Modern Crafters Rediscover an Old Sweater

YOUNG PEOPLE HAVE been picking up fiber arts such as knitting in recent years, spurred by social media trends and pandemic-era boredom. Knitting forums now feature young crafters not just rediscovering traditional patterns but reinventing them for modern times.

- Fiona Harrigan

Take the gansey sweater, a staple of 19th century British fishing communities-once a symbol of practicality and hard work, now the inspiration for numerous popular and fashionable knitting patterns.

The gansey was a product of industrialization and exchange, the very things that grant modern knitters the leisure time to create this garment for pleasure rather than practicality.

Traditional ganseys were knitted with a strong wool yarn to produce a very tight and dense fabric. These factors helped keep "the wearer warm in the face of the coldest days," noted Di Gilpin, co-author of The Gansey Knitting Sourcebook, in an interview with Nomadic Knits. Certain design techniques-such as leaving the more damage-prone lower half of the sweater plain and easy to remove-were used to allow ganseys to be easily repaired.