An old ſet-ſtitch’d chair, valanced and fringed around with party-colour’dworſted bobs, ſtood at the bed’s head, oppoſite to the ſide where my father’s head reclined.
[T]he kitten had been having a grand game of romps with the ball ofworsted Alice had been trying to wind up, and had been rolling it up and down till it had all come undone again;[…]
"Yes, young people are usually blind to everything but their own wishes, and seldom imagine how much those wishes cost others," said Mrs Garth. She did not mean to go beyond this salutary general doctrine, and threw her indignation into a needless unwinding of herworsted, knitting her brow at it with a grand air.
[T]he undertaker’s wife opened a side door, and pushed Oliver down a steep flight of stairs into a stone cell, damp and dark, forming the ante-room to the coal-cellar, and denominated “the kitchen,” wherein sat a slatternly girl in shoes down at heel, and blueworsted stockings very much out of repair.
He had tied a bit of whiteworsted round his neck—Why? Where did he get it? Was it a badge—an ornament—a charm—a propitiatory act? Was there any idea at all connected with it?
1980,AA Book of British Villages, Drive Publications Ltd, page 414, aboutWorstead:
When Flemish weavers settled in East Anglia during the Middle Ages they introduced a technique to the wool trade which produced a cloth of fine fibres and closely twisted yarn. Worstead became the centre for the manufacture of this new material, which came to be known asworsted – after the village.
The cognitive dissonance is plain to see on the faces of recruiters who pretend clothing is no big deal, but are clearly disappointed if you show up to a job interview in a darkworsted business suit.
