"Knitting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... standing perfectly still, entirely engrossed, when he came silently up behind him, and paused to look over his shoulder. They were alone in the vast and chilly room save for one attendant who dozed over some knitting in a corner near the door. Away into the distance stretched the other rooms, bound one to the other like links in a chain. From the third of these came the penetrating voices of the American ladies, descanting unhesitatingly upon the pictures; while in the second the two artists could be seen flitting ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... of their number was a hod carrier. He earned $2.50 a day, knowing that would not accumulate fast enough, he was strong and thrifty. After he had worked hard all day, he would spend his evenings putting new bottoms in chairs, and knitting gloves for anyone who wanted that kind of work. In the summer he made a garden, sold his vegetables. He worked very hard, day and night, and was ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... in Mrs. Wright, whose hands were busily employed knitting a sweater for one of her girls while her eyes were glancing from person to person. Her foot tapped constantly while her knitting needles flew. One felt that she was doing some kind of work ...
— Mary Louise and Josie O'Gorman • Emma Speed Sampson
... for going down into the Aquarium, where the sallow blinds, the stale smell of spirits of salt, the bamboo chairs, the tables with ash-trays, the revolving fish, the attendant knitting behind six or seven chocolate boxes (often she was quite alone with the fish for hours at a time) remained in the mind as part of the monster shark, he himself being only a flabby yellow receptacle, like an empty ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... latter case, it is merely the sensuous facts of immediate succession that we know about, as (Gravitation, Newton, Apple.) (Dives, Lazarus, Abraham, Bosom.) (Pipe, Tobacco.) (Michaelmas, Goose.) (Columbus, America.) (Bartholomew Diaz, Cape of Good Hope.) (Grandmother, Knitting.) (Socrates, Hemlock.) (Bruce, Spider.) (Nelson, Trafalgar.) (Demosthenes, Seashore, Stammering, Pebbles.) (Job, Patience.) (Wedding, Slippers, Cake.) (Wellington, Bonaparte, Waterloo.) (Depression, Fall ...
— Assimilative Memory - or, How to Attend and Never Forget • Marcus Dwight Larrowe (AKA Prof. A. Loisette)
... my mind when my eye fell upon my guide. She was seated against the south wall of the tower, on a stool, I thought, or small table. While I was wandering about the church she had taken her stocking and wires out of her pocket, and was now knitting busily. How her needles did go! Her eyes never regarded them, however, but, fixed on the slabs that paved the tower at a yard or two from her feet, seemed to be gazing far out to sea, for they had an infinite objectless outlook. ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... borders of (the territory of) Tauris there is a monastery called after Saint Barsamo, a most devout Saint. There is an Abbot, with many Monks, who wear a habit like that of the Carmelites, and these to avoid idleness are continually knitting woollen girdles. These they place upon the altar of St. Barsamo during the service, and when they go begging about the province (like the Brethren of the Holy Spirit) they present them to their friends and to the gentlefolks, for they are excellent things to remove bodily ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... like that; but time hangs heavy on my hands now. That's why I've taken to knitting." She held out a gray yarn muffler. "I had an operation a year ago, and since then Mrs. Vanderbridge has had another maid—a French one—to sit up for her at night and undress her. She is always so fearful of overtaxing us, though ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... fellow stared at Dad with his gimlet grey eyes, looking him through and through, knitting his brows, and sniffing and snorting at ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... what had happened until, on taking out his watch, he found it fused into one mass. Instances might be cited where a portion of the shoe was carried away without serious injury to the wearer, and where knitting-needles, scissors and other household implements have been struck, sometimes conducting the current to the person with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... seemed to make her happy. Her face lighted. She sat knitting for an hour, silent and serene, ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... was too small to engage my attention. But while I failed to see anything calculated to shake my confidence in the conclusions I had come to, I saw but little to confirm them. This was not strange; for, apart from a few toilet articles and some knitting-work on a shelf, she appeared to have no belongings; everything else in sight being manifestly the property of Miss Althorpe. Even the bureau drawers were empty, and her bag, found under a small table, had not so much in it as a hair-pin, though I searched it inside and out for her rings, ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... the vicolo, dark of wall and dank of pavement, with petticoats and shirts dangling from numerous windows and fluttering like gibbeted wretches in the air; with frowzy women sewing or knitting in the sombre doorways and squalid urchins screaming everywhere; with humble vegetables and cheap wines exposed for sale in dirty windows; with usually a carriage or two undergoing a washing at some stable-door; and with almost always an amorous Romeo or two from some brighter ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... Irene, knitting her black eyebrows till they almost met in her anxiety to express herself clearly; "she was telling you to have a good influence over me. She always begins like that with the new governesses. She has an interview with them the morning after ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... to the back parlor, where she at first caught up a half-finished stocking, and began knitting at it with nervous and irregular jerks; but quickly finding herself at odds with the stitches, she threw it aside, and walked hurriedly about the room. At length she paused before the portrait of the stern old Puritan, her ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... from exercise, than of any superstitious awe I felt. Mr. Blake seemed to labor under no such impressions. Riding up to the front door he knocked without dismounting, on its dismal panels with his riding whip. No response was heard. Knitting his brows impatiently, he tried the latch: the door was locked. Hastily running his eye over the face of the building, he drew rein and proceeded to ride around the house, which he could easily do owing to the absence of every obstruction ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... store had on its shelves, colored calico, a small amount of flannel, some broadcloth, and a small parcel of silk valued at one pound. There was also thread in brown and other colors, knitting-needles, pins, horn-combs, combs made of ivory and knives of various descriptions. For trimming garments, there was guimpe, colored tape, Holland tape and Hamburg, the latter an embroidered edging, buttons, some silk covered. Other items included skeins of twine, ...
