The path to handspun fingering weight yarn

 When I first thought about hand spinning yarn for a Sheringham gansey, I assumed that the long wools that I had been using for Yorkshire style ganseys would be the right fleeces for yarns knit into Sheringham ganseys.

I tried but could not make them work. I would spin 11,000 to 12,000 ypp singles, ply them together in various combinations, and try to knit them. All of those yarns came out too splitty to be reasonably knit. At first, I thought the problem was my knitting - that I needed to learn some trick for knitting these kinds of yarns. I spent a few months trying to learn how to knit these yarns.

Then, I was reading a Victorian collection of knitting patterns, there was Paton's Behive fingering specified for objects for babies and ladies - that meant it was a fine* soft yarn, (from a high crimp fiber). Paton's Behive fingering was also commonly used in the Victorian period used for Sheringham ganseys. It was clear, I was using the wrong kind of wool.

I had some Rambouillet, and tried it. It worked perfectly. 

These were raw fleeces from Anna Harvey (Contact - Anna's Got Wool (annagotwool.com).

I washed the wool by putting a pound or so of fleece into a blue 5-gallon bucket, covering the wool with tap water, and letting it sit in the sun for a couple of hours then pouring the warm wash water through a course screen onto a fruit tree. Then, I put a teaspoon of Dawn Ultra dish detergent on the wool, covered it with water, and let it sit in the sun until the water was warm, then I poured out the water onto a fruit tree. I repeated this a few times with less and less detergent until the wool was clean, and I was just rinsing the detergent out of the wool. (This is the easiest and least expensive way I know to wash wool. Dawn at these concentrations is biodegradable.) I drained the wool on my big screen, and let it dry enough to drum card. 

I applied spinning oil (Alden Amos recipe) on the wool, and drum carded it. Then I combed the wool on English combs, and dized it off using a diz with a 1.5 mm orifice and wound it on to my distaff.

Such gently prepared fiber has more crimp and is easier to spin fine than commercially prepared (e.g., pin drafted) fiber.

I use a flier whorl which controls how much twist is inserted into the yarn as it is spun (differential rotation speed flyer/ bobbin assembly). For the fingering yarns I am making these days, I am drafting the singles at between 11,000 and 12,000 yards per pound and inserting 17 twists per inch into the singles.

(Five hundred yards of these singles weighs less than 22 grams, so 500 yards of the 3-ply fingering is only 66 grams (just over 2 ounces) and I can make 500 yards of 3-ply yarn using my normal 3" spinning bobbin.) 

Three singles are plied together, with a ply twist of 5 ply twist per inch. I use a tension box to control the feed of the singles into the plying operation.

The yarn is wound off into skeins, washed, blocked/dried.

The grist of this yarn is ~2,700 yards per pound. It knits to ~12 stitches per inch / 20 rows per inch on either 1.3-mm or 1.5-mm needles with the finer needles producing a thicker, denser fabric. 

I agitate the yarn enough while washing resulting in minor fulling thus it is not at all splitty, and it is wonderfully easy and fast to knit, but it does not have great stitch definition. 

I do not have enough wear experience to know how durable the yarn will be. I am sure that it will knit into the best socks that I will ever own. I still have skeins of fingering spun from long wool and I may find that the long wool yarns provide better wear for sock heels and glove fingertips. 

Early in this evolution, I could make 30-yards of this yarn in half a day. Now, after climbing the experience curve, I can make a hank (500 yards) in a day. I do have a spinning wheel with a differential rotation speed-controlled flyer/bobbin assembly and an "accelerator".

I will be at Lambtown (2023), spinning my Rambouillet singles for this yarn.

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*Traditionally, spinning was divided into coarse, medium, and fine spinning. Fine spinning was singles with grist greater than 33,600 yards per pound. I do not consider the singles I am spinning for fingering yarns to be fine spinning. 

The Rambouillet fleece I am using has not been sorted and graded, and cannot be spun much finer than ~36,000 yards per pound.  Some years back I purchased an extra "fine" fleece from Anna Harvey, sorted and graded it carefully. The result was a packet of fiber that easily spun to ~48,000 yards per pound, and that was for competent yarn. Some recent yarns submitted to various spinning contests have been reported as being much finer. I do not find any wool yarns with grist over 50,000 ypp competent for hand crafting.  As such I stopped thinking about spinning contests.

Sheringham

 If the fine yarns the Sheringham ganseys were knit from had/have the beauty of the yarns I am spinning, then I can very much understand the fascination with Sheringham ganseys as objects of  art and beauty.  

