Notes from Sheringham

 

Knitting “Sheringham” fabrics has been a goal since I first picked up Patterns for Guernseys, Jerseys, and Arans by Gladys Thompson some 15 years ago. From Cod by Mark Kurlansky, we know that by 1415 Sheringham was rich from Cod fishing. (See for example, the St. Nicolas Chapel bench ends carved circa 1415, and now in the V&A Museum, London.)  In 1415, Norfolk was the homeport of fleets of “square rigged” ships and the crews that maned those fleets. Sheringham had a long, long tradition of knowing how to keep seamen working in the rigging during foul weather and remain warm enough to function. (These days weather reports allow ships to go around storms, and regulations forbid work in the rigging during storm conditions. Last time I saw professional sailors working in the rigging of a historic tall ship, their uniforms were all synthetic fiber.)

Square rigged ships required men working in the rigging, continuously in all weather. Staying warm in wet and windy conditions while above deck required light, stretchy, weatherproof clothing.  We have lost the skills of making such garments.

The Sheringham “ganseys” in Thompson were notably knit from thinner yarns than other British fishing/navy ganseys.  The Sheringham knitting yarns mentioned by Thompson ranged from about 1,600 ypp to about 2,500 ypp. There are stocks and stashes of such yarns still around, but they are rare, and as rare objects command a premium price. Last summer, I was learning to knit such objects, so I was not going to pay a premium price for yarn for practice knitting.

Finely spun yarns inherently require a lot more twist, and thus are stronger, more durable, and warmer for their weight. Finely spun yarns can be knit tighter, allowing the resulting fabrics to be more durable and warmer. The Sheringham ganseys are the ghost of such traditions.

Sheringham ganseys as we know them, were knit from machine spun yarns, and such yarns are well balanced meaning that ply-twist balances the twist in the singles. The geometry of hand spinning, combined with human nature means that fine, high-twist, hand spun yarns will frequently not be well balanced. When unbalanced yarns are knit, the columns of stitches tend to slant to the right or left. And due to changes in spinning technology, yarns spun prior to 1500, tended to be even more unbalanced.

Modern knitters have not had to deal with such unbalanced yarns for a couple hundred years. Yes, we still have hand spinners, but they do not (commonly) spin knitting yarns based on high twist singles of 10,000 or 15,000 yards per pound (or finer). Old timers did spin and knit such yarns, and they knit them into nice, neat vertical columns of stitches that do not slant.  It was not just a matter of fulling and blocking the fabric; they knew how to knit biased yarns into nice, vertical columns of stitches that do not slant.

Modern knitters, (using milled yarns) mostly use uncrossed stitches, With uncrossed stitches, if you knit a 2,500 ypp hand spun, 4-ply yarn, the columns of stitches will tend to slant to the left if the singles were spun “S” and the ply twist was “Z”.  Hand spun yarns with Z singles twist and S ply twist will tend to slant right. These yarn faults can be discovered in the gauge swatch and fixed by adjusting the ply twist.  Slants can also be controlled by using “crossed stitches”.

Mary Thomas’s Knitting Book does discuss fabric construction on page 50 et seq, in my Dover edition, but she does not address the use of crossed stiches to control ply bias or the use of knitting sheaths needed to produce useful quantities of such fine stitches.  If you are knitting 20 spi, there are better geometries for holding knitting needles than Mary Thomas shows, and you will need a knitting sheath. So far, my only success with such knitting required finely pointed needles, but I am just a beginner. As I worked up the learning curve, the words muttered under my breath likely offended every god known to man.

Knitting crossed (or twisted) stitches produces a thicker, warmer fabric than uncrossed stitches produce from the same yarn. Crossed stitches also produce more elastic fabric, better suited to belts, garters, bandages, etc. A gansey knit for seaman using crossed stitches did not need the stitch patterns added to modern ganseys knit from mill yarns with uncrossed stitches to provided stretch and freedom of movement.

I moved my spinning wheel to the patio and started spinning like a demon.  Singles of different wools worsted spun at grist of 8,000 ypp to 12,000 ypp.  As you can guess, single’s twist was per Alden Amos Big Book of Handspinning chart on pg 383 for firm and hard spun. Then the singles were plied into 2, 3, and 4-ply yarns. I did not always get the ply twist correct.

When knit, most of my fine yarns showed significant ply-twist bias.  Flat knitting became parallelograms that firmly resisted being blocked square. Columns of stitches knit in the round would spiral up the tube. I had spun and plied kilometers of 5-ply, 1,000 ypp gansey yarn without ply bias, and I was stumped. My 3-ply 1,680 ypp yarns knitted perfectly.  Spun “medium” firm there was less problem with ply-twist bias, but the yarns seemed too weak to be the base of a working man’s garment. There was much less problem in small samples.  The worst problems were in the 4-ply, 2,500 ypp yarns, produced in hanks of 560 yards. Ultimately the problem was traced to fact that the singles changed the effective diameter of the spinning bobbin less than the 4-ply changed the effective diameter of the spinning bobbin, so the 4-ply yarn got less twist while plying, and the yarn was twist biased. (It is hard for a hand spinner to maintain a 12 tpi ply-twist over a length of 560 yards.)

