Midwinter is the time when people look for more layers of cloth to wear to stave off the cold. Literature and fabric are (ahem) woven together in a number of ways. “Spinning a yarn” can mean “telling a tale”, for one thing. Nobody is quite sure where that phrase came from, but it’s been around for quite a long time.
The word “yarn” dates back to about the year 1000, when it was spelled “gearn.” At first it referred only to fiber (cotton, wool, etc) spun into a string, thread, or rope. The use of “yarn” to mean a story seems to have originated as a nautical expression. It’s just speculation, but it might have come from the practice of sailors to tell stories while they were working on making ropes.
The word “weave” as a term involving stories and their plots goes back to the 1300s. And around the 1600s the word “thread” has been used to mean a narrative chain of events, as in “Instructions for Forrein Travell,” written in 1642:
“If one read skippingly and by snatches, and not take the threed of the story along, it must needs puzzle and distract the memory.”
“Thread” has been used in relation to telling stories (“spinning a thread”) even further back; “He hath y-sponne a threde, that is y-come of eovel rede” is from a medieval book called “Kyng Alisaunder”, from before 1400.
“Knitting” also has to do with literature; a “well-knit plot” has been used since at least the late 1800s. Here’s an example written by Winston Churchill in 1910:
“The conception of a well-knit plot without irrelevant characters and episodes and with the interest strongly focussed upon some one main issue is distinctly modern.”
By the way, this was not THAT Winston Churchill — there was also an American novelist in the same era by the same name, and he’s the source of that quotation.
It might not be a surprise that fabric and literature are connected in so many ways, because “text” and “textile” come from the same Latin root “texere” (to weave). In Latin, “textus” meant “that which is woven”, and even in those days it could mean a piece of cloth or a written work.
And don’t forget what we call adding additional details to a description or other account: “embroidery!”