Weatherproof sock fabric

I knit a good swatch from 3-ply, 1,680 ypp yarn on 1.3 mm needles at 12spi & 20 rpi, fulled it, napped it, oiled it, put it on the counter, and poured water on it.  

The water stood in a pool on the swatch.  

The fabric passed the test.

• The Sheringham ganseys are weatherproof. 
• Knit Tudor hats were likely weatherproof.
• We can knit all kinds of stuff out of  "sock yarn" to produce light, elastic, and weatherproof objects.  We can knit socks that will really help our feet stay dry.
• Joyous Rapture! 240 stitches of knitting joy per square inch! We can get more knitting pleasure per gram of wool.
• I believe the yarn is flock run Cheviot, spun worsted, with a soft twist.

I expect traditional hosiery yarns to perform better. 

A super resource

 Ganseys (northfolk.org)

A great Resource!

I note that these fine, tightly knit fabrics, were knit with minimal wearing ease - hence the stitch pattern had to stretch to allow motion related to work or athletics.  This is somewhat different from vertical and horizontal cables used to protect seamen from bruising when they bump against spars (topmen) or rails (fishermen).  

I also note that various moss patterns are very good at increasing the warmth of the fabric, while diminishing its ability keep out wind and water.  Thus, I think some these garments were either not intended to either be worn "on deck"; or were intended to be worn under other garments, e.g., under an officer's uniform coat. This would be consistent with the minimal wearing ease.  

My conclusion is that "Sheringham ganseys" were knit for officers. And the cost and fineness of these ganseys emphasized the authority and importance of the wearer. Standing watch on deck is a cold business. A common seaman had his work to keep him warm. Just standing on the deck, supervising others as they work was a cold, damp business.

Knitting shields, knitting sheaths, and leather knitting belts.

Twenty years of experimenting with knitting sheaths, knitting shields has taught me that they support at least a dozen different knitting techniques. Different techniques allow the production of different fabrics.  

I find that leather knitting belts work best with pointed needles, and thus are much superior for knitting lace. Leather knitting belts/pointed needles are the tool kit of choice for lace and Fair Isle.

In contrast, I find that knitting sheaths/shields work much better with blunt, and even flat ended needles. The connection of the knitting sheath to the needle is better, and there is less wear on the knitting sheath, and the needle is less likely break.

Flat ended, spring steel needles allow faster knitting, because motions can be smaller.  The right needle tip is slid (by flexing the needle) along the left needle, into the stitch to be knit. (The motion is driven by the large muscles of the upper arm. If I suddenly do a lot of knitting, it is my right deltoids and left bicep that get sore.) The motion of the right hand as it holds the working needle positions the finger carrying the yarn over the working needle's tip. Then a dip of the finger loops yarn over the working needle.  I release the pressure on the working needle, and spring action of the needle pops it out of  the old stitch. The relaxation of my arm  pulls the new stitch onto the right needle, keeping it from being dropped as the needle is flexed /slid into the next stitch on the left needle.  The angle between the needles must change by about 20 degrees when purling.  When you work out the required needle angle to allow the working needle to slide into the front of the stitch for purling, purling becomes just as fast.  I find switching back and forth between knitting and purling to be a bit slower, but still faster than anything I could do with  pointed needles. 

You may need to keep a crochet hook and a fine pointed needle handy to fix some problems. I also use them for bobbles. 

A leather knitting pouch and pointed needles will support very fast knitting, but the gauge will not be weatherproof gansey tight. For additional warmth, tried knitting Fair Isle (e.g., knitting a second yarn into the fabric).  This was warmer, but I never got to "weatherproof". When knitting tighter fabric, the fabric got  gets stiff before it gets "weatherproof". However, you can build a very warm comfortable fabric for wear in indoors or under an oil skin.)

 

Sheringham fabric

In Gladys Thompson, page 83 et seq.  there are a couple of ganseys done at tensions of 12 or 14 spi using 3 or 4-ply yarns. I had approached this using yarns spun for weaving and fine needles, but the fabric was never interesting enough to put the effort into.

However, with swaving, it is pretty reasonable to produce 14 spi from Froehlich Wolle Special Blauband.    (50 grams = 225 yards; 2043 ypp.)  The pricks are 1.5 mm.

I find this fabric  -- interesting.
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In this case, the WIP is a the thumb for a glove.

I bought this yarn when I still looked at yarn labels.  The yarn band recommends 30 stitches / 4 inches on US2  (2.5 -3 mm) needles. I found that fabric much too loose. I did not like that  fabric.  That is why I never did anything with this bin of yarn, and thereby still have it.