Hybrid Event: Knitting Natural HerStory
Join Knitters, Book Lovers and librarians Jacquelyn Sundberg and Kristen Howard for a knitted perspective on 19th-century botanical specimen books. The Blacker Wood Collection of Natural History is rich in examples of these books, accumulated and created primarily by gentleman scholars and naturalists. Female botanists at the time faced a male-dominated field, as special guest Tina Gianquitto discussed in her talk on April 11th.
We selected some books created and compiled by women to use as inspiration for a new knitting pattern. Celebrate natural HerStory with us as we launch a new, free knitting pattern inspired by these books. Join us for a show and tell of some of our beautiful source material and for your chance to knit from our special collections.
Open to all, seasoned and new knitters welcome.
About the Speaker:
Kristen C. Howard is the Liaison Librarian for History, Classics, Indigenous Studies, and Religious Studies at the McGill University Library. Kristen has a PhD in History from the Division for Late Medieval and Reformation Studies at the University of Arizona in 2020. Kristen is a knitter and this will be the third knitting pattern she has created inspired by the McGill Library's Rare and Special collections.
Jacquelyn Sundberg is the Outreach librarian for the special collections units at the McGill University. Combining experience in both public and academic libraries with her Masters degrees in English Literature and Information Studies, she works to make library collections accessible to a broader audience. Her work includes grant projects, publications, multimedia projects, websites, videos, and games. Most recently, she created Moments in Time, a chronological card game supported by the library’s SSHRC-funded Serious Play initiative.
