Bosnian crochet

The magazine Crochet Insider is exploring Bosnian crochet in Central Asia: Adventure Begins. I'm very excited about this journey, as it will tell me more about the crochet technique that I have come to be fond of. I'm eagerly waiting for more about Bosnian crochet from the editor, but meanwhile it's interesting to read about her travels. Usbek, Samarkand, Bukhara, all are places I want to visit. For me, they are the places of sagas, adventure, textiles, the Silk Road. The roots for much of what I'm doing.

 I have also purchased a new crochet hook from Joel:

Joel's hook

This hook is perfect for my hand. I can see and feel the use it has been through while it was a spoon, and I can admire the wish to make something beautiful that the craftsman must have felt when he designed the spoon.

On top of it is the excellent workmanship of the crochet hook. OK, you can take a spoon or a knife or a fork and you make a hook of it. But you have to know the slip stitch crochet technique and the yarns used to make the angle of the hook perfect. Joel knows, because he is a crocheter himself. So I am grateful. Thank you Joel, once more!

Crochet Hooks

My father was very particular about his tools and equipment. He kept his hammers, saws, screwdrivers and knives clean and in order. They had to be of good quality (not an easy thing in the '50s, after the war). He said you do more harm than good with a bad tool. I'm sure he was right. During the years he gave me some of his tools, a hammer, a small pen knife, a tong. I still use them, but not always for the purpose they where designed for. The tong is now in my kitchen drawer. It's very useful when I want to pick bones out of salmon :)

My textile tools have to be good, too. I have bought new knitting needles, spindles, spinning wheels and sewing machines during the years. Now I'm buying new crochet hooks. Plastic crochet hooks are not always fun to work with, but I love the wooden ones.

On Thursday this week the postman brought me five wooden KnitPro double hooks and one Trapper Joel stainless steel hook. What a day! I had to try them at once! Among my UFOs was a hat in Bosnian crochet, for which I was using a hook from my youth, a steel hook from Inox, 4.5 mm (UK/US 7). The hook is too rounded for Bosnian crochet, but will do if you have no other choice. I like to work Bosnian crochet with a pointy hook. The hat would be a good piece to try the new hooks at.

From left to right: steel hook from Inox, five wooden KnitPro, Joel's hook made from a spoon handle, steel hook from Inox, steel hook from JMRA, my grandmother's homemade metal hook.
The yarn is a variegated 2-ply spun at Kehräämö Musta Lammas in Finland. I like this yarn with it's deep, clear colors. Some years ago the mill started selling so much carded wool for felting, that they decided to stop spinning. The hat is from Kerstin Jönsson's book Smygmaskvirkning, a Swedish book about Bosnian crochet

I tested Joel's hook first, naturally :) I think Joel had Bosnian crochet in mind when he made it. It's very pointy, which is good when you work slip stitches. My first impression was that I really like this hook. I tried the casting technique, where you keep the yarn and the hook in the same hand and throw the yarn under the hook instead of picking it from one of the fingers on the other hand. It worked quite good, but when I tried picking, I soon found out that works even better for me. I'm right handed, and the hook is made for a right handed person. It's very smooth, so the only problem for me was that the pointy hook sometimes got trapped in the yarn. I will work looser stitches in my next project, because that will solve the problem. I'm very pleased with this hook. Thank you again, Joel!

I like the wooden KnitPro hooks. They are smooth and light, but they are not so good in Bosnian crochet because of the rounded hook. The idea of two hooks in one is handy. I know that quite a few persons with joint problems have been able to go on knitting and crocheting with the lighter wooden needles and hooks. Wood can not be used in fine hooks, so I still have all my small stainless steel hooks in my hook cloth. My smallest wooden hook is 3 mm, and my smallest needle 2 mm, both from KnitPro.

