The Craftsman

"Craftsman" is a traditional term referring to  people of all genders that make fine objects and materials.

The craftsman sets out to make the "best" (aesthetics, durability, functionality) object or material  possible given available "resources" (skills, materials, tools) possible in the available "schedule" and available "budget".  

Everything a craftsman makes is some sort of compromise between quality (or scope), resources, budget, and schedule.

A "philosopher" makes something to discover some insight into into how the universe works. A wandering philosopher is not focused on a narrow topic.

I assert that an understanding of how fine objects can be produced from wool, tells us much about the life of our ancestors. Further, I assert that much of this knowledge was lost in Victorian times, and thereby offers a great opportunity for a wandering philosopher. 

I think knowledge once known, and now forgotten, is just as interesting  and valuable to rediscover as new knowlege is to discover.  I have built atomic particle accelerators and atomic particle detectors - and it was a lot of effort. Today, I can learn stuff that is just as interesting playing with a bit of wool.

There are all kinds of things that people tell me about working with wool that are just plain wrong.

Back in the fall of 1971 on the first day of Chemical Engineering 110, the professor said "Read Chapter 6 in the Text carefully; there will be a test on Tuesday".  On Tuesday, the question on the test was  "Discuss the theorem on page 56 of the text in excruciating detail",  and there were 7 sheets of paper to give us space to write our answer. My answer was, " The proof of the theorem violates the assumption of continuity in the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus."  I got full credit for my answer; 464 of 500 students flunked that test, and thereby flunked out of ChemE. 110.  

The important lesson that Dr. Long taught us that day is: "Do not accept what people say until you are satisfied that it is correct."  (He had asked each of us if we knew our calculus, and  required an affirmative to let us into the class. Dr. Long did not waste his time on students that lied about knowing calculus. ) 

So, how did wool workers lose the differential rotation speed flyer/bobbin assembly for worsted spinning?  How did wool workers lose knitting sheaths?  And of course, you need a knitting sheath to make blunt needles practical - even if they allow knitting (uncrossed stiches) much faster.  

There was a time when I was fascinated by "black holes in space".  Now, I am just as fascinated by high grist woolen yarns knit "cross stitch". How was it done at commercial speed? From here it seems impossible, yet I know it was done. The required skills (and tools?) have been lost. When, high grist woolen yarns were knit with twisted stitches, it was also common for high grist woolen yarns to be woven. That is another skill that has been lost. How was it done?

Planning

 As usual, I have a sweater in progress. It will be about 100,000 stiches.  It is a worsted weight yarn, knit on 2.3 mm needles knit at 7.5 spi /10 rpi, so it is a nice firm fabric, but not weatherproof.   As I knit up the torso, the knitting log shows I am knitting the torso at just under an inch per hour - something in the neighborhood of 3,000 stitches per hour. That sounds like ~50 stitches per minute. 

However, I make coffee, and drink coffee, and decant the used coffee, so truth of the matter is that I am only knitting about 48 minutes in each hour, so when I am actually knitting, I am knitting more like 60 or 70 stitches per minute. 

Allowing for the coffee and sticky buns, these days, I plan on 3,000 stitches per hour of knitting.

I figure the sweater will actually take ~35 hours. At 8 hours of knitting per day, that is bit over 4 days of knitting and some finishing. I expect it to be finished the middle of next week.

14 years ago, I tried Lever Knitting/Irish Cottage - and there was no way in the world that I could knit this object in 5 consecutive days using Lever Knitting.  In those days, there was a knitting group, and one of  the frequent attendees was a lever knitter. One day she  sat next to me, my knitting sheath, and my pointy sock needles, I knit 7 stitches to her 5.  I had been knitting there for hours when she came in, and I continued knitting long after she left. As she left, many in the group commented on how fast she knit. Her knitting was a bold display of her new engagement ring. 