— Domestic Life in Virginia in the Seventeenth Century - Jamestown 350th Anniversary Historical Booklet Number 17 • Annie Lash Jester
... The young belles and beaux whispered and tittered, and passed the original jokes and witticisms common in such cases, while the old ladies soberly took the matter in hand when they went out with their knitting to make afternoon visits, considering how much money Uncle Jaw had, how much his son would have, and what all together would come to, and whether Joseph would be a "smart man," and Susan a good housekeeper, with all the "ifs, ands, and buts" ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... of each boat was an awning of straw or matting, under which the fisherman's family could be seen at work upon their morning meal of rice and fish, flipping it into their mouths with long knitting-needles, which Herrick said were the famous Chinese "chopsticks." They hardly took the trouble to look round at the steamer as she passed, seeming to care very little whether she happened to ...
— Harper's Young People, May 25, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... to spend the day, are not bound by rules of etiquette but by the rules of their own and their hostess' personal preference. They take off their hats or not as they choose, and they bring their sewing or knitting and sit all day, or they go out and play games, and in other ways behave as house-guests rather than visitors at luncheon. The only rule about such an informal gathering as this is, that no one should ever go and spend the ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... "Distinguished in mien, graceful in manner. In the house of his patron, he dared look up to that nobleman's daughter, Diane de Poitiers. A dream; a youthful dream! Enter Monsieur de Breze, grand seneschal of Normandy. Shall I tell you the rest? How Caillette stares, moody, knitting his brows at his cups! Of what is ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... Saturday afternoon. Elsie was sitting on her sofa, quietly working, while her nurse sat on the other side of the room, knitting busily, ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley
... comprehend this, but the mystery was soon revealed. It was that they were all intent and engrossed with the same object; all were, as they passed, calculating and reflecting; this produced a similar contraction of the brow, knitting of the eye-brows, and compression of the lips—a similarity of feeling had produced a similarity of expression, from the same muscles being called into action. Even their hurried walk assisted the error; it is a saying in the United ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... trembled with excitement while he raised his eyes to heaven as if asking for inspiration that would enable his voice to do justice to his writing. So grand it was, said Janet, that her stocking would slip from her fingers as he read—and Janet's stockings, that she was always knitting when not otherwise engaged, did not slip from her hands readily. After her death he was heard by his neighbours reciting the poem to himself, generally with his door locked. He is said to have declaimed part of it one still evening from the top of the commonty like one addressing a multitude, ...
— A Window in Thrums • J. M. Barrie
... and the horseshoe at the forge, to build the boat or the cart in the shop, to hew store or cut timber for building or firewood, to erect a mill for sawing lumber or grinding grain. Similarly the woman used her spare time in knitting and mending, and if time and strength permitted added to her duties ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... other side, in a narrower show case, were piled up large balls of green wool, white cards of black buttons, boxes of all colours and sizes, hair nets ornamented with steel beads, spread over rounds of bluish paper, fasces of knitting needles, tapestry patterns, bobbins of ribbon, along with a heap of soiled and faded articles, which doubtless had been lying in the same place for five or six years. All the tints had turned dirty grey in this cupboard, rotting with ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... four broomsticks in a sandy court; and it was there, the first day during recess, that the innocent Leon burst into cries of terror when he saw the school-mistress, forced by some accident to interrupt her knitting, stick one of her great knitting-needles in her capacious head-dress. A "senior," who was more familiar with her head-dress, explained the phenomenon in vain to Leon and Norine, for the boy, none the less, preserved ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... hard to say," he replied, knitting his brows. "I hardly know. I think it depends on you.... But if you did do such work wouldn't you ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... plumes, in opal, ruby, pale green, and other hues, are also constructed of these threads, and are wonderfully pretty. The chief obstacle yet to surmount seems to lie in the manipulation of these threads, which are so fine that a bunch containing 250 is not so thick as an average sized knitting needle, and which do not possess the tractability of threads ...
