This is very much “guess that I expect to be wrong”, but...
A question that occurs to me is how much wool (or linen, if you can knit that) it takes to make a knitted garment versus a comparable woven one? Presumably more, because the threads aren’t straight, but I dunno how much.
So I dunno if wool/linen got more abundant leading up to 1000 CE, but if so I could see that being part of an explanation for why it took so long? Rich people would have been able to afford knitwear if it had existed, but the number of people who’d have had capacity to play around and discover it, and to make use of it if they had, would have been lower.
(And, how do they compare for warmth? The knitted one will presumably be denser, so warmer, so maybe in certain climates at certain times of year you could replace multiple woven garments with a single knitted one; but then in other situations the knitted one is unpleasantly warm. Again though, I dunno how much of a factor this is, I guess minor.)
This is very much “guess that I expect to be wrong”, but...
A question that occurs to me is how much wool (or linen, if you can knit that) it takes to make a knitted garment versus a comparable woven one? Presumably more, because the threads aren’t straight, but I dunno how much.
So I dunno if wool/linen got more abundant leading up to 1000 CE, but if so I could see that being part of an explanation for why it took so long? Rich people would have been able to afford knitwear if it had existed, but the number of people who’d have had capacity to play around and discover it, and to make use of it if they had, would have been lower.
(And, how do they compare for warmth? The knitted one will presumably be denser, so warmer, so maybe in certain climates at certain times of year you could replace multiple woven garments with a single knitted one; but then in other situations the knitted one is unpleasantly warm. Again though, I dunno how much of a factor this is, I guess minor.)