Sarah Hunter’s Gloves
THE TRADITION of two-colour glove knitting in the Dales region of Britain was written about in the 1951 book by Marie Hartley and Joan Ingilby, The Old Hand-Knitters of the Dales. In the 19th century, Dales knitters in Yorkshire produced intricately patterned gloves as a way to earn much-needed income.
There is an illustration of a particular glove in The Old Hand-Knitters of the Dales which was captioned by Miss Hartley: “Swaledale, S. Hunter c. 1850 Black and Red wool”.
Sadly, these gloves are lost, and no extant pairs of Dales gloves have been knitted in red and black wool. I have seen a pink and white pair of child’s gloves, however - the pink possibly faded from red - so it’s possible that Dales gloves were sometimes brightly dyed, as well as made from the more familiar contrasting natural shades of
