KNITTING.
We should find it difficult to trace the origin of this particular class of work-table employment, of which our book treats, except as it sprang from these intricate stitches first introduced into old point lace. The transition from one needle to more, and the weaving of thread into forms of beauty, was a progress natural to the spirit of invention, and the facilities for thought which the first step in any art creates.
Probably the first progress which Knitting made toward a distinct art, was when yarn stockings were invented in Flanders. The stitch, as every New England housewife knows, is simple enough. But inventive genius has so adorned and varied it, that stockings are easily enriched with lace-work, and lace itself is abundantly manufactured by a little thread and a pair of knitting needles. There is no female accomplishment so universal as this of knitting. The women of different nations perform the simple stitches with a process of their own, but the result is the same. In Germany and Russia, the yarn is held in the left hand, and wound in an intricate fashion among the fingers of that hand, while with us it is simply folded over the front and little finger of the right hand. The author remembers well the amazement and merry smiles of a Russian lady in St. Petersburg, when she exhibited this American method of producing the stitch the lady had been forming in the continental fashion; this was but natural; for the amusement was quite mutual. Nothing could be droller than the way in which she handled her needles.
All over Europe, ladies may be seen in their balconies after dinner, grouped around their work-baskets, while the gentlemen converse with them, or silently watch the progress of their pretty tasks. In the sitting-room of every mansion, some one corner is rendered cozier than the rest, by the well-used work table, laden with pretty boxes and baskets, crowned with a rainbow wreath of Berlin wool. Fashionable as this household accomplishment is getting among us, American ladies devote themselves less to needlework than those of almost any other nation.