Richard Rutt (1925-2011) was the former bishop of Leicester in
the U.K. "The Knitting Bishop," as Serenity Knitting called him,
was taught to knit by his grandfather, the village blacksmith.
Rutt was a missionary in Korea for 20 years, where he lacked
yarn for knitting and took up Asian history instead. Once back
in England, he started knitting again and even knitted his own
miter (the pointy hat bishops wear). His book A History of Hand
Knitting was published in 1987. A History of Hand Knitting has
many interesting tidbits of history in it. Did you know there
are methods of making fabric structures that are more ancient
than knitting: nalbinding and sprang? If your friends think you
are geeky for knitting, wait until you tell them you've taken up
nalbinding. Then there's the legend about shipwrecked sailors
from the Spanish Armada teaching the people of Fair Isle (off
the coast of Scotland) how to knit with more than one color at a
time. It's unlikely that the technique was learned from sailors,
but still in