I also bought a hook at the local yarn shop, a 2 mm (UK 14, US B/1) steel hook made by Inox. It has a plastic handle for easier grip. I have small hands, so the hook was far too long for me. I took some masking tape and made the steel part a bit shorter. This is a good hook for all kinds of crochet, even if I have a suspicion my shortened steel part will be too short for bullion stitch. Is that a good reason to by another one? Is there such a thing as "too many crochet hooks"?

My answer is no. Every new yarn needs it's own hook. If you have only one 2 mm hook, it might be the right size for the yarn, but it still doesn't work because of the shape of the hook and the handle. Sometimes I try 3-4 hooks before I find the right one. That's why I won't throw away my old hooks when I buy new ones. I even keep the impossible hook I found in my grandmother's button box after she died in the late '60s. My father thought it was made during the war, probably by grandfather, as a means to keep grandmother calm at a time when every new day could bring a dreaded message from the front line. I have tried the hook a couple of times, but I find it to be a very bad hook. What has grandmother crocheted with this? I don't know. She was a very skillful lace crocheter, so most of her hooks where much, much smaller, size 0,5 to 1,5 mm. This hook might have been for wool rather than cotton yarn. And yes, my grandparents did get that message. My uncle died in battle. Did grandma keep the hook as a memory? She kept the buttons from my father's uniform in that box, too. My father survived the war, and lived the rest of his life as a pacifist.

Trapper Joel's Hook

Trapper Joel sent me pictures of one of the beautiful crochet hooks he has made out of a spoon handle. Here is one of the pictures:

Flat hooks like this one have been used for Bosnian crochet, at least in Scandinavia. Sometimes they are made from silver spoons.  Silver is a wonderful metal, so I am now looking for an old silver spoon that Joel could transform into a crochet hook for me. If you want to buy one of Joel's hooks, you can contact Amy at The Yarn Stash in Minot, North Dakota. She is yarnfloozie on Ravelry, where you can find links to her shops on her profilepage. I bought one of the two Joel-hooks she had only yesterday :) Joel says it's difficult to find spoons to make hooks from.

You can read more about Trapper Joel in Carol Ventura's blog. If you already haven't read the interesting article about Bosnian crochet "From Carpet to Jourabs" that Carol links to in her post "History in Making", remember to read it! But for Joel, scroll down until you find him! Look at his amazing hats!

On Ravelry you find Joel as Trapper336. He is now working on hats in Bosnian crochet, look at his Ravelry Projects. Joel says he likes increases better than decreases, so he works from the top to the bottom. I understand why he does that, because in crochet increases often look better than decreases. I'm very taken by the fact that Joel is left handed, but learned to crochet with his right hand. I'm right handed. The last few weeks I have tried to learn how to crochet left handed, but it's NOT easy! In some amigurumis you  crochet backwords in a round without turning the piece.

Joel also mailed me copies of articles he had gotten from Mr. Larry Smith last year. One of the articles is "Old World Crochet", written by Priscilla Gibson-Roberts, and published in the summer issue of Spin Off 2001. I greatly admire her way of making both history and technique visual and easy to understand. If you have that magazine in your bookshelf, do look at it again, there are some great photos! Gibson-Roberts lists some of her resources at the end of her article. Among them are some very interesting publications, that I now have in my wish-list. I didn't subscribe to Spin Off that year, so I had not seen that article. I'm happy that Interweave is now publishing digital editions of back issues, as this is not the only year I thought I could survive without that magazine! There is a tutorial article in the same issue, written by John Yerkovich: "Old World Crochet Bags".

One of the articles was from a Swedish book I have read some 20 years ago, but did not try to find for my article about Bosnian crochet in western Finland: "Gamla textila tekniker i ull", written by another of my favorite authors on textile: Kerstin Gustafsson, a very skilled spinner and weaver. The book was published in 1988 by LT förlag. It's a fantastic resource when you want to get a first look at old techniques where wool is used. It's interesting to note that Kerstin Gustafsson did not know all the Swedish terms we now have for Bosnian crochet. When Kerstin published her book, there was almost no elder books in Swedish where Bosnian crochet was mentioned, and little was known about it at that time. The picture shows how you hold the flat hook:

It seems to me that this hook is made of bone or wood, but I can't say for sure. The picture has traveled around the world in different shapes a few times :) It shows a hat, that is crocheted from the brim up to the top. In Joel's Ravelry Projects you can see his version of this hat, crocheted in a beautiful coopworth yarn.

