Love and Hate of the Classics

Over the years, I have had a love and hate relationship with Paton's Classic Wool (PCW).


A large swatch of Paton's Classic Wool knit on 2.4 mm needles was the  was the first clue that I was on the right track.  However, ultimately I generally decided that  the fabric that I was producing was not worth the effort, resulting in a large number of WIP sitting around.  Finer needles seemed like more effort for not that much better fabric.

Exploration of blunt needles over the last few months has allowed exploration of knitting PCW on finer needles.

Knit on 2 mm needles, I get 9 spi and 12.5 rpi for 112.5 stitches per square inch, and on 1.6 mm needles I get 9.5 spi and 12.5 rpi for 118.75 stitches per square inch.

While the numbers are similar, the fabrics are different. In fact, the numbers would seem not that far off of the 7 spi by 10 rpi (70 stitches per square inch),  that I get with 2.38 mm needles, and yet the 3 fabrics are very different.

Knit on the 1.6 mm  needles, the fabric has a smoother surface that allows water to just run off in ways that just does not happen with the fabrics knit on larger needles. It is also surprisingly abrasion resistant.

Knit on the 2 mm, the fabric is thicker and has more surface texture, but is still very weatherproof.  The extra thickness/ softness gives better drape, and the surface can be brushed into a very nice nap.  Over all, the fabric knit on 2 mm needles is softer and wickedly warm.  It is a nice Guernsey fabric, that is much, much warmer than what most folk knit as "gansey" fabric.

These fabrics are firm, so they need to be knit to fit, rather than knit from a generic pattern.  However, these fabrics have more stretch and elastisity than woven fabrics.  They can form a warm second skin that allows free and easy movement.  And, they have tremendous warmth for the weight.

In many ways, these are fabrics that I have been trying to knit since 1998, but I did not have the tools and skills to knit.  Oh, there were hints, such as the fact that "mak'n pins", were often only 1.5 mm in the old days.  When I first read that, I should have jumped forward to 1.5 mm needles.  And, when I read about how long it took a professional knitter to make a set of needles.  That should have told me that they are not tapered to the tip, but rather blunt.

And, you are not going to get to PCW knit at 70 stitches per square inch with circular needles. I have knit small swatches of such fabrics on circs, but that convinced me that sweaters from such fabrics were not plausible. I tried over and over. Swatches of these fabrics can be knit with a knitting belt, but those swatches told me that that it imposed significant wear on my knitting belt. so I moved on to wooden knitting sheaths.  Maple, rosewood, and even cherry, endure the stress very well. I got here using 12" blunt needles with my latest generation of knitting sheaths.

My point is not that PCW is the best yarn, only that it is a very good yarn, and a great value. And it sets new standards for hand spun - it tells us that rather generic woolen yarns can be knit into great objects. It opens the door for finer fabrics knit from finer woolen yarns.  And, it suggests that generic worsted spun yarns can produce great fabrics. And, if that is the case, why is there such a variance in price?

The evolution of my knitting sheaths, 

with newer sheaths to the left.

The needles on the left are old.

The horizontal knitting sheaths were made in the last 3 months, and the vertical sheaths are older.   The gansey needles are 10 years old. (And, for large objects, longer needles are faster!)  Sizes of needles in photo range from US1 to US0000, and all can be accommodated with various needle adapters in the photo.  Special needle adapters are made for swaving.  Number and color of bands on the adapters indicate size, and placement of the band(s) indicates gansey or swaving. These needle adapters work better with the swaving needles than the knitting sheaths that the swaving needles were originally made to fit.  (However, currently the swaving needle adapters work better with my Durham style knitting sheaths. The Durham sheaths put the swaving needles into a better ergonomic zone.)

Note that the needle adapters allow use of one sheath with many different sets of needles.  The knitting sheaths work much better when they are made to fit one style of work belt, and are then used with  the belt they were made to fit.  Between the old and new knitting sheaths are (on the block of maple)  examples of  the threaded inserts currently used to attach the needle adapters to the knitting sheaths.

In the context of thousands of hours of planned knitting, taking a couple of hours to make a knitting sheath that might increase productive by a couple of percent is perfectly rational, regardless of the discount rate.   When those same knitting sheaths move better fabrics from the realm of plausible dreams into practical reality, it is silly, not to be making better and better knitting sheaths.

I keep the old knitting sheaths around to later, check, verify, and validate the data related to each transition.  As Feynman said, "It is important not to  fool yourself."