pg 230- Felix: 'I have this idea that we live for the specialness of weekends, holidays and art galleries, that we think all the resto of our time and environment is a bit of crap.' "Knitting can help us connect, add meaning, deepen our understanding. "
pg 256- "Knitting patterns record friendships and connections, knitting people together through their craft."
pg 257- "Knitting for babies exerts one of the strongest pulls between a knitter and her needles."
"Knitting welcomes new life, the stitches in these garments trapping tiny pockets of air to warm, comfort, and protect."
pg. 277- "Making presents, whether knitted or not, is more complicated than buying gifts."
pg 289 - " Whilst knitting undoubtedly has many traditions,'tradition' itself is a fraught word divides opinion."
"We seek origins and earlier inspirations, drawing on archives and memories and ideas handed down to us from sources specific, shadowy and singular."
Summary: (https://www.theguardian.com/books/201...)
"Rutter tells a good yarn as she tours the sheepier parts of Britain and teaches herself knitting via YouTube.
When Vanessa Bell painted her sister, Virginia Woolf, in 1912 she didn’t give her eyes, although she did supply her with knitting needles and what looks like the beginnings of a reddish-pink scarf huddled in her lap. Woolf, it transpires, was far from being the only member of the Bloomsbury group who liked to spend her downtime plaining and purling. Younger brother Adrian had recently taken up the craft and, by the outbreak of war two years later, Lytton Strachey was busy “knitting mufflers for our soldier and sailor lads”, thrilling to the thought of the tender male bodies he might be warming with his busy fingers. As for Woolf’s novels, they are stuffed with women plying their pins. One academic has totted them up, and discovered that in her fictions there are more females who knit than write.
Like all north Atlantic communities, Britain has depended for millennia on wool as a source of warmth and wealth, and Esther Rutter follows this thread by travelling around the sheepier parts of Britain, from Shetland to Guernsey and Norfolk to Monmouth. She is a likable guide with a good eye for a story. The fact, for instance, that when the Romans brought their sparkling Mediterranean hillside sheep to our damp, woody isles, they furnished them with little macs to stop them getting grubby. Or the pleasing symmetry that in 1193 Richard the Lionheart was ransomed from the Holy Roman Emperor largely through the profits from the Cotswold Lion, a Gloucestershire sheep that grew its own magnificently curly mane. Then there’s the way that in 1814 the agricultural writer John Shirreff described Shetland sheep as being particularly “kindly”. Although he was probably referring to the delicate touch of their fleece, it is irresistible to imagine Shirreff being pressed to stay for a cup of tea by a group of hospitable quadrupeds.
Virginia Woolf by Vanessa Bell, 1912.
The beginnings of a scarf … Virginia Woolf by Vanessa Bell, 1912. Photograph: National Portrait Gallery London/The Estate of Vanessa Bell, courtesy of Henrietta Garnett
As Rutter crisscrosses Britain in search of woolly arcana, she undertakes her own practical research. As a country child in the 90s with a crafty mum, she used to enjoy knitting presents for her friends, including an “oboe warmer” (it was meant to be a scarf but she ran out of time). Now in her 30s, she sets out to revive her old skills and learn new ones. This is antiquarianism with a modern twist. Thanks to the internet, Rutter is able to buy rare heritage yarns online and access practical tutorials in forgotten techniques via YouTube, which acts as a deft-fingered virtual grandmother to a new generation of crafters.
As muscle memory returns old skills to her fingertips, Rutter begins to add observations of her own. The idea, for example, that knitting clothes for oneself – let alone for a loved one – is an unnervingly intimate act. Undertaking to knit a 1950s bikini requires her to measure her body in ways that go far beyond a vague “I’m a big size 10” . What is the length from her crotch to her navel? Which tension of stitch will produce a bandeau top that is firm enough to support her breasts? For the record, Rutter’s woolly two-piece works. When sea-tested in rough Northumberland waves, it neither droops, rides up nor takes in water.
