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is that now with 5 years of practice with blunt needles used with a knitting sheath i can knit a good but plain weatherproof gansey in 4 days the key elements are good tools for the job and a high level of skill in knitting that kind of an object now i believe those accounts of professional hand knitters circa 1840 knitting a good gansey in 3 days those professional knitters did not use generalized knitting tools they used knitting tools refined by generations of professional knitters to the production of specific objects this has been confused by a period when it was fashionable for men to carve token knitting sheaths for their wife or sweetheart neither giver or receiver were expert knitters so the knitting sheaths had more sentimental value than practical utility as sentimental objects those less refined knitting sheaths have contaminated and confused our knowlege of good functional knitting sheaths i make good knitting sheaths i use them they wear out and i discard them an experienced user of knitting sheaths knows knitting sheaths wear out so instead of putting a lot of effort embellishing one one puts the same labor into a series of knitting sheaths so the loved one always has a highly functional knitting sheath it is much better to have a working but plain knitting sheath than to have an embellished but worn out knitting sheath with no practical use for a long time it took me 3 days to spin the yarn for a gansey and 10 days to knit that yarn i thought knitting must always take a lot more manhours than spinning now i have to reevaluate my model of the economics of production of seaman s slops spinning and knitting seem to have about equal inputs to a knit object and seamen s ganseys were likely less costly than i had thought and much less costly than thought by the the knitters who assumed it took months to knit a good gansey because it took them months to finish a gansey i expect many a bright eyed nimble fingered herring girl could knit a very good seaman s gansey in 40 hours because they had done so for their father brothers and cousins since i have been using knitting sheaths i have said that half the skill is figuring out to how fasten the sheath in place one issue is that for knitting different kinds of objects different kinds of needles are used which need to be supported at different heights modern fashions involving belt loops belts tend to interfere with the proper secure and comfortable placement of some knitting sheaths i no longer wear pants with belt loops when i am knitting also serious knitting will cause rapid wear in knit sweat pants yes an apron reaching from chest to knees is to serious knitting what gloves are to serious skiing every hobby has its need for gear holes in all my sweat pants have pushed me to wear a leather apron when knitting and having discarded a bunch of rather fancy knitting sheaths in the last few months i am back to very a simple plain but very functional knitting sheath held in place with an old soft work belt i have newer and prettier belts but old and soft works for the current knitting sheath of choice it is paired with 5 spring steel flat ended knitting needles if you want learn to knit fast i suggest practice with fine sock yarn and 1 5 mm needles that develops the small precise motions that are necessary for fast knitting and a little bit of yarn lets you make a lot of stiches which is a lot of practice and practice makes perfect over the last few months i was practicing sheringham style fabrics knit finely from high grist yarns i found a byproduct was that i knit a lot faster posted by aaron at 5 20 pm no comments labels blunt knitting needles knitting fast knitting gear knitting sheaths friday january 14 2022 just knitting a while back i read an account of a master knitter who required his apprentices to knit for 5 years before he allowed them to purl anything of course from a modern viewpoint that seems extreme on the other hand 500 years ago a journeyman knitter would have passed through seaports where he would have seen seamen wearing jersey knitting ouvre aka crossed stitch right over left knitting from eastern europe crossed stich left over right and plaited fabrics where both kinds of crossed stitches are used and the uncrossed knitting which is more popular today as a craftsman he would have thought about each of these knitting techniques on hand spun threads and yarns ranging from fine silk and fine worsteds to the course woolens needed by stockmen working in the winter s cold and seamen braving the north atlantic and finnish seas knitting crossed stitches flat and in the round require different techniques you are knitting a sock and must change techniques when you get to the heel flap and toe up knitting is harder to maintain consistent stitch pattern you really do have to think 3 rows in advance knitting crossed stitches and uncrossed stitches in yarns of different twist and grist with the speed required by