While proof-reading my latest Dickens book ("Hard Times"), I came across this:
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Mrs. Sparsit netting at the fireside, in a side-saddle attitude, with one foot in a cotton stirrup...
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and then, later on:
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Mrs. Sparsit, easily ambling along with her netting-needles...
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Would anyone who is conversant with handicrafts care to speculate whether "netting" is an old word for what we'd now call "knitting", or does it refer to some other type of craft?