What was clear early on, was these yarns with grist of 1,600 ypp to 2,500 ypp could be knit into fabrics that were both water repellant and weatherproof. In fact, I could knit these yarns into fabrics with a greater weight per area than the weatherproof fabrics that I knit from 5-ply, 1,000 ypp gansey yarn. Ya!! Get out your itty-bitty needles and you can knit a warmer fabric from finer yarn. However, if you make the yarn yourself, and you knit it as we were all trained to knit – the knit fabric will show ply-bias.

On the other hand, the stitches are so small that they can be made very quickly.

In such periods of confusion, I tend to reread Mary Thomas’s Knitting Book. There, she says that [uncrossed stitches] are currently [1938] more popular. However, through the Middle Ages [crossed stitch knitting] was the more popular. The great fishing fleets of Sheringham developed in the High Middle Ages and extended to Late Middle ages. The original gansey production skills likely developed at a time when crossed (or twisted) knitting stitches were more popular. Today, the terms have been corrupted to mean other things. We have lost the skill.

I think that circa 1415, Norfolk hand spinners, spun fine, high-twist woolen yarns, that were finely knit with crossed stitches. The crossed stitches substantially reduced the effect of ply-bias and allowed knitting square panels of fabric. Thus, the St. Nicolas Chapel bench ends were bought with money resulting from men wearing garments knit using crossed stitches from woolen spun yarns being warm enough to catch fish.

I think that circa 1450, Differential Rotation Speed spinning wheel technology (DRS) arrived in Britain, which allowed faster and easier production of worsted spun yarns. This new technology reduced the cost and increased the availability of the more lustrous worsted fabrics that we see in Tudor period paintings. DRS also allowed better control of twist in both the singles, and the ply-twist of yarns, allowing the faster and easier uncrossed knitting.  It became cheaper to produce 5-ply, 1,000 ypp yarn than 4-ply 1,600 ypp yarn. (The finer singles need more twist, so the twist ply must be greater to balance, and twist was the most expensive part of making yarn.)  Time needed to produce a seaman’s “gansey” from raw wool dropped from weeks to days.

I think DRS technology allowed the faster production of worsted yarns and fabrics that drove the fashion revolution known as “The New Drapery” at the beginning of the Tudor period.  Historians looking at social drivers of will see The New Drapery as a result of the Tudors as a newly dominate social group. I think DRS spinning technology affected Tudor era fashion; just as synthetic fibers and double-knit technology has affected our fashion industry over the last 50 years.

Fabric knit uncrossed is thinner than fabric knit crossed. Thus, I think the patterns in fisherman’s ganseys needed to protect the men from bruising and banging against spars, rigging and rails such as the patterns in Thompson began to be introduced circa 1450 as a result of the thinner fabrics produced by the faster uncrossed knitting. Nevertheless, I think the patterns produced by a knitter knitting crossed stitches can be just a distinctive, identifiable, and protective as stitch patterns produced by knitting uncrossed.

This project highlighted the difference between a knit fabric being water repellent and being “weatherproof”. With good fulling and oiling, a knit wool fabric can be water repellent enough to support a pool of water for hours, and still not be weatherproof enough to keep one warm in foul weather.  You can make a fabric that will support a pool of water, and you put the object on, and it is cold, it makes you cold and you stay miserable cold for hours. On the other hand, when one puts on a knit garment that is knit tightly enough that it is weatherproof, it feels cold for the first few minutes, then the wool that touches your skim dries, and protects your skin from the still wet, cold bulk of the fabric. A weatherproof fabric feels warm within minutes, even if the outer layers of the fabric are still wet.  A weatherproof knit fabric is tight enough to stop air flow through the fabric. That requires a much tighter fabric than one that will just stop liquid water.  (For the first time in a long while, Mother Nature has been sending me rain for testing wool objects. I have been knitting hats and walking in the rain.)

On the other hand, one can knit a fabric that is almost weatherproof and full/oil it so that it becomes water repellent. This summer’s studies have driven home the fact that just because a fabric will support a pool of water, does not mean that the fabric is weatherproof. Producing a fabric that is just water repellant and not fully weatherproof is MUCH less knitting effort, and it produces a more comfortable (in fine weather) and lighter object. I am sorry, after 21 years of knitting and 15 yeas of spinning, I am still learning the fine points of fulling knit wool.  Not many classes on wool fulling wool at “Stitches”.

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Until I see something to the contrary, I am going to think that “Ouvre” refers to a use of crossed stitches in traditional Jersey knitting. I think Sheringham and Jersey reflect ghosts of old knitting traditions (e.g., fine yarns and crossed stitches) that have been lost elsewhere.  

I think Guernsey delt with the problem of ply-twist bias by spinning thicker, lower twist yarns, and this tradition was adopted by knitters in what is now Britain. While Jersey corrected ply-twist bias by knitting with crossed stitches. This allowed them to use finer yarns. With mechanical spinning, the use of fine yarns was retained, while the laborious crossed stitch knitting was replaced with the modern, faster, easier, uncrossed knitting.

Nevertheless, I live in hope of finding a faster and easier technique to produce crossed stitch knitting.