This Golden Fleece is the latest addition to the publishing trend for books in which clever youngish people write about an activity that until recently would have seemed either square or niche – making cakes, or flying hawks. Revisiting activities you enjoyed when you were young is actually a neat way of structuring a piece of popular non-fiction. So, in the case of knitting, Rutter gives us material culture combined with social history, memoir, oral testimony, travel writing and then adds a bit of heft with some light archival work. There’s literary criticism in the mix, too – her broader point about Bloomsbury’s penchant for knitting is that it cuts across our perception of these militant modernists as great chuckers-out of inherited forms and styles. But what also seems to come with the territory of this kind of book is a tendency to overwrite. Her text at times positively sags with the weight of her carefully gathered word hoard: nep and slub, niddy-noddy, and three crimps to the inch.
Even so, she remains good on the textile variations in knitting, the way that local patterns show up even within such apparently fixed practices as Fair Isle, Aran or Guernsey. For instance, a gansey (originally from Guernsey in the Channel Islands) from northerly Scarborough is uniquely marked by a yoke of double moss stitch step-stitched to the shoulders. A few miles up the Yorkshire coast at Whitby, one gansey variation incorporates 199 zigzags to echo the steps that link the harbour to the abbey on the clifftop. Even on Guernsey itself, the atmosphere is that of a knitted tower of Babel. As sailors over the centuries fetched up on the tiny island to repair and restock their kit, they added their favourite stitches to the mix, giving their second skins the touch of both home and away."
March 15, 2021
Reading this inspired me to pick up my knitting needles and dedicate a bit of time to it. There's something comforting and cosy about the book, and the way it journeys month by month, knitted piece by knitted piece. It travels back and forth across Great Britain and across themes and covers stages of the authors life at times. Which admittedly makes me feel like an imposter. All the people I know who knit were taught by loved ones. And weirdly, the same seems to go for chess. But just as with Chess, I was taught this by chance, by a coworker and fellow reader who lived near me in the suburbs of a city. I'm not a city person and travelling in and out was a hassle. So it was a nice escape and a wonderful new skill. Which I often neglect....
It's also very wordy. Which is great, but I can see it being a little alienating. Usually it was a beautiful set up at the start of a chapter, creating an atmosphere, but I did find myself switching off every now and then with all these metaphors and complex structures. I just wanted to know about the knitting.
Oh oh, and I really hope future copies have detailed colour photos of the items the author created! You do get some of them in the book, but I'm greedy and want them all. And bigger because my eyes are rubbish.
I've scanned through her Instagram (very much worth a follow), and found a few ☺️
It's also very wordy. Which is great, but I can see it being a little alienating. Usually it was a beautiful set up at the start of a chapter, creating an atmosphere, but I did find myself switching off every now and then with all these metaphors and complex structures. I just wanted to know about the knitting.
Oh oh, and I really hope future copies have detailed colour photos of the items the author created! You do get some of them in the book, but I'm greedy and want them all. And bigger because my eyes are rubbish.
I've scanned through her Instagram (very much worth a follow), and found a few ☺️
December 8, 2020
I flew through the first half of this book, eagerly following Ruster's footsteps as she traversed Britain. I loved the mythical allusions in the first chapter and would have loved more throughout the book, but alas it was a book about knitted history, not knitted myths. The author weaves together her modern day experiences and the people she meets in her travels with the history in a way that feels effortless. In fact, it's this seamless blend that is the book's standout feature. Ruster is witty and charming and you feel like you really get to know her well while reading.
I think I started to lose pace with the book halfway through, as it was so thoroughly researched, that in parts the theme of the chapter got lost in some of the history. That being said, the amount of time, energy and research that has gone into this is astounding and generally very well presented.
This is a great book for any knitting enthusiast to learn more on the history of the British woolen industry.
I think I started to lose pace with the book halfway through, as it was so thoroughly researched, that in parts the theme of the chapter got lost in some of the history. That being said, the amount of time, energy and research that has gone into this is astounding and generally very well presented.
