About the stocking knitting. We buy yarn from Harrisville Designs – their Highland style 100% wool yarn, to be specific. We use that yarn for a few reasons, one is that it comes in a number of colors that look like natural dyes. Other reasons are that it is not expensive, is readily available, and wears well.

Some have asked about using handspun to knit for us. I get 12 wraps per inch with Harrisville Highland. The “fancy” stocking pattern calls for a gauge of 24 sts and 36 rows = 4 inches. It would be possible to use any yarn that gave that gauge, in any natural sheep color. I’d feel - how to put this - like it was a waste of precious handspun to use it on pilgrim stockings, though. Interpreters wear their stockings hard. We usually have to refoot each pair of stockings at least one time per season, for some folks twice per season.

Here’s a photo of my current re-footing project. After they wear through the heels to where there’s no point darning it anymore, we cut off the foot, pick up the live stitches, and knit a new foot.

Handspun would find a better use, I think, in gloves. Gloves get less hard use and are more visible to the visitor. Handspun would make an impact there. If you’re interested in spinning to knit some gloves, let me know. jhall@plimoth.org I’ll get you a pattern, and the wraps per inch and yardage for gloves.

We can’t put the patterns on the blog, as some have suggested. It isn’t a technology thing, but more because once they’re out there, they’re out there and you can’t get them back.

Many, many thanks to all the knitters who have volunteered to make stockings and gloves. The hand knitted garments add to the richness and depth of our recreated sites, increasing for our guests the sense of being immersed in the past.