— Scientific American, Volume XLIII., No. 25, December 18, 1880 • Various
... this way," he began, knitting his brows, and marshalling the thoughts and phrases with which his mind had been busy. "This is the question. You were saying that you weren't asked to join my Board. You explained in that way how I could do things for Plowden, ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... know Hannah Smith had gone to work for the widow Orville?" inquired Mrs. Fleetfoot, looking up from the blue yarn sock she was knitting, which was destined, no doubt, to convert some half-naked Burman boy from the errors of paganism. "La, I heard of it a ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... doth the milk of the paps come to the matrix or womb? A. There is a certain knitting and coupling of the paps with the womb, and there are certain veins which the midwives do cut in the time of the birth of the child, and by those veins the milk flows in at the navel of the child, and so it ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... and how she may best accomplish it, is worthy our earnest counsel one with another. We have heard many complaints of the lack of enthusiasm among Northern women; but, when a mother lays her son on the altar of her country, she asks an object equal to the sacrifice. In nursing the sick and wounded, knitting socks, scraping lint, and making jellies, the bravest and best may weary if the thoughts mount not in faith to something beyond and above it all. Work is worship only when a noble purpose fills the soul. Woman ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... bacilli in the nearest watch-glass quite angrily. "To ninety-nine!" he exclaimed, knitting his brows. "Cumberledge, this is disgraceful! A most disappointing case! ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... the coasts of Norway, of the British Isles, of France, of Portugal, of Spain, of Italy, of Greece. Picture from this immense arc of communication branch lines longer still, diverging to America, to Africa, to India, knitting the ports of the world together in one vast railway system. That railroad system, with its engines and rolling stock, its stations and junctions, its fuel stores and offices, over which run daily and nightly the wagon loads, of food, munitions, ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... infancy and childhood." Notwithstanding her devotion to public matters her private duties were never neglected. Many of our readers will no doubt remember Mrs. Mott at Anti-slavery meetings, her mind intently fixed upon the proceedings, while her hands were as busily engaged in useful sewing or knitting. It is not our place to inquire too closely into this social circle, but we may say that Mrs. Mott's history is a living proof that the highest public duties may be reconciled with perfect fidelity to private responsibilities. It is so with ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... one who talks to himself aloud without knowing it, and none heard it but me. I glanced at her and saw that her knitting-needles were idle in her hands, and that her face had a dreamy and absent look in it. There were fleeting movements of her lips as if she might be occasionally saying parts of sentences to herself. But there was no sound, for I was the nearest person ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... Sir,—I return you the plates, with which I am highly pleased. I would humbly propose, instead of the younker knitting stockings, to put a stock and horn into his hands. A friend of mine, who is positively the ablest judge on the subject I have ever met with, and though an unknown, is yet a superior artist with the burin, is quite charmed with Allan's manner. I got him a peep of the "Gentle Shepherd", and he ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... looks up from her knitting, and smiles as she says, "Tut, tut, daughter! Our Amy isn't any worse than a little girl I knew ...
— The Nursery, September 1877, Vol. XXII, No. 3 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... was his parlour, you know, and I had kept nothing from him while he was alive; that is to say, he always knew what I was thinking of, and I like to fancy that he knows still. In the evenings he used to sit in the arm-chair by the fire, and I sat talking or knitting at his feet, and if I ceased to do anything except sit still, looking straight before me, he knew I was thinking the morbid thoughts that had troubled me in the old days at Double Dykes. Without knowing it I sometimes shuddered at those times, and he was distressed. ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... out knitting, with the woodbine and syringa in the basket for the parlour. I made the basket ... I and ... but myself chiefly, for ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... down in its grooves of beauty, and its very loveliness gave Dilly a pain at the heart. She remembered that this was the hour when her mother used to yawn over her long seam, or her knitting, and fall asleep by the window, while the bees droned outside in the jessamine, and a humming-bird—there had always been one, year after year, and Dilly could never get over the impression that it was the same bird—hovered on his invisible perch and ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... invitations to the whole family, which I concluded would not be advisable: there are so many of them, and as they would not be acquainted with the rest of the company, it seemed best not to have any of them. I thought, too, of old Mrs. Joyce, who sometimes does quilting and knitting for me, but she has a large family of grandchildren, some of whom she always drags with her when she goes to where there is any thing good to eat; and it would never do to have them poking their fingers into the refreshments. So it struck me that perhaps you might oblige me. You don't appear ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... Polly gave me a towel, and we both wiped with all our might and main, and 'most as quick as you can say Jack Robinson, we had them piled in shining rows on the kitchen dresser. Then I did twelve and a half rows on the suspenders I was knitting for Pa's birthday, while Polly finished the rest of ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... that that was why his mother had liked it. She could sit with her knitting and watch the passers-by. She had always "infused" the tea when she heard the click of the gate as he ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... up Angela and gazed over her head as she considered. She had a way of using Angela as most women do knitting or embroidery: as something to have in her hands ...
