Research for my newest class, Be Inspired by Your Stash, led me to consider the usefulness of the weaver’s and knitter’s tool known as a niddy noddy. I must confess that in my original search for it, I looked for a knitty noddy, but found it all the same. Clearly, Google knows our foibles and missteps.
Where did this simple tool come from, I wondered, and how long has it been around? Mary Knox has fully researched the topic in her article, Niddy-Noddies Through the Ages. It’s fascinating. There’s evidence of niddy noddies, along with other weaving tools, dating back to 834 AD in a womens’ burial site in Norway. There’s a drawing of the tools in the article.
Both the archeological evidence and very early paintings show a parallel arm configuration, much trickier and more difficult to use than the variation with a 1/4 turn of one of the arms, like we use today.
Old Man with a Niddy Noddy, by Pieter Pietersz, a Dutch Renaissance painter, bears the faint inscription, “I am old and worn, and still I must wind for my food.”
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