This is a great book for any knitting enthusiast to learn more on the history of the British woolen industry.
September 8, 2019
Part travelogue, part social history, this book weaves together much about the history of Britain as told through the regional garments of Britain. I really enjoyed reading the etymology of words used in knitting as well as learning about the history of the agriculture, the communities of Britain and the clothing described.
The foundations of many towns were built on the profits of the wool trade from the towns of the Cotswolds to the church towers of Norfolk. The book also looks at the crofting communities of Scotland, the Fishermen of Yorkshire as well as military uniforms in Scotland and Wales amongst others. The book has a clear informative style and shows the importance of wool and the knitting industry and how it really is part of the fabric of Britain. (every pun intended!)
#ThisGoldenFleece #NetGalley
The foundations of many towns were built on the profits of the wool trade from the towns of the Cotswolds to the church towers of Norfolk. The book also looks at the crofting communities of Scotland, the Fishermen of Yorkshire as well as military uniforms in Scotland and Wales amongst others. The book has a clear informative style and shows the importance of wool and the knitting industry and how it really is part of the fabric of Britain. (every pun intended!)
#ThisGoldenFleece #NetGalley
November 25, 2020
Yes, it's another "I took a year out to do a thing" book, but if you can get past that (which is only really a small part of the book), this is a gloriously hotchpotch book about the way that knitting is a key part of the history of Britain. This is a history of women, of the poor, of the isolated and of the working classes, which is refreshing to read when so much history is about the rich, the educated and often only the male.
I enjoyed this author's rambling style, and I found myself knitting more as I read on in the book. While I won't be picking up any historical knits or year-long-ganseys, I am enjoying making my small projects a little more now I know more about the way my hobby is connected to the people who picked up the needles before me, and the land that I live on.
A lovely, cosy and informative read. Recommended.
I enjoyed this author's rambling style, and I found myself knitting more as I read on in the book. While I won't be picking up any historical knits or year-long-ganseys, I am enjoying making my small projects a little more now I know more about the way my hobby is connected to the people who picked up the needles before me, and the land that I live on.
A lovely, cosy and informative read. Recommended.
January 10, 2020
There are many books written about a central commodity and in doing so illuminating history in a singular way think Mauve, Cod and The World in Ten Glasses. Esther Rutter’s book does the same thing for an activity. This is a history of the wool industry in Britain through the prism of knitting. A well-researched and well-written book which chronicles a year of the author’s knitting journey around Britain matching projects to regional specialities and in the process explaining knitting vocabulary, sheep breeds, knitting’s role and hence women’s role in the social fabric of rural communities. Whilst Rutter weaves in her own story, this is not the dominant strand of the narrative which for me is great. Loved this book.
May 16, 2020
This was a really interesting if ponderous wander through the history of yarn and knitting in the British Isles.
The author spends a year travelling round the country to learn about knitting, and how it has developed and specialised in different areas ;she takes on various knitting projects inspired by her travels and shares with us her extensive research into the history of knitting.
It is a slow read but I do not mean that as a criticism. This is a book to savour and enjoy. I often found it made me want to pick up my knitting so that made me take even longer.
I am delighted to discover that a shawl is a decorative item whereas a hap is a workday one. I'm really going to enjoy adding that to my vocabulary.
Not a book for everyone I admit but for me it was a wonderful read.
5stars
The author spends a year travelling round the country to learn about knitting, and how it has developed and specialised in different areas ;she takes on various knitting projects inspired by her travels and shares with us her extensive research into the history of knitting.
It is a slow read but I do not mean that as a criticism. This is a book to savour and enjoy. I often found it made me want to pick up my knitting so that made me take even longer.
I am delighted to discover that a shawl is a decorative item whereas a hap is a workday one. I'm really going to enjoy adding that to my vocabulary.
Not a book for everyone I admit but for me it was a wonderful read.
5stars
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