My Technique

 Yesterday, I wrote a summary of my knitting techniques for fine yarns, and sent it off into the either. This morning it seemed disgustingly vague. I thought I should make and send a video.

The fine needles certainly were not going to show on a video, so I went back to 2.3 mm gansey needles. 

My favorite springy knitting technique uses blunt 18" long 2.3 mm spring steel needles. The knitting sheath is over the right buttock, and the working needle arches under the right armpit with the right forearm/wrist resting on it. The left needle is only about 20 degrees off vertical. This is the first industrial knitting technique that I learned. However, it does not work with 1.5 mm needles and smaller. It is not a path to Sheringham.

While I have needle adapters to allow the knitting sheaths I use for fine needles to accept the 2.3 mm needles, when using the thicker, stiffer needles, the knitting sheath needs to be secured much more firmly.  The truth is that fine needles and "gansey needles" want very different knitting sheaths worn very differently.

Yesterday, in my mind, the spring loaded knitting technique that I use for fine knitting with 12" long 1.5  mm needles, was very similar to the spring loaded knitting technique that I use for 18" long 2.3 mm gansey needles. The concept is similar, but ALL the details are different, and in knitting, details matter. They both use the spring action of spring steel needles. They both work much better with blunt needles. They both use small motions driven by shoulder muscles. Details such as where and how the knitting sheath is placed, the orientation of the needles, and where the needles flex are all different.

Yesterday, in my mind, there were 3 knitting concepts that I could use to produce weatherproof fabrics. I thought these were knitting techniques. No, they were just ideas. 

In fact, I use 3 different knitting techniques using the spring of steel needles. One works with 2.3 mm needles, one with 2 mm needles, and one works with fine needles. The description I sent out was vague, because these 3 techniques were all jumbled together in my head, and I was trying to describe a dozen knitting techniques as 2 knitting techniques, one using spring loaded flexing needles, and one using stiff needles   My muscles know what works, but I did not have the 3 techniques well defined in my head.  These were issues I tend to work out as I swatch and assemble project kits. I have an idea for a fabric, and then I figure out how to knit the fabric.

 For example, there is a classic description of  knitting gloves very fast (using a knitting sheath) with the needles being pushed down and forward.  With pointy needles, this motion does not get you to "fast". With short stiff, blunt needles, one must push down and then pull up and the motion gets you to "fast". With short, blunt, 2 mm needles, you push down, loop the yarn, relax, and the spring of the needle finishes the stitch, very fast.  However, that spring only works for a limited range of needle diameters, which means the technique only works for a limited range of yarns. This is a specialized technique for people that need to knit many small objects quickly - and are willing to put in the effort to find the right knitting sheath, the right needles, and the right yarn. If you learn this technique as knitter in a glove factory, they will teach you which knitting sheath to use, how to use it, which needles to use, and they will supply the yarn.  This is not a path to Sheringham.

Above are two perfectly good, fast to very fast knitting techniques using a knitting sheath. With finer, springy needles and finer yarns, and a slightly different motion you can produce a different fabric  - Is this another technique? For me, it takes a different project kit, and produces a different fabric, and yet conceptually it is springy, blunt needles being pushed down and forward, yarn looped and needles allowed to spring back finishing the stitch.

I knew it was a glove making technique, so I did an evolution to learn it , starting with 2.3 mm by 6" needles.  It took a while, (as measured in buckets of swatches.)  At the end  of the evolution, I had 12" long, 1.5 mm needles in my hand and loved the spring action of the needles, so I thought I should do an evolution to learn about sock fabric.  With 12" long 1.3 mm needles the spring action is gone, but with 6" blunt 1.3 mm needles the motions are so small and so easy, that knitting can be very fast in stitches per minute, (if not so much in gloves per day.) I think the fine, tight fabric acts as a spring. This is not a path to Sheringham.

I am not done with my evolution to learn sock fabric. Last night I ripped out  what I had knit (slowly) on 1.3 mm needles because I decided that with appropriate wet finishing, I could get as good a result with knitting done much faster on 1.5 mm needles.

Yes , there was a reason for professional knitters to have a long apprenticeship.  

My guess is that it took 1,000 knitters, 200 years to find a good path to Sheringham ganseys, and then, they stayed on that path for 700 years. For various reasons, I expect many of those knitters seeking that path were in the Channel Islands, Brittany, and Portugal.