Knitting in Art: The Asparagus Vendor

This is a detail of a painting at the wonderful Minneapolis Institute of Art. It's by Pieter de Hooch, a Dutch painter who finished this sometime between 1675 and 1680. It's a depiction of a household in the rising middle class. But it raises a question for me: is that lovely red stocking most likely to be knit or woven? 

Well, in Folk Socks, Nancy Bush points out: "By the end of the 1600s, one to two million pairs of (knitted) stockings were being exported from Britain into other parts of Europe."

So, even though we can't see the knit stitches, I think she might be mending a knit stocking, not seaming a woven one.