Knitting is one of the most popular textile crafts today and it's estimated that there are well over a hundred million active knitters globally. But where does it come from? When did knitting first appear and what do we know about how it spread around the world?

This episode of Travels with Textiles is devoted to knitting and its history. We explore the origins of knitting and what we know about some of the earliest surviving pieces we have from North Africa. We travel to a small island in the North Atlantic that is home to some of the world's most iconic knitting and we hear about knitting traditions that grew up in America's Appalachia region as waves of different migrants arrived.