To say I am a fount of useless knowledge would be a massive understatement. Trivia is my love language, and the fibre arts are no exception.
I’ve got some bigger projects percolating in the background right now, but until those are ready I thought it would be fun to embrace the Buzzfeed era of blogging and collect my favourite knitting and fibre-related fun facts in one place!
1. Chris Pine actually learned how to knit for that one scene in Dungeons & Dragons where his character is labouring over a pair of mittens at the beginning of the film.
2. Angela Lansbury was a prolific knitter and crocheter, and would often bring her projects to set. Anytime her characters were seen crafting — whether it would be on TV’s Murder She Wrote, films like Harvey Girls, or onstage in Sweeney Todd — it was real!
3. Mister Rogers’ glorious collection of knitted sweaters were all made by his mother, Nancy McFeely Rogers.
4. Sleeping Beauty‘s story has sparked much debate in the spinning and folklore communities as to whether pricking her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel is plausible. Some say she got a splinter in the original translation of the story, others argue that it might have been a quill spinning wheel (which does have a pretty menacing-looking spindle).
The Disney film shows her pricking her finger on the distaff of a spinning wheel, which is a wooden rod used to hold flax fibres for linen, and would never in a million years be sharp enough to hurt yourself on. The spinning wheel I have myself doesn’t even have a distaff, so I’m safe regardless!
5. The oldest example of woolen textiles that still exists today is Coptic socks from the Roman and Egyptian Empires. These were forked socks meant to be worn with sandals. The Royal Ontario Museum boasts the largest intact collection, hailing from approximately 400-500 CE. Even though it looks a lot like knit, technically, these socks were made using an ancient method called nalbinding, which involved weaving yarn with a thick sewing needle. Nalbinding itself can be traced back to 6,000 BCE Israel.
6. The fastest sheep shear on record is a brisk 37.9 seconds, achieved by 33-year-old Ivan Scott in Donegal County, Ireland in 2010.
7. In Irish folklore, it is believed that you send a piece of your soul into everything you knit, and the only way to let your soul escape is to leave a mistake in your project.
8. The world record for the most sheep sheared in a single day is held by 51-year-old Una Cameron of Cornwall, UK, who sheared 517 sheep over a nine-hour period in August 2024.
9. New Zealand is the third largest exporter of wool in the world, where sheep outnumber people 4.6:1. Yet this ratio is actually the lowest it’s been in 170 years, as up until spring of 2024, the sheep population was 5:1.
10. The rarest and most expensive wool is vicuña, a small creature native to the mountains of Peru. Unlike its relatives — alpacas and llamas — which get sheared annually, vicuña only get sheared every three years. They also produce only one pound of wool at a time, whereas alpacas produce up to 10 pounds and llamas up to eight. Furthermore, vicuña are endangered and only live in the wild, not on farms like its camelid brethren.
Love the trivia!