Crochet in Art (not crochet as art)

Thanks to the sidebar of the blog I was reading this morning "Crochet by Catherine", I've discovered some artists who painted crocheters as the theme of a painting, not just a person in the background.
The title link is to a portrait by Mary Cassatt. The picture is a close up of her sister crocheting.

Here is another "Girl Crocheting" This is by another American artist Edmund Tarbell.

What are your impressions on "this painting"? It's titled "Woman with a Crochet". Is that Woman with a crochet hook? Woman with a crochet-ed doily? or simply Woman with Crochet (drop that a)? We will not be able to study this, like the others, to find out how women in Early America held their hook or whether they used yarn or thread, or what types of projects they created. Still, the artist did choose crochet as the subject of the painting.

"Sarah London" has a gallery of paintings featuring crocheters. I thought that it was interesting that half were of individual women or girls, and half were a pair of crocheters, usually titled "The Crochet Lesson". I also observed that all the crocheters were using a "pencil hold".
Take time to look at Sarah's masthead of her blog, she has created a work of art with her crochet motifs.

We started with Americans of the Impressionist period. Let's jump now to current day, here's an American teen who is a talented painter. He's fascinated with lines and structure, and he knits and crochets. Read the newspaper article "The Art of Seeing".