Knitting, like other of its kindred arts, came from the East, from the Arabian peninsula, whence it spread eastwards to Tibet, westwards as far as Spain, carried thence and to other Mediterranean ports by the Arabs, who were the great traders of those days.

Egypt learned her knitting from the Arabs, and it is only in Coptic Egypt, and where Arabian influence could penetrate, that Egyptian knitting discoveries dating from the 4th and 5th centuries have been found. At what date knitting actually originated no one knows, but in the ancient city of Yemen, in Arabia Felix, earlier known as Shabwa, the city of the Queen of Sheba, it is said to have been known forever, and that the pattern on the serpent's back was knitted by Eve. Such is Eastern chronology.

Historians place the date about A.D. 200, but legend claims that the seamless garment of Christ was knitted and so could not be cut or divided' and lots were cast for it.

Legend again provokes a claim to Penelope's web which she wrought by day and unravelled so quickly by night, saying it was knitted! Was this Frame knitting?

But legend is a whimsical handmaid, and, though, facts are rare, and knitting relics even more rare than those of any other textile, historians generally agree that knitting had but one common source, Arabia, and that from thence it has penetrated to the far conrners of the earth, carried hence by the traders, sailors, and settlers of different nations.

excerpt from Mary Thomas's Knitting Book, originally published in 1938.