"navajo" knitting

[piranha]

oh wow, i just came across this while looking for something completely different, and it is amazingly useful:

also, lucy neatby rocks, and not just because she has the best hair.

Comments

[aquaeri]

Very nice trick, but I'm uncomfortable with the name.

[piranha]

because actual navajo don't knit this way? i actually don't know whether they don't -- i expect the name was taken from spinning where it is named after a navajo method of plying.

Navajo

[aquaeri]

She says in the video that it's named for Navajo plying, and that part makes sense. But I don't like "knitting with yarn that's being Navajo-plied on the fly" getting compressed down into "Navajo knitting". It moves the "Navajo" adjective from referring to actual Navajo people to referring to loose chaining. And given how Navajo people are treated, that isn't acceptable to me. (I'm not opposed to the underlying linguistic principle - I completely accept that "Danish" refers to a class of baked goods that has only a tenuous connection to Denmark, for example. And of course the Danish baked goods are called wienerbrød - Vienna bread.)

I don't know if Navajo people knit and if they do anything different when they do. The only hit I could find doesn't seem to mention knitting in the actual text.

Re: Navajo

[piranha]

i see what you mean, and i agree that linguistically this is meh. it has the other bad effect that if you type "navajo knitting" into a search engine now, you find that many top references are to this method, and there is nothing about knitting by any actual navajo.

so i am kinda torn. i don't see what would be better.

because what it's doing is giving some acknowledgment to the fact that the idea came from navajo plying. which seems better than calling it "chain-ply knitting", for example, and just dropping the acknowledgment altogether.

i don't think calling it "chain-ply knitting based on a navajo method of creating a 3-ply yarn from a single bobbin" is really an option outside of a treatise written up for piecework magazine.

and now that i've looked a little further, it seems that other references to "navajo knitting" talk about duplicating navajo weaving patterns in knitted blankets, hats, slippers etc. like this "navajo knitted cardigan", which isn't knitted with the chain-ply method, nor by actual navajo.

i think i put the navajo in the subject in quotes, that's probably the best i can do.