Linda Falkenstein
Nalbinding creates a thick material that works well in cold weather gear like mittens.
First off, nalbinding is pronounced “noll-binding” —rhymes with maul kindling. I’d been pronouncing it to rhyme with nail biting.
Larry Schmitt, who wrote the book on nalbinding — literally — says softly, “That’s okay. When you go to Norway, they don’t correct you.”
Nalbinding is one of the oldest of the fiber arts. These days it’s often associated with the Scandinavian countries, but similar versions exist across the globe. It predates both knitting and crochet — this craft existed before whoever invented knitting invented knitting! — and is sometimes shorthanded as “how the Vikings made their socks.” It might be described as hand weaving done with a needle and lengths of thread, although that does not really get to the magical heart of it. I’ll call it “pretzels in motion that miraculously resolve into a chain.”
Larry admits he doesn’t enjoy nalbinding itself as much as he enjoys teaching it; his wife, Lynn, who learned the craft from Larry, is the more avid producer of wearable objects, colorful hats and thick mittens. These cover the dining room table on their east-side home.
“It’s easy, once you know how,” Larry says drolly.
Larry learned nalbinding as a child through his parents, although they didn’t learn the art from their parents; it wasn’t a family tradition passed down from the old country. His parents, both artists, had teachers who trained at Hull House, the social reform center in Chicago that pioneered educational and employment workshops for the poor.
It was the heart of the Great Depression, and Larry’s father came by a job running a WPA workshop in Milwaukee with 150 weavers and 100 looms. They made mostly drapery fabrics and rugs, and sometimes the workers made nalbound rugs, “if there wasn’t anything else to do,” says Larry. His mother made one, and it was on the household’s kitchen floor in West Allis as he was growing up.
Years later, Larry was about to throw the rug away when Vesterheim, the National Norwegian-American Museum & Heritage Center in Decorah, Iowa, heard about it and contacted him, hoping to add it to its sizable textile collection. His interest piqued, Larry began to take nalbinding more seriously and discovered there was little written about the craft in English. He taught himself enough Norwegian and Swedish to read existing books and “I thought I could write something up, to teach,” says Larry.
Linda Falkenstein
Nalbinding might start with whittling your own needle from a local tree branch (left). Schmitt (right) starts his classes that way, before his students go on to make mittens or other useful objects.
He teaches a nalbinding course every year at the North House Folk School in Grand Marais, Minnesota — an intensive five-day, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. course because, Larry says, it gives students the opportunity to complete a whole project but also because it can take from “20 minutes to two-and-a-half days” to really get the hang of the motions and the stitches.
Larry cuts a length of string about an arm span long and threads it through a wooden needle he made himself, about the size of an eyedropper. (In fact his classes start with students whittling their own needles.) He loops the yarn over and around my thumb and fingers — then there’s something about making a “6” shape with the yarn, and looking for the “X,” as the needle plays hide-and-seek with my thumb. What I have after a couple of repetitions looks to me like irretrievable knots, but Larry teases them apart and shows me my looped chain. Still, it’s clear that practice is involved. Also a lot of splicing — every time you use up one length of yarn, another needs to be added.
“There are no seams,” Lynn says of the simple elegance of nalbinding. Unlike knitting, it doesn’t unravel. There are several different stitches, but in all cases the result is a dense fabric (made denser by felting in some cases), yet which is very flexible, Lynn notes. The finished look can resemble a woven basket.
“I like to start out and see where it goes,” says Larry. “You don’t need a pattern. And the patterns tend to be a little vague.”
“There’s no counting stitches,” Lynn says, “and it’s faster than knitting.”
“It’s a primitive technique,” says Larry. “That’s how it survived.”
All you need is a needle — whittle it yourself — and a length of yarn. Note: A teacher helps.
Oldest known nalbound object: a piece of mesh sieve dating to 6500 B.C. found in a cave in Israel.
Direction you nalbind in: left to right (if you’re right handed) — the opposite of knitting.
How to join the lengths of yarn: If it’s 100 percent wool, spit on the ends and rub between your hands to create a spit splice!
Nalbinding books by Larry Schmitt: Lots of Socks; Mittens, Mittens, Mittens!; Scarves, Wimples and More; Edgings and Embellishments; and Great Hats.
The Heritage Crafts Association of the U.K.’s status report on nalbinding: endangered.
See a short video of Larry nalbinding.