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The Secrets of Woolen Crochet Stockings

Handwork was one of the favourite hobbies of the Upper Don Cossack women in the XIX–XX centuries. In the long winter evenings they made clothes, spun wool, manufactured woolen cloth, knitted, crocheted and embroidered. The most popular handwork products among Cossack men were coarse woolen socks and stockings.

The craftswomen of present do not crochet stockings, and only few of them remember the crochet technology of their grandmothers. One of them is Anastasiya Andreyevna Vorobiyova, born in 1936, in Yerinsky Village, now living in Stanitsa Vyoshenskaya. In her childhood she knitted socks, mittens and gloves, then she mastered knitting openwork scarves and shawls.

A.A.Vorobiyova told about and showed the technology of traditional crocheting of Cossack woolen socks. The tradition of wearing such homemade socks is described by M.A.Sholokhov: “Miron Grigoriyevich, dressed as for death in all the new, in tanned sheepskin, shoes and clean white stockings tuck-in, was sitting next to old man Bogatyryov and Matvey Kashulin.” (Sholokhov M.A. “And Quiet Flows the Don”. Book 3, part 6, chapter XXII).

Woolen coarse crochet stockings were thick, warm, though prickly, and comfortable as they were made without heels, and if they were worn out in one place, they could be turned to another place. The Upper Don Cossacks used to wear white coarse socks with wide trousers tuck in them and low-heeled leather shoes.

Having learned the technology of making crochet coarse woolen socks the experts of the Museum department of applied art will be able to make copies of ethnographic objects mentioned in the works by M.A.Sholokhov, because the revival, preservation and spreading of traditional folk arts and crafts as a component of the Upper Don culture is one of the main fields of the Museum-Reserve activity.

Irina Korenyughina