1892 Victorian Stockings || Historical Knitting

Hey everyone! Welcome back to another historical knitting video. This time I wanted to share with you all a pair of Victorian stockings that I knit from the 1892 book The Art of Knitting. I actually used the same pattern book to knit the purse in a previous video and I liked the pattern book so much that I decided to knit these stockings from it. The book itself actually has a few different patterns for stockings but I chose this one because it had a really nice illustration and I thought it was interesting that it was completely ribbed from the top to the bottom. I do think that this pattern is going to be quite the challenge because it calls for 317 rows of lace weight knitting per stocking which sounds like it's going to take forever but knowing that my gauge is quite loose I'm hoping that I can get away with knitting quite a few less. In case you're interested in some of the research that I did about Victorian stockings I put it together the links that I found and some of the images that I found in a blog post which I'll link below feel free to click on that otherwise wish me luck in knitting these stockings. The yarn I used for this project is Knit Picks Gloss Lace. It is 70% merino wool and 30% silk. While the pattern calls for silk yarn I decided to go for this blend because it was a little bit more cost effective for me and this isn't an advertisement for these yarns I just really like Knit Picks because it has a lot of options and it's pretty affordable for me. As these come as skeins I have to wind them up into balls of yarn using my trusty ball winder and my swift and I cake them up into two separate cakes and this is the amount of yarn this is almost exactly perfect for the stockings that I knit with these two skeins of this black yarn. My first attempt at knitting these stockings were using the two at a time method unfortunately I just could not come to grips with it this time and I ended up creating a bit of a knotted mess that I tried to undo but ended up just cutting my losses quite literally. My second attempt was to knit on double pointed needles and that worked a lot better for me. The entire leg of the stocking is ribbing where you knit two plain and you purl two. Now I cast on 100 stitches rather than 124 because I do have a loose gauge. I also had a lot of fun while making these stockings creating this stop-motion video of my progress while I was knitting what ended up being 267 rows for the legs of my stockings. If you're wondering why I chose black as the color that's because it was what was suggested in the pattern as well as what was commonly worn during the day in 1892. I also added this stitch marker of this other twine that I had at every 10 stitches because trying to count such tiny tiny loops of yarn in such a dark color it becomes a real strain on the eyes. Here you can also see the interesting decreases around the calf. Now I'm adding a second strand of the same yarn from my other ball while I'm starting the heel flap. This was suggested in the pattern and I think it's a really nice idea to reinforce the heel. The pattern did call for a very thin piece of silk to be used for reinforcement but this was all I had on hand. Now that I was finished with the heel flap it was time to turn the heel. So I slipped a stitch, knit one, pass the slip stitch over, and knit one again when I had only five stitches left on my left needle before I turned the work. It suggested that I keep working in this fashion continuing to do that same pattern one further out until I'd worked off all of the extra stitches on each side. I think this is actually a really nice way to get the heel flap turned and I think it's a pretty common way that's done today now too. So here you can see the nice little room for the heel and I think that it also looked really nice up close. I've never really knit in such dark colors before and I really liked how the stitch definition looked. At this point it was actually time to pick up the stitches on each side of the heel flap and knit the gusset of the sock. So here's where you can see that I finished that and then I actually continued knitting until I did the decreases for the toe of the sock and here I am using the Kitchener stitch to bind off the last stitches around the toe. Now that I'm completely done with the first stocking it was time to tackle the second stocking. So another round of 267 rows and I knit and I knit and I knit until I was finally done with my second pair. I should have really taken a bit better notes while I was knitting the foot of my first stocking because my two stockings turned out slightly different sizes in the feet but it's not too noticeable while I'm wearing them. At this point I took out all of my stitch markers that I had placed at every 10 rows and I was completely done with my stockings. Another thing that I wish I was a little more careful on was where I placed the decreases on either side of the calf. I don't think they were quite centered but I am incredibly excited to try on the stockings for the first time. The blend of the silk and the wool is incredibly soft and as you can see my dog Nutella also really really likes these stockings. Overall this is an incredibly fun project to work on not only because it was a different knitting challenge for me but also because the research about the stockings during the Victorian times was very interesting. If you want to read some of the links and images that I found I will link the blog post that I wrote up about it below. But I plan on continuing to knit more historical patterns since I've enjoyed making them so far and if you guys enjoyed this video feel free to like and subscribe and I hope that I can see everyone again really soon.