a commercial enterprise requires different tools i would expect a knitting apprentices to make the needed tools for themselves even if the master was a good teacher that chose smart nimble fingered bright eyed apprentices today i think that the apprentices would have had to work very hard to master just knitting in 5 years advantages of crossed stich knitting include greater elasticity when stressed crossed stich knit fabric will not stretch as far for the given stress but it returns to it s original size and shape better than knit fabric without crossed stitches and the fabric is a quarter to a third thicker than fabric knit without crossed stiches from yarns of the same twist and grist at the same gauge and finer yarns often have more twist and thus are more durable crossed stiches allow knitting a warmer fabric from a particular yarn and the fabric surface is smoother allowing the fabric to shed water better than fabric knit with uncrossed stitches from the yarns of the same grist and twist at the same gauge on the other hand fabrics knit with crossed stitch techniques take more effort take longer and are much more difficult to plan than just uncrossed knit to fit i have not proven it yet but i expect that a 1 5 pound jersey knit from 1 700 ypp 3 ply yarn was as warm as a yorkshire gansey knit from 5 ply weighing 2 2 pounds and i am coming to expect that cross stitch fabrics are more durable than fisherman s rib for fabrics in points of abrasion such as sock heels fingers of gloves and such and think of the advantage of such warm light fabrics for a seaman with the clothing he needed for months at sea in a bag 8 in diameter and 24 long yes today i think that much of what we see in gladys thompson came after mechanical spinning technologies starting circa 1450 that were faster than drop spindles and the various driven spindles and the enclosures starting circa 1604 that resulted in cheaper wool yarn in short i do not yet understand how sailors fishermen on square rigged ships sailing from norfolk or st helier jersey circa 1400 stayed warm the wool technologies that kept them warm are a puzzlement this is the most challenging and interesting problem i have come across in years my knitting corner in the kitchen is a mess i do not know how my wife stands it my knitting costume is now overalls under a leather apron and 2 wide heavy leather belt supporting the knitting sheath the overalls and leather apron form a stable base allowing the belt knitting to be moved up and down and then be a stable base for my knitting pins there are at least half a dozen swatches hats socks gloves in process needles range from 1 3 mm spring steel to 3 25 mm wood some of those needles are really long and some are very short the yarns range from 2 500 ypp worsted spun 2 ply handspun to good old https www macauslandswoollenmills com 3 ply woolen the different swatches use different muscles as one set of muscles gets tired i switch swatches crossed stitch knit fabrics let woolen yarns show off a whole new bag of tricks posted by aaron at 11 18 am no comments labels jersey knit stich knit cross stich knit twisted stiches ouvre sheringham ganseys weatherproof gansey saturday january 01 2022 more crossed stitches i have been working on crossed stitches for a while now there were little swatches some approaches did not work some sort of worked so i stared doing bigger swatches to see if the approaches might work with a lot more practice this last week the swatches were hats and i woke up this morning feeling like i had been doing contests with bruce lee on who could do the most pushups on fingertips i knew the feeling my tools were wrong i had been using 7 pointed 2 25 mm steel needles i went back to the tool chest and dug out the shetland making pins i bought a long time ago and had not used for years and years fourteen inches of stiff polished pointed steel 3 32 in diameter they went into a knitting sheath that hangs below my belt an edison moment the right tools for knitting a hat from 2 ply woolen yarn with crossed stitches the take away old school tools work for old school knitting i think this is the reason that crossed stitches have been less popular since victorian knitters tried to do away with traditional knitting tools posted by aaron at 8 42 am no comments labels cross stich old school knitting thursday december 30 2021 cassandra said beware of knitting in the dark i am trying to learn to knit cross stitch i had done a few rows i thought i would test myself by knitting cross stitch while watching the evening news i was using 1 5 mm blunt steel needles and worsted spun 6 ply 1 680 ypp purple yarn i looked at what i had knit in this morning s light and there was one row of cross stitch and the rest was rows and rows of plain knitting not bad for plain knitting but not what i planned to knit the sun is out and i can see what i am knitting same needles same yarn and in the morning s light i am knitting a nice plaited fabric alternate rows of right