Knit & Yarn

14/03/2026

Save this Yarn Substitution Cheat Sheet for reference later on. 👇🧶

Check out even more crochet tips and resources at the Annie's Attic Stitch Guide: https://bit.ly/4coA4Kj

05/07/2025

17/06/2025

Always a great get together

Ladies at our Knit and Knatter at Hoya Nursery Alexandra Hills participating in Worldwide Knit in Public Day today.
Great food, friendly ladies and topics of discussion covering the widest range, what a great Saturday.

17/06/2025

True!

03/02/2025

Ever come across the 'Terrible Knitters of Dent'? Dent is a tiny, quiet hill village near Sedbergh in the Yorkshire Dales National Park, instantly recognisable for its whitewashed cottages. Until the 19th century, Dent would have resounded with the clickety clack of hundreds of knitting needles! In those days knitting wasn't an activity associated with women or hobbies - it was something done by men, women and children and was an essential way to supplement meagre incomes.

Whether from farming or lead-mining families, most Dales inhabitants were poor and needed to supplement their income. The solution was to knit at every opportunity. Children were sent to live with cottagers in Dent so they could learn the trade, in an early kind of sweat shop, being cajoled or whipped to knit as quickly as possible. Women knitted as soon as their housework was done. Men knitted on their way to and from work. The Dales knitters were known for their incredible dexterity.

They used a simple tool called a 'knitting stick', a wooden stick that was tucked into a waist belt, which anchored needles and enabled knitters to knit with just one hand. This meant that knitters could do two things at once, perhaps churning butter as they knitted.

The Dales Countryside Museum has a great collection of knitting sticks. Some of them are quite plain, whereas others are more decorative and probably made as gifts for sweethearts. You can also find out more about them at Farfield Mill, Sedbergh

So famous were the astoundingly quick knitters of Dent, people still talk about the "terrible knitters of Dent". Groups of people would often gather in one cottage to save fuel for fires and light, knitting and telling stories or singing as they worked. Knitters were brought yarn by merchants who also collected the socks, stockings, mittens, hats and jackets they knitted and took them off to market.

​Each Dale would have had their own distinctive patterns, a bit like Fair Isle where complex patterns were handed down from family to family.