— The Wishing-Ring Man • Margaret Widdemer
... downstairs, she found her brother reading some letters which had been received during his absence. She went and softly shut the door of communication between the parlour and the kitchen; and then, fetching a grey worsted stocking which she was knitting, sat down near him, her eyes not looking at her work but fixed on the fire; while the eternal rapid click of the knitting-needles broke the silence of the room, with a sound as monotonous and incessant as the noise of a hand-loom. She expected him to speak, but he did not. She enjoyed ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... being called the procondyle, the middle the condyle, and the upper the metacondyle. He passes briefly over as lines of little import, the via combusta and the Cingulus Orionis, but lays some stress on the character of the nails and the knitting together of the hand, declaring that hands which can be bent easily backward denote effeminacy or a rapacious spirit. He teaches that lines are most abundant in the hands of children, on account of the tenderness of the skin, and of old men on account ...
— Jerome Cardan - A Biographical Study • William George Waters
... "Ralph Motherson," quoth Ralph, knitting his brow. Said the captain "And whither wilt thou?" Said Ralph, "On mine own errands." "Thou answerest not over freely," quoth the captain. Said Ralph, "Then is it even; for thou askest freely enough." "Well, well," said the captain, ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... the inmost recesses of his tiny soul. He stared stupidly after the sheep for half a minute, then gave the order, "Wully, fetch them in." After this mental effort he sat down, lit his pipe, and taking out his knitting began ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... explained the Doctor-in-Law, "a knitting machine. I was persuaded to buy it on the understanding that I was to have constant work all the year round, and be paid so much per pair for knitting socks with it. It's a most interesting and ...
— The Wallypug in London • G. E. Farrow
... given me a reason. I rejoice in being reasonable. I lent him a bit of knitting-work that I happened to have brought with me, with which he kept down his locks, else astray, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... only appropriate comparison I can find for her is, to liken her to such a peasant woman as one sees in the Alps, striding ever upward, heavily burdened, and with mind bent only on her home; but yet, without effort and without thought, knitting for her children. Now stockings are good and comfortable things, and the children will undoubtedly be much the better for them; but surely it would be short-sighted, to say the least of it, to depreciate this toiling mother as a mere stocking-machine—a ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... Then,—had her eye in sorrow wept, A thousand warriors forth had leapt, A thousand swords had sheathless shone, And made her quarrel all their own.[417] Now,—what is she? and what are they? 160 Can she command, or these obey? All silent and unheeding now, With downcast eyes and knitting brow, And folded arms, and freezing air, And lips that scarce their scorn forbear, Her knights, her dames, her court—is there: And he—the chosen one, whose lance Had yet been couched before her glance, Who—were his arm a moment free— Had died or gained ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... Mrs. Jolliffe and tell her of the danger which threatened him, she might refuse permission to fight at all, or, at the very least, she would see that he had proper assistance. So into the house he went, and the first person he found was Hazel, who was knitting her pretty forehead over the Latin exercise which had been given her as ...
— The Talking Horse - And Other Tales • F. Anstey
... subscriptions of foreign residents. The school contained twenty-nine pupils, of whom three were Moslem children, and one a Druse, and no opposition was made to it. Religious instruction was given, of course, and the scholars made good progress in reading, sewing, knitting, and behavior. The whole number in the schools exceeded a hundred. Mr. Abbott, the early and valued friend of the mission, ...
— History Of The Missions Of The American Board Of Commissioners For Foreign Missions To The Oriental Churches, Volume I. • Rufus Anderson
... distance. It was when she turned to go down again that Goodwin had a full view of her face, bleak and rigid, with greying hair drawn tightly back from the temples, as formal and blank as the face of a clock. It was told of her that she would sit knitting in her chair by the mizzen fife-rail while at the break of the poop a miserable man was being trodden and beaten out of the likeness of humanity and never lift her head nor shift her attitude for all his cries and struggles. It ...
