Sheringham Ganseys

 I have been interested in Sheringham Ganseys since I bought Gladys Thompson circa 2007.

By then the fine yarns needed for such fabrics were not common, and I was learning to spin yarns for Yorkshire style ganseys (e.g., 5-ply, 1,000 ypp). I spun those singles at 9 tpi and I plied those yarns at 9 ptpi. That made a nice yarn for weatherproof seaman's gear. I could spin an 8 ounce/ 500-yard hank of the 5-ply yarn in an easy 8- hour day. Spinning the yarn took about one-third as long as knitting the sweater, or hat or socks, or mittens.

I am now learning to spin "Sheringham yarns" that can be knit at 12 spi and 20 rpi. There are "swatches" everywhere. The socks I am wearing fit into that category. They are a pair, but they are knit from different yarns to test durability, and now I am getting results as one develops a hole.

I spin singles of 11,000 to 14,000 ypp at about 17 tpi. That is easy. They are lovely strong singles - I do not see such strong, durable singles on the market. Twist is expensive and yarn mills put as little twist as possible in their yarn and use "soft" as their selling point. If you are a fisherman, fishing every day, durable is more important than soft.

When plying the Yorkshire yarns, I could ply five singles of 5,600 ypp together and get a yarn of close to 1,000 ypp of grist. The math was easy!

With 17 tpi singles of 12,000 ypp, when I plied four together with 17 ptpi, I did not get a 2,700 ypp fingering that I want - it comes out closer to 900 ypp, and it knits at about 6 spi. The trick is to take the yarns fresh from spinning, and hang the singles wanted to make a yarn from, with a knot at the top and a small weight at the bottom. They will twist together to make a stable yarn. I count the twists per inch, and that is the ply twist I use to make the yarn.  Counting twist is easy if I put a single of the same grist/twist/fiber, but of a different color.

It turns out that with my 12,000 ypp singles, about 4-ply twists per inch to make a yarn element and then about 4-ply twists per inch to ply the yarn elements together produce a 2x2 ply cable that makes a good fingering yarn that will knit at ~ 12 spi and 20 rpi.

I have spun such singles from various yarns ranging from fiber varying from  Cotswold to Rambouillet.  It works. You may not want to knit such a sweater! It is a nice yarn for socks, mittens, and hats. Because of the high twist, the yarn and the objects made from it will be both warm and durable.

By 1320, the Italians were spinning yarns that fine, and machines for plying such yarns are in Leonardo Da Vinci's notebooks. Sheringham style fabrics were then available. We have just forgotten some of those skills.

The trick is that all this is much easier if you use a differential rotation flier/bobbin assembly. Alden Amos tells how they work in his book. After the book was published, many spinner wanted such spinning wheels. Alden and Henry Clemes made and sold a bunch of such wheels, but spinners returned those wheels because they could not figure out how to use them.

For the record, using a differential rotation flier/bobbin assembly I can spin a hank (500 yards) of 12,000 ypp single in about 2 hours.  I can use a standard 3" long spinning bobbin. I use flyer whorls for 17 tpi for spinning and 4 tpi whorls for plying.  Plying is super fast, so I can spin a hank (88 grams) of 4-ply fingering yarn that will knit at 20 spi in an easy day of spinning.  An ounce is ~ 170 yards, so the grist is ~2,800 ypp -- similar to the grist of the old Paton's Behive fingering.

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. 

 

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 a time when there were professional hand spinners making yarn on spinning wheels like mine (and as described in Alden Amos's Big Blue Book) and selling such yarns to hand knitters.

These were yarns called: Saxony Wool, Andalusian Wool, German Fingering, Berlin Wool, Peacock Fingering, Aurora Wool, Scotch Fingering . . . . .  Yes, in Victorian times they were produced in mills, but the packaging was based on the packaging from an earlier time when such yarns were hand spun. 

And, I have bowed to the practicality of the tradition, and I spin a hank (or so) of fine single, divide it on to plying bobbins, and ply 1 ounce balls of finished yarn.  My little yarn balls contain  between 100 and 150 meters of yarn.  

Yes, knitting from  a shoebox of little balls of yarn seems like a bother,  but if I was buying old stock of such fine yarns, they would come in 1 ounce balls.   I might as well make the yarn I want in 1 ounce balls, rather than just taking what is a available.

And, truth be told, if you are knitting on fine needles, every so often you need to get up and move about to restore circulation.  Getting up to get another ball of yarn is a good excuse to have another cup of tea.