In 19th-century France, a man named Sylvain Dornon walked from Paris to Moscow in 58 days. Although the time frame is in and of itself impressive, it’s especially amazing when you consider that Dornon walked on stilts the entire way. Dornon was from the Gascony region of France, where the ground frequently became marshy and nearly impassable by foot after rains. The inhabitants of this area began using stilts to move around—in particular shepherds tending flocks that were spread out over a large area. The stilts were about five feet tall and called tchangues, or “big legs.” A shepherd could become so skilled at walking on stilts that he could knit, spin, or even pick something up from the ground without getting off them.
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S OF MID-2014, Technorati, a now defunct website dedicated to searching and indexing blogs, pulled up nearly 3,000 blogs identified as relating to knitting (2,990, to be precise). That’s more knitting-related blogs than those relating to golf (2,944), beer (2,763), comic books (1,060), oil painting (659), crochet (1,362), hand spinning (a mere 20!), and, curiously, yarn (932). ■ ■ ■ ■
At the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, the New South Wales portion of Australia’s exhibit featured pyramidal displays made of bales of wool, a wall of wool, and large signage prominently displaying statistics about Australia’s wool industry. One viewer stated, “No other country had such a display, and it was universally acknowledged to be the finest and best arranged in the Agricultural Building.” 126
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