I got to wondering why Chaucer never wrote about knitting. I mean, it seems like the obvious thing to do on a journey, as in The Canterbury Tales. I was building up steam about how our literary history is male based, and therefore men in charge of literature would never think that knitting would be important enough to be in anything they wrote about, when I discovered that knitting didn't really catch on in Europe until the 15th century ... and Geoffrey Chaucer died in the year 1400. He was about 100 years too early. Otherwise he would have started his Tales with
"Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
Wettens the lambe and laves the woole,
The spinerre makes suche lettil threed
To hie to kniterres evaerywher..."