— Those Who Smiled - And Eleven Other Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... Brown, Up rose the Doctor's "winsome marrow;" The lady lay her knitting down, Her husband clasped his ponderous Barrow; Whate'er the stranger's caste or creed, Pundit or papist, saint or sinner, He found a stable for his steed, And welcome for himself, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... a Continental duchess aboard, whom I pitied. She was oldish and homely, and couldn't forget her rank. She had a woman companion, an honorable lady, a maid, and a courier, but she sat all day knitting or reading poor novels. She had nothing to do with the other passengers, eating with her companion at an aloof table, and sitting before her own cabin, apart from others. The courier and I talked several times, and once he said that her Highness ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... liked to talk as much as grandpa liked to keep silent; and always, to the running accompaniment of her tongue, she kept her hands busied, whether "puttering about" in her house or flower-garden, or crocheting "tidies," or knitting little mittens, or creating the multi-coloured paper-flowers which helped ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... explaining to him. Her rebellious hair is all over her eyes, much vexing the pale, energetic mother who sits on the opposite side of the fire, cumbered with much service, letting no instant of time escape the inevitable click of the knitting-needles. The father is already proud of the astonishing and growing intelligence of his little girl. An old-fashioned child, already living in a world of her own imagination, impressible to her finger-tips, and ready to give her views ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... letters, speaking of having chartered the Casco, "I can't but be glad, for his heart has so long been set upon it, it must surely be good for his health to have such a desire granted." Louis warned his mother years before she had a nomad for a son, but she had never objected, and sat knitting on deck, well content not to be "in turret pent," but to go forth with the bright sword she had forged. "She adapted herself," her brother says, "to her strange surroundings, went about barefoot, found no ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • E. Blantyre Simpson
... well that whatever Hagar might once have thought to do, there was no danger to be apprehended from her now, and the next day found her as usual on her way to the cottage. Bounding into the room where the old woman sat at her knitting, she exclaimed: "I know what it is! ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... with a stained-glass oriel in a mediaeval cathedral. There is no doubt which is the prettier of the two. The question is, do you want pretty colour or do you want clear daylight?" He paused, but neither of his listeners spoke. Lady Atherley was counting the stitches of her knitting; I was too tired; so he resumed: "For my part, I prefer the daylight and the glass, without any daubing. What does science discover in the universe? Precision, accuracy, reliability—any amount of it; but as to pity, mercy, love! The fact is, that famous simile of the angel playing at chess ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... autographs were put into pregnant English at a subsequent date by the elder Weller. He professed to have received at second-hand from the charity-boy, set to con the alphabet, what the retired stage-driver applied to matrimony—to wit, that it was not worth while to go through so much to get so little. Knitting delighted not ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... she shifted the needles in her knitting, and, smoothing down the big blue stocking-leg over her knee, cast a glance at the Deacon which signified command. The dame was thoroughly mistress in her own household, as well as in the households of not a few of her neighbors. Long before, the meek, mild-mannered little ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... small hole in it, moving it in front of the light so as to throw the latter only upon the portions needing the extra printing. Still another modification is where a portion only needs holding back. Here we use a small piece of paper or cardboard stuck on a knitting needle, moving the latter so that it will not intercept the light too ...
— Bromide Printing and Enlarging • John A. Tennant
... would rather have lived in a hut with a vine growing over the door, and the grapes growing purple in the kisses of the autumn sun. I would rather have been that poor peasant with my loving wife by my side, knitting as the day died out of the sky—with my children upon my knees and their arms about me—I would rather have been that man and gone down to the tongueless silence of the dreamless dust, than to have been that imperial impersonation of ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... a scarlet waistcoat, leathern small-clothes, blue yarn stockings, and a red wig and cocked hat, which gave him a sort of military appearance. He usually traveled in a sulky, but sometimes in a chaise, or on horseback.... Mr. Martin also contrived to employ himself in knitting coarse yarn stockings while driving or rather jogging along the road, or when seated on his saddle-bags on horseback. He certainly did not ride post, according to the present [1821] meaning ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... week later. My sister sat in the garden, knitting. I was walking up and down, reading. My gun leant up against the wall of the house; for, since the advent of that strange thing in the gardens, I had deemed it wise to take precautions. Yet, through the whole week, there had been nothing ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... must ship her off, so that she may never return," observed the Buccaneer, with a fierce knitting of his brows. ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... dim and distant here, on this parching road, among southern fields. I was beginning to be lost in a muse as to what these boreal flies might do with themselves during the long winter months while all the old women of the place are knitting Shetland underwear when, suddenly, a little tune came into my ears—a wistful intermezzo of Brahms. It seemed to spring out of the hot earth. Such a natural song, elvishly coaxing! Would I ever play it again? Neither that, nor ...
— Alone • Norman Douglas
... disposition of the coat should have been. The china vases would a little improve the appearance of my parlors; but how many pleasant feelings and hours and days of comfort, would the old coat have given to Mr. Bryan. I said no more. Aunt Rachel went on with her knitting, and I took the vases down into the parlors and placed them on the mantles—one in each room. But they looked small, and seemed quite solitary. So I put one on each end of a single mantle. This did better; still, I was disappointed in the appearance they ...
— Trials and Confessions of a Housekeeper • T. S. Arthur
... them, before any travellers passed. It was rarely indeed that a sick person had to wait a minute for her appearance. There she sat, in her shed when it rained, and under a tree when it was fine, sewing or knitting very diligently when no customers appeared, and now and then casting a glance over the Levels to the spot where her husband's mill rose in the midst of the green fields, and where she almost fancied sometimes ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... o'clock when at last Mother Meraut took the basket on her arm and gave Pierrette her knitting to carry, and the three ...