Intermezzo, lament: Oh, all the books and magazines I have seen and read during my 40 years as a librarian! And oh how many of them I should have bought when they were published and still available for a reasonable price!

 

Back to more of the interesting texts Joel sent me:

In a letter from Larry Smith to Joe, Larry writes that the flat hook has been used in "pjoning", which is one of the terms for Bosnian crochet in Norwegian and Danish. Larry Smith mentions that some people find it easier to use the flat hook than a standard hook in pjoning, and that is what I have found, too. You hold the hook inside your hand, like a knife, and cast the yarn with your hook hand the same way as in twined knitting (twoendknitting, Swedish tvåändsstickning). Once you get used to this technique, you find it very comfortable and natural for Bosnian crochet.

On copy was from a Norwegian book, "Strikke, hekle, binde" by Gjertrud Saglie, published in 1989 by Landbruksforlaget. In this excerpt I got more terms in Norwegian than I had before: krokbinding, påting, bosnisk hekling, gobelinhekling, mosaikkhekling. Here is a picture from that book, showing an old and a new hook:

Thank you, Joel! You sent me some interesting texts and pictures. I will add them to my library ( my private one, not the one where I work!)

Now I'm sitting here wishing that someone with much knowledge and skills would write a book about Bosnian crochet in English. There is a lot of information that could be put together: history, culture, fibers, yarns, hooks, a lot of pictures, and some patterns, too. A thick book printed on good paper, and in a bind that stands opening and reading over and over again.

Bosnian Crochet

Hillevi's wristdistaff for securing fibers while spindling. Bosnian crochet in the back loop. Handpainted yarn from Limmo-design. Spindle "Comet" by Tracy Eichheim at Woollydesigns. Fiber merino-silk from Das Wollschaf

This blogpost about Bosnian crochet is an English version that is not translated, but completely re-written for Englishspeaking readers, thank's to Carol Ventura (dear Carol, you are a capable teacher, getting people to do things they have not thought of doing just by asking in a friendly way ;) of my blogpost in Swedish earlier this year. I have photos in that post that are not published here, so when I refer to my Swedish blogpost, please look at this link: Smygmaskvirkning

First some clarifying information about where I live. I live in Finland, my mothertongue is Swedish. My second language is Finnish. Finland is a bilingual country, very similar to Canada. The Finnswedes have lived along the western and southern costs of Finland for hundreds of years. We have strong bonds to Sweden, stronger than to Eastern Finland. Our culture has much in common with Swedish culture in Sweden. We have our own Finnswede media, but we also watch Swedish television, read Swedish books and magazines, listen to Swedish radio, but, and this is where we are oh so Finnish: we cheer for the Finnish sportsmen :) What could say more about a people than that?

Bilingual surroundings can sometimes cause confusion, because when you speak two or three languages in your everyday life, you mix things up. You think you are using the proper words, but you might have invented them yourself, or use a word that doesn't exist or that means something you didn't have in mind. It happens all the time, and usually there is no harm done (even if me and my wonderful Finnish husband, who just brought me a cup of French coffee, have communication problems sometimes!)

And now to the matter of this blogpost. Bosnian crochet is a technique where you use only slip stitches. By crocheting through the back or front loop, and by adding color, you can crochet quite nice looking things. The technique is best suited for small garments like mittens, gloves, and hats. It might have developed from tambour work, a way of embroidery where you use a small hook to draw the yarn through the cloth.

