Starting Again

I knitted in college, and then dropped it. Thirty years later my wife and I were buying “fishermen’s” sweaters in Canada. As a discount, they gave my wife a free hat with her sweater, but they did not have a matching hat for me, so they gave me 3 skeins of yarn. I bought myself some needles, some books on knitting, and I started knitting again. I read the books, and I got to be a pretty good knitter.

I got more critical of knitting. I came to admire the traditional Guernseys, Jerseys and Arans, (ganseys) with their fine, intricate, and delicate stitch patterns. When wives were knitting the sweaters with love to keep their husbands and sons warm, the stitch patterns were worked at 7 or 8 stitches per inch. Now, such patterns are worked at 5 stitches per inch and the effect is very different.

But the modern books and classes do not tell us how to knit the traditional gansey. I take hints from history and experiment with modern materials until I come up with something that approximates the appearance and function of the traditional gansey.