— The French Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... of satirical, heretical, critical poem, with regular cadences, and generally catching up near the beginning some singular epithet, which serves as a refrain when his song is full, or with which as with a knitting-needle he catches up the stitches, if he has chanced now and then to let fall a row. For the higher kinds of poetry he has no sense, and his talk on that subject is delightfully and gorgeously absurd; he sometimes stops a minute to laugh at it himself, ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... the streets of Washington, wearing a high black silk hat perched on the back of his head, and a suit of black broadcloth, much too large for him, but made in obedience to his orders, that he might be comfortable. Mrs. Taylor used to sit patiently all day in her room, plying her knitting-needles, and occasionally, it was said, smoking her pipe. Mrs. Bliss was an excellent housekeeper, and the introduction of gas into the Executive Mansion, with new furniture and carpets, enabled her to give it a more creditable appearance. It was said that she did the honors of the ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore
... tattooing, all one side and much of the other being of an even blue. Further acquaintance increased our opinion of his sense. He viewed the Casco in a manner then quite new to us, examining her lines and the running of the gear; to a piece of knitting on which one of the party was engaged, he must have devoted ten minutes' patient study; nor did he desist before he had divined the principles; and he was interested even to excitement by a type-writer, which ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... spent in the getting, Since women for tea forsook spinning and knitting, And men for punch ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... promised mother to be good and to do the things you thought would please her. Come on and meet Aunt Trudy—we'll all go, you and I and Shirley," wheedled Rosemary, beginning to roll up her knitting. ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... of Mr. Sanborn's school would go there to play whist, make poker-sketches, and talk with the ladies; while Mrs. Alcott, who had played with the famous automaton in her younger days, would have a quiet game of chess with some older person in a corner. Louisa usually sat by the fire-place, knitting rapidly with an open book in her lap, and if required to make up a table would come forward with a quiet look of resignation and some such remark as "You know I am not a Sarah Battles." Then after a while her love of fun would break forth, and her bright flashes of wit would ...
— Sketches from Concord and Appledore • Frank Preston Stearns
... it were her own case put off going into the workhouse, which meant parting with her children, to the very last. The idea of mentioning her name in the one breath with these people precluded the possibility of answering. She threw down her knitting ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... a rest. She smiled as she said this though her legs were swollen and bruised. What upset her the most was that she couldn't do her work while tied to the bed. She could watch the children though, and even did some knitting, so as not to entirely ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... When I speak of knitting together breaks in the trail, I mean simply that the passage of the supporting party from that point where the trail was broken by the movement of the ice to the point where the trail went on again, some distance either to the east or west, would itself renew the broken ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... not believe. Then the rector had come up to town to hear the trial, and on the day preceding it had asked his nephew as to the truth of the rumour which had reached him. "It is true," said the young lord, knitting his brow, "but it had better not be ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... this whole passage: the sense of utter deadness and emptiness, and frustrate fall in the leaves; of dormant life in the human body,—the fire, and heroism, and strength of it, lulled under the dead brown heap, as embers under ashes, and the knitting of interchanged and close strength of living boughs above. But there is not the smallest apparent sense of there being beauty elsewhere than in the human being. The wreathed wood is admired simply as being a perfect ...
— Selections From the Works of John Ruskin • John Ruskin
... whenever we caught a glimpse of them. He was one of those drivers who know everybody; he passed the time of day with all the men we met, and he had a joking compliment for all the women, who gladdened at sight of him from the thresholds where they sat sewing or knitting: such a driver as brings a gay world to home-keeping souls and leaves them with the feeling of having been in it. I would have given much more than I gave the beggars in Toledo to know just in what terms ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... round the tea-table just as at Tryland—Kirstie and Jean embroidering and knitting, and the other two reading new catalogues of ...
— Red Hair • Elinor Glyn
... the house. Neither of us said anything for a bit. Mother was sitting in her old chair by the fire knitting. Many a good pair of woollen socks she'd sent us, and many's the time we'd had call to bless her and her knitting—as we sat our horses, night after night, in a perishing frost, or when the rain set in that run of wet winters we had, when we'd hardly a dry stitch on us by the week together, ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... Two wicker-work armchairs and the little round tea-table were set out under the trees. Mary's knitting lay in one of the chairs. She had the habit of knitting while she talked, or while Rowcliffe talked and she listened. The act of knitting disposed her to long silences. It also occupied her, so that Rowcliffe, when he ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... amused to look over Joseph's case of books?" handing her the key, and then sitting down with her knitting, contented in having finished her duty. "After a while thee'll have a pleasant time,"—smiling consciously. "Richard'll be awake. Richard's our boy, thee knows? I wish he was awake, but it is his mornin' nap, an' I never disturb ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... these would-be reformers are simply notoriety-seekers. I believe in manual training, but Latin and mathematics always will be the backbone of sound Americanism, no matter what these faddists advocate—heaven knows what they do want—knitting, I suppose, and classes in wiggling ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... blanket she had spread on the lawn in her front yard, knitting a pair of booties for the PTA bazaar. Occasionally she glanced at her son in the play pen, who was getting his daily dose of sunshine. He was gurgling happily, examining a ball, a cheese grater and a linen baby book, ...
