The other day while perusing interesting articles online, I ran across this photo from the British Museum of a 1700 year old sock from Egypt. Yes, 1700 year old knitted sock for a child. The left foot apparently, found in a trash midden if I understand the article correctly. This puts us smack in the Roman occupation of Egypt and they were knitting socks.

I have always felt that my sewing hobby tied me back to women through the ages. Before metal needles, women and men were using bone needles to join things into useful items. I knew knitting had been around for a long time but this was a 1700 year old sock. Someone had decided that a child needed a pair of socks and that the socks should be interesting enough to have different colored stripes in them. They took the time to knit a left sock so presumably there is a right sock somewhere in the universe. On a side note, I think this destroys the myth that dryers eat socks, because they didn’t have dryers 1700 years ago, yet only the left sock was found in the trash pile, making me think that it was tossed when they could no longer find the right sock. Let that sink in for a minute. The chase for the missing sock has been going on a lot longer than any of us realized.

Anyway, back to my original thread (yes, pun intended). I enjoy my needlework hobbies very much. They let me create things that are both beautiful and useful at the same time, but they also give me a very tangible tie back to previous generations of women, using their needles (both sewing and knitting) to bring beauty to every day items. That thread just goes back farther than I realized in knitting.