I got hooked by this old way of working crochet, when I read an article about tapestry crochet in the local handicraft guild's magazine. The article was written in Swedish, and strictly speaking it was an abstract of a Finnish article published in the magazine "Kotiteollisuus" in 1988. The headline of the abstract confused me, because it read "Krokvirkning", a Swedish term for Bosnian crochet. The writer, who by the way is a very skilled woodworker, obviously translated the Finnish term "kirjovirkkaus" (=tapestry crochet) without checking the accurasy of the word. This made me want to know more about crochet terms. Tapestry crochet, by the way, is called "flerfärgsvirkning" and "pälsbältesvirkning" in Swedish. English translations would be "crochet with many colors" and "fur-belt-crochet". Huh! How much more do you need to get confused :)

I wanted to compare five related techniques, so I crocheted five purses with the same yarn, Novita 7-veljestä, and a pattern with 3+3 stitches and 4 rows. I will not go into details about the purses, because I think the photo tells a crocheter pretty much. A few things though: Bosnian crochet in the front loop looks very much like knitted purl stitches (purse 3). This confused Swedish textile people when they first started analyzing garments in the museums in the first decades of the 19th century. Bosnian crochet had fallen into oblivion almost everywhere, but luckily there were still people who knew the technique. In purse 3) you can also see a typical design in Bosnian crochet with two colors, the way the stitch divides the pattern. There are 3 stitches in each motif, believe it or not! The pattern also slants to the right, and this is something that is often used to create patterns in Bosnian crochet. You can see it in the photos of the cover of the Swedish book, and the glove in my Swedish blogpost.

The purses: 1) Bosnian crochet in the back and in the front loop 2) single crochet (double crochet in UK) in the back and in the front loop 3) Bosnian crochet in the back loop, two colors 4) single (double) crochet in both loops, tapestry crochet 5) single (double) crochet in the back loop, tapestry crochet. The Bosnian crochet was worked with my aluminum Bosnian crochet hook, and the single crochet with an Aero 3,5 mm (US E/4, UK 9). You can find a converter here: Garnstudio crochet converter

You can see the hooks I used in my Swedish blogpost. The flat aluminum and wooden hooks are of a type that was often used in Bosnian crochet at least in Scandinavia. The crochet hook is the Aero 3,5 mm I used in three of the purses. Hooks for Bosnian crochet were often made of old spoonhandles, sometimes silver, and with beautiful ornaments. I know at least one person who has made a hook in that way.

I very soon found that crochet terminology is not quite established, and that misunderstandings can spread very fast in blogs and the internet. I also found there is very little written in Finnish and Swedish about Bosnian crochet in the area I was interested in, the coastal area of Ostrobotnia (Swedish Österbotten, Finnish Pohjanmaa) in Finland.

As the guild's editor was interested in an article about Bosnian crochet, I started writing it. I added information about Bosnian crochet in Europe. Lis Paludan, the Danish textilehistory scientist who is especially learned in crochet, wrote her book "Haekling" about European crochet in the '80s. She has one chapter about Bosnian crochet in her book. The book was later translated into English, and published by Interweave Press under the name "Crochet, History and Technique". From what I read in other books, especially from Sweden, it seems that most of the texts goes back to Paludan. I could have found much more about this technique if I knew more languages, such as Bosnian.

Lis Paludan traveled through Europe in the '80s and looked at crocheted items in the museums. She found no crocheted pieces older than the late 18th century. Bosnian crochet seems to be older than other forms of crochet, and to be concentrated to the peripheral areas of Europe: Bosnia, Balkan, the Scandinavian countries, Scotland, the Baltic countries.

In the 19th century, and also in the 20th, Bosnian crochet was often crocheted very loosely, and then felted. That made strong, warm and soft garments. After I had finished my article, I learned from Caprifool in Sweden that his grandmother used very tight Bosnian crochet for workmittens. She felted and then brushed the finished mittens to be even stronger and durable. She and Caprifool used to have crochet competitions, sitting on their front porch crocheting away the fastest they could :) They used crochet hooks of the kind we are familiar with nowadays.