— The Ultroom Error • Gerald Allan Sohl
... more of the nursery party till later in the afternoon. The creaking wheels of two small wheelbarrows made Jan look up from the letters she was writing at the knee-hole table that stood in the nursery window, and she beheld little Fay and Tony, followed by Meg knitting busily, as they came through the yew archway on ...
— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker
... en bloc was its idleness. I never saw one of them with a piece of knitting or any other work in her hands during all the weeks we were there. In fine weather they loitered and basked in the garden, gossiping or amusing themselves with novelettes cut from the penny papers and passed from one to the other in turn. The front door stood almost always open, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... again (the knitting of his black brows omened ill for the peace of that interview); afterward, on my honor and faith, I will never speak to her one word, or willingly look upon ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... salesman were well informed, that the high price was due to the manufacture of airplanes! The explanation is that the wire stays used in the manufacture of airplanes are made of steel wire from which machine knitting needles are also made. In the early part of the war all of the available wire of this kind was taken for airplanes, thus limiting the supply of knitting needles and consequently ...
— Community Civics and Rural Life • Arthur W. Dunn
... the mingling of classes—girls of education and refinement working quite happily with those of a much humbler type—runs without friction under the influence of a common spirit. This common spirit was well expressed by a girl who before she came to the factory was working a knitting-machine. "I like this better—because there's a purpose in it." A sweet-faced woman who was turning copper bands for shell, said to me: "I never worked a machine before the war. I have done 912 in ten hours, but that tired me very much. I can do ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in more jelly, keep turning and add by degrees more jelly; continue this process until the jelly has formed a complete lining inside of form; lay the pegs of apples and pears in slanting rows onto a napkin and cut them all the same length; then take each one separately onto a larding or knitting needle and dip into cold jelly; first lay a row of red on the side of form, then a row of white in an opposite direction; continue until the form is covered, pour over some thick jelly and when firm fill the inside with apple bavarois made as follows:—Prepare 1 pint apple sauce, press ...
— Desserts and Salads • Gesine Lemcke
... deeply significant in her gaze, something that was brave, and appealed, and winced at the same time. She went on slowly with her knitting. ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... divine striker of the senses; thus much is undoubtedly true, that if reading be foolish without remembering, memory being the only treasure of knowledge, those words which are fittest for memory, are likewise most convenient for knowledge. Now, that verse far exceedeth prose in the knitting up of the memory, the reason is manifest: the words, besides their delight, which hath a great affinity to memory, being so set as one cannot be lost, but the whole work fails: which accusing itself, calleth the remembrance back to itself, and so most strongly ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... went, and as the lecture was delivered before one of the benevolent societies of the city, the subject was the broad and strong one, "Christian Giving." Tode came home with some new and startling ideas. He burst into the little kitchen where the mother sat placidly knitting her stockings, and the daughter sat knitting her brows over her arithmetic lesson, and ...
— Three People • Pansy
... only blind, but it was evident that smallpox had been the cause of her loss of vision. Her eyes were bound with a bandage, her features were entirely swollen, scarred and distorted by the horrible effects of the malady. She had been knitting in a corner when we entered, and was wrapped in a very dirty bedgown. Her voice to me was quite different to that in which she addressed her husband. She spoke to Haggarty in broad Irish: she addressed me in that most odious of all languages—Irish-English, ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... who wore gold-rimmed spectacles, and was a person of weight in the councils of the Primrose League, went calmly on with her knitting. ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... at once into the library, where Doctor Joyce was spelling over the "Rubbleford Mercury," while Mrs. Joyce sat opposite to him, knitting a fancy jacket for her youngest but one. He was hardly inside the door before he began to expatiate in the wildest manner on the subject of the beautiful deaf and dumb girl. If ever man was in love with a child at first sight, he was that man. As an artist, as ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... management of a clothing club, in itself a maddening thing to ordinary mortals, and had an eye to the distribution of the parish coals. Of mothers' meetings and other cheerful parochial entertainments, she became the life and soul. Giving up her mathematics and classical reading, she took to knitting babies' vests and socks instead; indeed, the number of articles which her nimble fingers turned out in a fortnight was a pleasant surprise for the cold toes of the babies. And, as Mr. Fraser had prophesied, she found that her labour ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... then, being the unmerited disparagement of the Byzantine government, and so great the ingratitude of later Christendom to that sheltering power under which themselves enjoyed the leisure of a thousand years for knitting and expanding into strong nations; on the other hand, what is to be thought of the Saracen revolutionists? Every where it has passed for a lawful postulate, that the Saracen conquests prevailed, half by the feebleness of the Roman government at Constantinople, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 348 • Various