over left and left over right one can use blunt needles bent to a specific angle that rotate in the knitting sheath or with 1 5 mm and smaller needles one can flex the needle with the right wrist so the tip pops into the back of the stitch to be worked either approach is neat and wicked fast this is not weldon knitting posted by aaron at 12 05 pm no comments labels cross stitch wednesday december 29 2021 as usual when i try something new i get part of it wrong it is perfectly possible to knit cross stitch twisted stich plaited fabric with blunt needles and a knitting sheath it can be done as flat knitting or in the round just try every possible position and angle between the needles and the last combination you try will work very well with 1 5 mm blunt needles and dark 1 700 ypp thread it can even be done in the dark the blunt needles pop in where they should and make it easy to feel what is going on as cassandra said beware of greeks bearing gifts and knitting cross stitch in the dark well if she did say that she would have gotten the last half of it correct and of course she was under the influence of apollo god of sunlight in the last few weeks i have ruined a lot of yarn learning to knit cross stitch actually yarn is cheap compared to the satisfaction of working this little math problem out for yourself and much of that yarn had been set aside as practice that i never intended to use on a real project set up a swatch and track in your knitting journal how you enter the stitches in each row and which direction you wrap the needle and how this row affects the next row done thoughtfully and purposefully it can be done faster than the time you would spend in a class on the topic the hard part is getting good at knitting cross stich because that involves breaking habits and building new muscle memory this is where most of your waste yarn will go and having broken habits all of your knitting will slow down for a while this does not bother me i am changing knitting patterns to take advantage of the virtues of cross stitch and i ultimately expect to produce better objects faster posted by aaron at 4 34 pm 1 comment labels cross stich monday december 27 2021 statement of errors again since taking gladys thompson as my primary teacher some 15 years ago i have focused on uncrossed stiches neglecting crossed stitches in knitting gear for outdoor gear has been a serious error that i made that leads to other serious errors for example i can knit crossed stitches flat with blunt needles but i have not figured out how to knit alternate rows of left over right and right over left in the round with blunt needles there is some evidence that the knitters of dent used crossed stitches in their products if you have information on this topic please let me know thus for now i am knitting outdoor gear with very pointy needles posted by aaron at 12 29 pm no comments labels crossed stitch knitting diy knitting tools do it yourself knitting tools knitting warm woolens terrible knitters twisted stitch knitting saturday december 25 2021 how i got ply twist on sheringham jersey yarns so wrong i use differential rotation speed drs control of twist insertion as i spin it is a well known technology both henry clemes and alden amos made such systems and had to take them all back because modern hand spinners could not figure out to use them let just say that as powerful as it is drs technology makes demands on the user i started my exploration of knitting fine yarns by prepping about 25 grams of wool and spinning a single at the desired twist 12 to 17 tpi depending on the desired grist then i would divide that single up on to 3 or 4 bobbins and ply it into 125 to 150 yards of the desired yarn i would block the yarn and knit swatches when i found a yarn that i liked i would spin hanks 560 yd of singles with each hank weighing 20 to 25 grams when i plied these together the finished hank of yarn would weigh between 80 and 100 grams that was half a spin bobbin it did not really look like much however it was enough to change the effective diameter of the spin bobbin and reduce the inserted twist in the outer layers of the yarn i would wind it off and the end that had been at the core of the spinning bobbin would be great i would knit a swatch think the hank was fine and spin a couple more hanks each of which would turn into a twisted mess after i had knitted about half of it the old spinners had a very good solution to this issue they made and sold finished yarn in balls of about an ounce 30 grams that is about what a drs technology can control with a standard sized spinning bobbin of with a length of 4 or a little less it is the product that would be produced by a professional hand spinner using traditional drs technology this tells us that professional hand spinners were using drs technology to produce fine yarns for sheringham and jersey ganseys i have seen 30 gram balls of yarn for sale in brittany and scotland these 30 gram yarn packages are ghosts of ...