For almost as long as I’ve been a knitter, I’ve been fascinated by the history of knitting. I’ve especially enjoyed the mind-twisting process of working with the often obtuse and obfuscatory language of antique patterns. There’s a thrill, I find, in watching a project emerge row by row and knowing that other knitters, long gone, followed the same path.

The process of decoding, testing and correcting isn’t for everyone, though; and so in this column I hope to share the excitement of the journey by removing as many of the roadblocks as possible. You don’t need to be a historian to come along–just a knitter with a curious mind.

Fruit Knitting and the Art of Compromise

When I began this column I made a promise to myself. The translated patterns would, in so far as possible, be faithful to the originals. I would fix errors. I would fill in gaps. I would sweep the garden path, but not straighten it overmuch.

This was absolutely a reaction against the first book I ever read that purported to offer Victorian knitting patterns. I wrote about it years later in my own book, It Itches:

It was full of the author’s clunky. simplified interpretations of Victorian knitting patterns. There were mouthwatering photographs of original, nineteenth-century pieces, but these she insisted were beyond my reach. “The busy modern knitter,” she wrote, “has neither the time nor the patience to devote herself to such complicated work.”

Says you, lady.

I see no reason why a twenty-first century knitter cannot have a swell time, if he so chooses, knitting the old patterns as written. They do not require six hands, two brains, or the power of telekinesis. Usually, though, they do require a bit of compromise.

Consider this month’s pattern. It’s a purse shaped like a pineapple.

Now, you may never have considered knitting a purse in the shape of a pineapple; but in the mid-19th century, judging from the number of extant examples and the number of published patterns for making them, they were Just the Thing. The craze was only for pineapple bags, mind you, not for hand luggage knit in the shape of fruits generally.

The first pineapple bag I ever saw was in Montse Stanley’s essential The Reader’s Digest Knitter’s Handbook – a period example in a come-hither color illustration. It looked hopelessly complex and very fussy. I knew with sick certainty that some day I would  have to knit one.

The pattern I figured I’d use is in the only Victorian knitting book of which I own an original copy: The Ladies’ Work Table Book, published in Philadelphia in the 1860s. There is no author’s name given, possibly because she was afraid of angry readers coming after her. The patterns in The Ladies’ Work Table Book are the sort of that give the entire era a bad name.

The pineapple bag, in particular, is a doozy. It rambles like an opium dream from one page to the next without even a paragraph break, only to end abruptly with the supremely helpful phrase “…then knit the stalks and narrow [bind] off.”

Then knit the stalks? Stalks? What are the stalks supposed to look like? I grew up in Hawaii across the street from a pineapple field. I don’t remember any stalks. How big are they? Answer comes there none.

So, Compromise Number One was switching to another version of the bag. I selected Jane Gaugain’s (from The Lady’s Assistant for Executing Useful and Fancy Designs in Knitting, Netting and Crochet Work) with a sense of relief. Mrs Gaugain (whom we’ve often met before in this column) is reliable and clear-headed. She understands that knitters have different tastes, needs, and inclinations.

For example, she helpfully offers a choice of two gauges. The smaller uses "purse silk," which in our time would mean compromising with (for example) silk sewing thread. She specifies a size 19 needle, which in our time would mean the skeletal remains of a US 0 that perished on a desert island after a shipwreck. The larger bag calls for Berlin wool (its modern substitute being fingering weight) and a US 1.

Guess which option I picked? Go ahead, guess.

For the extra-fancy knitter, she suggests beading the purse. If you love to bead, you’ll love this. No waiting. You cast on 320 stitches, and you bead every one of them. In case you’ve ever wondered if there might be a way to make a very long, tedious cast-on row even less fun, here’s your answer.

I decided not to bead.

Finally, compromise was necessary when choosing colors. In the interest of botanical accuracy, Mrs. G. calls for four shades of green and four shades of yellow–all in the same yarn. Good luck, darling, finding that on the shelf in 2012. I compromised with one shade of each, but consoled myself by using a hand-dyed pure silk yarn so gorgeous that I would like to buy it pied-à-terre in a fashionable part of Paris and spoil it rotten.

Maybe, on the whole, that wasn’t really much of a compromise.

About the Pattern

The pattern is a tour-de-force of cleverness -- maximum punch with minimum fuss. There’s less going on here than there is in a plain sock. I kid you not.

The leaves are knit in stockinette, the fruit in reverse stockinette–but because the work is turned inside-out which changing from the former to the latter, purling is never necessary. More amazing still, both leaves and fruit use the same stitch motif–the fruit simply swaps the position of the increases and decreases every so many rounds, which causes the fabric to break out in knobs.*

The final, completely unexpected compromise was waiting for me at (literally) the end. The instructions for closing the bottom of the bag are succinct and elegant–just two rounds, repeated without alteration until you’re finished. But there’s a hitch: they don’t work. What’s more, they immediately don’t work. In round one, Mrs G asks you to work a nine-stitch repeat evenly into 320 stitches. I’m not that good a knitter.

Without an extant example or a working email for a dead designer to offer guidance, I had to guess what the bottom of the pineapple was supposed to have looked like and then find a way to approximate it. I mapped out four possible solutions, and tried them one by one. The solution that worked was the last one I tried, of course.

Ultimately, this meant it took two weeks to knit the leaves and the fruit, and three weeks to figure out those final decreases. So whether you intend to knit the bag or not, won’t you please take a moment and admire my bottom? I’m quite proud of it.

*Warning: Because of said knobs, do not attempt to knit this purse in public if you are a shy person and/or desire privacy. I worked a large part of my pineapple sitting in a city sidewalk café, and otherwise blasé urbanites crossed the street to ask me what the hell I was making.

by Franklin Habit, translated from “Pine Apple Bag” in Jane Gaugain’s The Lady’s Assistant for Executing Useful and Fancy Designs in Knitting, Netting and Crochet Work (1840)

FINISHED MEASUREMENTS

MATERIALS
Yarn
Lisa Souza Sylvie [100% Bombyx Silk; 750 yd per 6 oz skein]
[MC] Artichoke; 1 skein 
[CC] Glory; 1 skein

Recommended needle size
[always use a needle size that gives you the gauge listed below -- every knitter's gauge is unique]
1 24-inch US# 1/2.25mm circular needle

Notions
1 stitch marker
scissors
yarn needle
sewing needle
1 yard green silk satin ribbon
green sewing thread
670 gold-colored metal beads (optional, not pictured; see Pattern Notes)

PATTERN NOTES
[Knitty's list of standard abbreviations and techniques can be found here.]

DIRECTIONS