... possession of the Duke of Newcastle, who cleared away almost the whole of the ancient structure and built a house upon the site. The city was noted for its manufactures as early as the reign of King John, and the hand-knitting of stockings was introduced in the sixteenth century. Previously to that time hosiery had been cut out of cloth, with the seams sewed up the same as outer clothing. As early as 1589 a machine for weaving was invented, but failing to reap a profit from it, the inventor, a clergyman, took it ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... English ladies certainly do carry practical industry farther than I ever saw it in America. Every body knows that an anniversary meeting is something of a siege, and I observed many good ladies below had made regular provision therefor, by bringing knitting work, sewing, crochet, or embroidery. I thought it was an improvement, and mean to recommend it when I get home. I am sure many of our Marthas in America will be very grateful ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... Her mother's scanty income did not enable them to hire servants; and the work of the house devolved upon Elinor, who was too dutiful a child to suffer her ailing mother to assist her in these domestic labors. The lighter employments of sewing and knitting, her mother shared; and they were glad to increase their slender means by taking in plain work; which so completely occupied the young girl's time, that she was rarely seen abroad, excepting on Sundays, when she accompanied her mother to ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie
... a great problem to me,' she declared at length, knitting her brows with a hint of humorous exaggeration. 'I wonder whether he believes ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... if it wasn't for the fact that Petway does the knitting act so well that he is a perfect lady. We never could equal him," answered Tony, with jolly good humor to save our feelings ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... my winter stockings. I got knitting needles and cards my own mother had and used. I got use for them. I wears clothes on my body in cold weather. One reason you young folks ain't no 'count you don't wear enough clothes when it is cold. I wear flannel clothes if I can get holt ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... afternoon; but was it duty? or, indeed, putting that question aside, was it quite right to compound matters with his own heart's desire and the work he was engaged in, in this undeniable fashion? The young priest crossed the street very slowly, swinging his cane and knitting his brows as he debated the question. If it had been one of the bargemen bringing his sweetheart, walking with her along the side of the canal to which Spring and sweet Easter coming on, and Love, perhaps, ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... but no one offered him anything. Close by was a stall of splendid purple grapes, but the old woman that kept it was busy knitting. She only called to him to ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... first glimpse he'd had of Bedford Forrest—the officer sitting his big gray charger in the midst of a battle, whirling his standard to attract a broken rabble of men, knitting out of them, by sheer force of personality, a refreshed, striking force. Now Drew found himself facing quite a different person—a big, quiet, soft-spoken man who eyed the scout ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... delightful!" said Ruth, knitting the fingers of both hands over one knee and listening to him with a child-like abandon ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... take his overcoat and hat and cane, and place them as carefully in the clothes press as if they had been the robe, crown, and sceptre of a king. Then she would sit in her little chair, and take her sewing, or knitting, or embroidery, and pretend to be all absorbed in it, while she was listening eagerly to every word that Marcus addressed to her father, and occasionally looked up at the face of their guest, and thought how noble it was, and how proud she should be ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... necessity of knitting these committees into a national unity. The national convention which nominated Clay in 1831 appointed a "Central State Corresponding Committee" in each State where none existed, and it recommended "to the several States to organize subordinate corresponding committees ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... toads, and working each one into one of the wonderful legends which he had heard from the old German gardener across the way. He saw his father, too, pacing those paths of summer evenings, when the hollyhocks nodded their pink heads, and glancing up, from time to time, at his mother as she sat knitting at that very window. And, last of all in the line, yet first in his mind, he saw his wife tripping out in the fresh morning, to smile on the flowers she loved, to linger lovingly over the beds of verbena, and to pick the little nosegay that stood by the side of the tall coffee-urn ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... gentle Love, who was knitting "double mittens" in the corner; "that isn't a sure sign at all. I dare say he went away because he was unhappy. How would you like to live with people that don't trust you? Why, Seth, you ...
— Little Grandfather • Sophie May
... led into a back anteroom. An old man, a servant of the princesses, sat in a corner knitting a stocking. Pierre had never been in this part of the house and did not even know of the existence of these rooms. Anna Mikhaylovna, addressing a maid who was hurrying past with a decanter on a tray as "my dear" and "my sweet," asked about the princess' ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... tree on the lawn knitting, when the children clustered around with the old request, "Please, grandmamma, tell us ...
— Woodside - or, Look, Listen, and Learn. • Caroline Hadley
... of bloody and aimless revolutions, of silly and ferocious warfare against their neighbors, and of degrading alliance with the foreigner. From these and a hundred other woes the West no less than the East was saved by the knitting together of the ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... at the corner of a market-place or beneath an arcade near the Maine exercising his health-giving trade in the open air. He lives, and lives bountifully, by unmaking, picking over and re-making the mattresses of the people. Good housewives, moreover, stand near him with their knitting to see that he does it well and puts back within the cover all the wool that he took out. In these backward countries the domestic mattress is remade once a year if not oftener. In our great land there is a considerable vagueness as to the period allowed to a mattress to form itself into lumps and ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... and the girls sat still and watched the men across the level sands, and the boats hurrying out to the fishing grounds. Then they went back to the cottage, and found that Mistress Binnie had taken her knitting and gone to chat with a crony who lived ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr |
