Comments

  1. fusilier says

    What kestrel @1 said.

    My Beloved and Darling Wife has been knitting for about 50 years now, and she doesn’t know either.

    fusilier, who STILL doesn’t have a sweater! (Knitters know….)

    James 2:24

  2. flex says

    Shawl-straps are straps used to bind a shawl into a bundle, and often incorporate a handle for carrying. The thing in the picture is a shawl with shawl-straps attached.

  3. flex says

    Note, it appears that shawls were often used as simple travelling bags. I.e. you could carry extra clothes or a sheaf of loose papers bound in a shawl with shawl-straps while travelling. When you got to your destination you would not be lumbered with a suitcase, and would still have a shawl to keep you warm. Louisa May Alcott wrote a travel book called Shaw-straps.

  4. kestrel says

    @flex: thank you! I kept coming back to this thread hoping someone had the answer. Nice to know!

  5. flex says

    @kestrel #5, no real credit goes to me. I looked it up in my usual sources (old dictionaries (yes, print!)), and then asked my wife (who’s a knitter). She didn’t know, but she used her google-fu and got the answer pretty quickly.

    All I did was transfer that information, mainly because you asked, I was curious myself, and I liked the illustration of it above. (And then I miss-typed the title of Alcott’s book. It’s really Shawl-straps. It’s not a book about George Bernard Shaw’s bondage fetish.)

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