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This knitting trivia quiz has 70 free questions with answers and runs from the oldest surviving knitted socks, dug up in Cairo, to the diver who knitted a Team GB cardigan in the Olympic stands. Along the way you will meet William Lee's stocking frame, the Prince of Wales in a Fair Isle jumper, the invented 'meanings' of Aran stitches, Madame Defarge's coded knitting, and the woman who started yarn bombing with a door-handle cosy in Houston. It is built for anyone who knits, crochets, or just loves a good origin story: knitting circles and yarn shops looking for a quiz night, craft teachers, and trivia fans who want something other than sport and geography. There are easy questions on knit versus purl and where cashmere comes from, and genuinely hard ones on 16th-century purl stitches and Guinness records. Every answer has been checked against a reference page, mostly Wikipedia and Guinness World Records, so the explanations are safe to repeat at your next stitch-and-bitch. Play through all 61, then share your score.
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Q 01The oldest surviving knitted artifacts, cotton socks from Fustat, date from which century?
11th
The Fustat socks were worked from the toe up, and their fine gauge suggests knitting was already a mature craft in Egypt by then.
Q 02Which single-needle fabric technique, whose Scandinavian name means 'binding with a needle', predates knitting?
Nålebinding
Textile historians sometimes have to trace the path of a single yarn through an ancient fragment to tell the two techniques apart.
Q 03Europe's earliest known knitted items were made by knitters of which faith, employed by Spanish royals?
Muslim
Knitted cushion covers and gloves found in the tomb of Prince Fernando de la Cerda, who died in 1275, are among these early pieces.
Q 04Which artist painted the knitting Virgin Mary in Visit of the Angel on the Buxtehude Altar?
Master Bertram of Minden
In the panel Mary knits a seamless garment in the round on four needles, one of the earliest depictions of the technique.
Q 05Who reputedly gave Queen Elizabeth I her first pair of knitted silk stockings in 1561?
The Countess Montague
Silk stockings were finer, softer and far pricier than wool, and the queen is said to have refused to wear cloth hose again.
Q 06The first known European purl stitches appear in mid-16th-century red silk stockings of which duchess?
Eleonora de Toledo
The stockings were found in her Medici tomb in Florence, and their purled patterning shows the stitch was already understood by then.
Q 07In which year did William Lee invent the stocking frame, the first knitting machine?
1589
The frame's basic principle of bearded needles survived in hosiery machines for more than two centuries.
Q 08Refused an English patent, William Lee took his stocking frames and workmen to which country?
France
The famous story that Elizabeth I told him the machine would make her subjects beggars appears nowhere before the 19th century, so historians doubt it.
Q 09Which ruler incorporated the Worshipful Company of Framework Knitters by letters patent in 1657?
Oliver Cromwell
It received a fresh royal charter from Charles II in 1663 and today ranks 64th in the livery companies' order of precedence.
Q 10Fair Isle knitting takes its name from an island in which archipelago?
Shetland
Purists reserve the term for the island's own patterns and call the general technique 'stranded colourwork'.
Q 11Fair Isle jumpers became fashionable after which royal wore them in public in 1921?
The Prince of Wales
The prince, later Edward VIII, was painted in a Fair Isle jumper by Sir John Lavery and set off a craze for golf-course knitwear.
Q 12Traditional Fair Isle patterns use how many colours in any single row?
Two
Limiting each row to two strands and keeping colour runs short is what keeps the floats on the back tidy and the fabric elastic.
Q 13Aran jumpers are named after islands off the west coast of which country?
Ireland
In Irish the garment is a geansaí Árann, and the islands sit at the mouth of Galway Bay.
Q 21The finest traditional lace shawls from Unst were judged by their ability to be drawn through what?
A wedding ring
The shawls were knitted from single-ply Shetland wool spun so fine that a full-size piece could weigh only a few ounces.
Q 22Queen Victoria, a fan of the northern isles' knitted lace, gave a lace shawl to which American abolitionist?
Harriet Tubman
Victoria's taste for the lace helped turn a remote island craft into a fashion staple of the era.
Q 23A c.1918 American Red Cross poster urged the home front to 'Knit Your Bit' because 'Our boys need' what?
Sox
Historians note the drives had as much to do with stirring patriotism as with supply, since factories already made most uniforms.
Q 14The myth of family patterns on Aran jumpers identifying drowned fishermen stems from a 1904 play by whom?
J. M. Synge
In Riders to the Sea a body is identified not by a jumper but by a sock, from the number of stitches its knitter cast on and dropped.
Q 15Most historians now agree that Aran knitting, far from being ancient, was invented roughly when?
The 1890s–1900s
The Congested Districts Board brought guernsey-style knitting to the islands to bolster the fishing economy, and islanders elaborated on it.
Q 16Heinz Edgar Kiewe, who fabricated the romantic 'meanings' of Aran stitches, ran what kind of business?
A yarn shop
Kiewe spotted a chance resemblance between the stitches and Celtic knotwork and decided the knitting must be just as old.
Q 17Which Irish folk group popularised Aran jumpers by wearing them on The Ed Sullivan Show?
The Clancy Brothers
The group also gave a special televised performance for President John F. Kennedy in their trademark cream sweaters.
Q 18What is the undyed cream wool yarn of traditional Aran jumpers called in Irish?
Báinín
Pronounced 'bawneen', the yarn's natural lanolin gave the sweaters a degree of water resistance.
Q 19The gansey, a tightly knitted seaman's sweater, takes its name from an island in which group?
The Channel Islands
Ganseys were traditionally seamless, worked in the round, with patterns passed from mother to daughter.
Q 20The guernsey sweater was first widely used in the 19th-century rating uniform of which service?
The British Royal Navy
Fishermen's wives knitted the same tight, dense fabric for their husbands, which is why the garment survived on both sides of the North Sea.
Q 24Cowichan sweaters, with shawl collars and bold motifs, are made by Coast Salish knitters based where in Canada?
Vancouver Island
When the Hudson's Bay Company sold a look-alike sweater for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, the Cowichan Tribes threatened legal action.
Q 25The knitted Monmouth cap of soldiers and sailors is named after a town in which country?
Wales
Shakespeare's Fluellen boasts in Henry V of Welshmen 'wearing leeks in their Monmouth caps'.
Q 26In knitting, what is a stitch worked by passing the needle through the loop from above called?
Purl
Almost every knitted texture, from ribbing to seed stitch, is just an arrangement of these two basic moves.
Q 27Knitting every single row in knit stitches produces which fabric?
Garter stitch
The result lies flat and looks identical on both sides, which is why it is the first fabric most beginners make.
Q 28Alternating rows of all knit stitches and all purl stitches produces which smooth-fronted fabric?
Stockinette
British knitters call it stocking stitch; its edges curl, which is why sweater hems are usually finished in ribbing.
Q 29What are vertical stripes of alternating knit and purl columns, common on cuffs, called?
Ribbing
The alternating columns pull inward, giving the fabric the stretch that makes it ideal for cuffs, collars and sock tops.
Q 30What is creating the first stitches on the needle at the start of knitting called?
Casting on
There are dozens of methods, from the long-tail to the provisional, and the choice affects how stretchy the edge will be.