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Fabric made with a single hooked needle, pulling loops through loops. Unlike knitting, only one live loop exists at a time, so the work cannot ladder and can grow in any direction, which suits lace, amigurumi figures and granny squares. For all its handmade ubiquity, no machine has ever reproduced true crochet.
Facts
Disputed
OriginNo crocheted textile has ever been convincingly dated before the year 1800, even though the tool is simple and the materials would have been perishable; documented crochet, as the craft is understood today, is a nineteenth-century development, whatever undocumented folk practice it may have grown out of. 1 Mainstream: no surviving crochet fabric predates 1800, and the first published instructions using the term in its modern sense appeared in the Dutch magazine Penelope in 1823. Three competing folk-origin theories claim a much older, undocumented ancestry: an Arab trade route into Spain and the Mediterranean, a South American tribal-ritual origin, and an early Chinese doll-making practice; none is corroborated by any surviving crocheted textile. See the recorded dissent. Earliest Evidence (Circa)No convincing examples are known before 1800; the earliest published patterns appeared in the Dutch magazine Penelope in 1823 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Sources
1. Crochet (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia Foundationen.wikipedia.org/wiki/CrochetQuote, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crochet
The first known published instructions for crochet explicitly using that term to describe the craft in its present sense appeared in the Dutch magazine Penélopé in 1823.
Dissenting Readings (1 dissenting reading)
Origin
Three folk-origin theories hold that crochet is genuinely older than its documented nineteenth-century record: one traces it along Arab trade routes into Spain and the Mediterranean, one to a South American tribal ritual practice, and one to early Chinese doll-making. None of the three is corroborated by any surviving crocheted textile, and the craft's own source material treats them as unproven theories rather than a settled account, distinct from the mainstream, no-evidence-before-1800 position.
A dissenting reading, from an independent laneCrochet (Wikipedia), Wikimedia Foundation
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