Hjördis Dahl, a textile scientist from Finland, wrote her thesis "Högsäng and klädbod" about textiles among Finnswedes. Hjördis Dahl mentions that Bosnian crochet has been used to some extent in the northern and southern parts of the Ostrobotnian coast. There is a photograph in her book showing a pair of very nicely crocheted white gloves. Marketta Luutonen, who is one of Finlands most highly learned and respected textile scientists, sent me two photos of Bosnian crochet in the Finnish National Museum in Helsinki. She was, by the way, the writer of the original article about tapestry crochet that was called Bosnian crochet in the abstract. She is in no way responsible for the misinterpretation. I used one of the pictures in my Swedish blogpost, here is the other one:

And that is about all I found. I asked people on a couple of Finnish Ravelry-forums for more, but nobody knew anything about history, even if a couple of crocheters were familiar with the technique.

Now, what about the word "krokvirkning" that confused me? Well, the terms for Bosnian crochet in Swedish are many. We call it smygmaskvirkning (=slip stitch crochet), gammelvirkning (=old crochet), påtning (I have no English word for this, but it's a technique used for making cords and for nålbindning aka nalbinding), gobelängvirkning (=gobelin/tapestry crochet), bosnisk virkning (=Bosnian crochet), and krokvirkning (=hook crochet). "Kärt barn har många namn", as we say in Swedish. A dear child has many names. The most common term right now is smygmaskvirkning.

The Scottish/English term shepherd's knitting for Bosnian crochet is also a bit confusing, as it is clearly a crochet technique. The term has been in use since the late 18th century. "Bosnian crochet" of course indicates the area where the technique has been widely spread.

This little excursion into the world of crochet terms taught me, besides my first rows of Bosnian crochet, that crochet terminology is far too big a field for an amateur to try to explore in a few weeks alongside all the other things in life that have to be done. But it was a fun place to visit. If some of my readers have more information, or want to correct mistakes or misunderstandings (there must be some, as I have no one who could read this through before publishing), I would be happy if you let me know. I would gladly return to the subject later.

Smygmaskvirkning

                                               Mina kroknålar och virknål Aero 3,5

Jag har ett yrke där ord är viktiga: jag arbetar på bibliotek. Våra användares intressen spänner över en väldig mängd ämnen. När kunden kan sin terminologi och vet vad han vill ha är det oftast lätt att hitta litteratur. Men när kunden använder ord som inte är allmänt vedertagna blir det svårare. Då får vi diskutera oss fram till vilken bok, tidskrift eller sajt som bäst motsvarar det som frågas efter.

I höstas läste jag en artikel som hette "Krokvirkning". Alla bilder föreställde flerfärgsvirkning, vilket gjorde mig fundersam. Jag började titta på terminologin i böcker och på nätet. Jag upptäckte snabbt att terminologin i virkning kan variera mycket och till och med vara missvisande. Hade någon bett mig söka litteratur om krokvirkning, hade jag med största sannolikhet sökt fram Kerstin Jönssons bok Smygmaskvirkning. Men det var inte det artikeln handlade om. Troligen hade artikelförfattaren, som är en utmärkt träkarl förresten, använt en hemgjord översättning av finskans "kirjovirkkaus", som på svenska heter "flerfärgsvirkning" eller "pälsbältesvirkning". Eller så hade han tänkt på ett dialektord från Korsnäs för de fina tröjor de stickar/virkar där: "krokatröjon".

Krokvirkning är en av de benämningar som använts för smygmaskvirkning. Andra termer är bosnisk virkning, påtning, pinning, gammelvirkning. På engelska heter tekniken "Bosnian crochet". I Skottland kallas den "shepherd's knittning". På finska heter den "piilosilmukkavirkkaus", direkt översatt "smygmaskvirkning". Norrmännen och danskarna kallar tekniken "pjoning", tyskarna "Gobelinstich" och fransmännen crochet de Bosnie". (Lis Paludan, Haekling)

I endel områden har man använt en särskild virknål, en kroknål, i smygmaskvirkning. Jag har köpt mina från Slöjdmagasinet. Man virkar löst, för tekniken lämpar sig bäst för plagg som skall vara porösa och varma, som vantar t.ex. Ofta filtar man plagget lätt. Det finns ett par böcker där tekniken med virkkrok visas, t.ex. Kerstin Jönssons Smygmaskvirkning. Lis Paludan har ett kapitel i sin fantastiska bok Haekling, som är slutsåld för länge sedan, tyvärr. Hjördis Dahl nämner tekniken i sin avhandling om finlandssvenska textilier, Högsäng och klädbod.

Nå, det slutade förstås med att jag skrev en artikel om smygmaskvirkning. Den publiceras i nästa Spånkorgen, Stundars Hantverkargilles medlemstidning. Jag hittade inte så väldigt mycket litteratur, vilket dels kan bero på att det inte finns så mycket, men också (och det här gör mig alltid irriterad för att jag är så lat och inte lär mig flera språk) för att tekniken varit vanligast i Europas randområden. Om det finns litteratur på bosniska, serbiska, kroatiska osv så hittar jag den förstås inte. På finska hittade jag ingenting, på svenska och danska en del, norska sökte jag inte på. Jag hittade inte något riktigt bra på engelska heller, men eftersom jag koncentrerade min text till Finland, sökte jag inte på allvar.

Jag virkade fem påsar med samma mönster men olika teknik, att ha som illustration:

Alla påsarna är virkade med samma mönster: 3 maskor på bredden och fyra varv på höjden. De smygmaskvirkade är virkade med krok, de övriga med virknål Aero 3,5. Garnet är Novitas 7 bröder, ett ganska grovt och mjukt sockgarn.

1)  smygmaskvirkning med nedtag omväxlande i bakre och främre maskbågen 2)  fasta maskor med nedtag omväxlande i bakre och främre maskbågen 3) smygmaskvirkning med nedtag i bakre maskbågen 4) flerfärgsvirkning med nedtag i båda maskbågarna  5) flerfärgsvirkning med nedtag i bakre maskbågen.

De två flerfärgsvirkade påsarna visar ganska tydligt varför Korsnäströjans virkade partier virkas med nedtag i bakre maskbågen: det går det snabbare, eftersom maskan blir högre än med nedtag i båda maskbågarna, och mönstret drar inte lika snett.

Smygmaskvirkningens mönstereffekt används ofta i det slags mönster som man kan se på den högra vanten på Jönssons pärmbild. Marketta Luutonen skickade mig ett foto föreställande en fingervante i Nationalmuseum i Helsingfors:

                                          Courtesy Marketta Luutonen, Finlands Nationalmuseum

I Finland har smygmaskvirkning förekommit i Österbottens kusttrakter, med koncentration till norra delen. Det finns några plagg i lokala muséer, som t.ex.de vita fingervantar som finns i Björköby. Smygmaskvirkning verkar vara en äldre form av virkning än fasta maskor och stolpvirkning. Ordet "gammelvirkning" har använts i Sverige på 1900-talet, efter att man hittat några plagg som man först inte kunde teknikbestämma. Smygmaskvirkning i bakre maskbågen är förvillande lik stickade aviga maskor. Men om man försöker repa upp plagget, upptäcker man snabbt att det inte är stickning.

"Krokning" då? Det är tunisisk virkning, och den tekniken ska jag inte skriva mer om än att man behöver en lång virknål, eller en rundvirkningsnål, eftersom man plockar upp en maska på nålen ur varje maska på varvet, och avmaskar dem en efter en på tillbakavarvet. Om du vill titta på en trevlig bild, kolla Caprifools blogg.