My knitting was done quietly in my lap, and nobody noticed how fast I was knitting, because my motions were so small. Because my motions were so small, they could be very fast. Now that I have learned to use blunt needles, my knitting motions can be much smaller - and much faster.  The smaller motions are less effort, and I can knit for longer periods of time. .My record is 9 consecutive 10 hour days. (At the time it was my record for fastest knitting of a Gladys Thomas gansey.)  Also, knitting sheaths support a variety of equally effective knitting styles that are driven by different muscles - as one set of muscles gets tired, they can be rested by using a different style of  knitting.  

I will not say you can knit while asleep, but you can knit in the gloom of a movie theater or with your eyes closed.  

Knitting fast revisited

 When I came back to knitting, circa 1999,  I was told a lot of things - circular needles are faster, Continental knitting style is faster, pointy needles are faster, gansey needles are faster, and finally, the old professional knitters used knitting sheaths, so knitting sheaths are faster. 

I tried very pointy gansey needles in knitting sheaths, and for 12 years that seemed the best combination I could find. It allowed me to knit a good, weatherproof gansey in 9 to 12 days (without damaging my wrists).  That seemed faster than anyway, anyone else was knitting weatherproof ganseys.

About 2015, I started experimenting with blunt needles used with knitting sheaths. It works very well. There are a lot of "knacks" that have to be learned. Purling and knitting require very different needle positions. However, needle motions can be very small and use the spring motion of  spring steel needles fixed in a knitting sheath. The physics tells me that it can be much faster than "Irish Lever".  

The bottom line is that now, with 5 years of practice with blunt needles used with a knitting sheath, I can knit a good (but plain) weatherproof gansey in 4 days. The key elements are good tools for the job, and a high level of skill in knitting that kind of an object.  Now, I believe those accounts of professional hand knitters circa 1840, knitting a good gansey in 3 days.   Those professional knitters did not use generalized knitting tools. They used knitting tools refined by generations of professional knitters to the production of specific objects.  This  has been confused by a period when it was fashionable for men to carve token knitting sheaths for their wife or sweetheart. Neither giver or receiver were expert knitters, so the knitting sheaths had more sentimental value than practical utility.  As sentimental objects, those less refined knitting sheaths have contaminated and confused our knowlege of good, functional knitting sheaths.

I make good knitting sheaths, I use them, they wear out, and I discard them. An experienced user of knitting sheaths, knows knitting sheaths wear out, so instead of putting a lot of effort embellishing one, one puts the same labor into a series of  knitting sheaths, so the loved one always has a highly functional knitting sheath. It is much better to have a working (but plain) knitting sheath, than to have an embellished but worn out knitting sheath with no practical use.

For a long time, it took me 3-days to spin the yarn for a gansey and 10-days to knit that yarn.  I thought knitting must always take a lot more manhours than spinning.  Now, I have to reevaluate my model of  the economics of production of seaman's slops.  Spinning and knitting seem to have about equal inputs to a knit object. And, seamen's ganseys were likely less costly than I had thought, and much less costly than thought by the the knitters who assumed it took months to knit a good gansey because it took them months to finish a gansey.  I expect many a bright eyed, nimble fingered "herring girl" could knit a very good seaman's gansey in 40-hours, because they had done so for their father, brothers, and cousins.

Since I have been using knitting sheaths, I have said that half the skill is figuring out to how fasten the sheath in place.  One issue is that for knitting different kinds of objects, different kinds of needles are used, which need to be supported at different heights.  Modern fashions involving belt loops/belts tend to interfere with the proper, secure, and comfortable placement of  some knitting sheaths.   I no longer wear pants with belt loops when I am knitting.

Also, serious knitting will cause rapid wear in knit sweat pants. Yes, an apron reaching from chest to knees is to serious knitting what gloves are to serious skiing. (Every hobby has its need for gear!) Holes in all my sweat pants have pushed me to wear a leather apron when knitting.

And having discarded a bunch of rather fancy knitting sheaths in the last few months, I am back to very a simple, plain, but very functional knitting sheath held in place with an old, soft, work belt.  I have newer and prettier belts, but old and soft works for the current knitting sheath of choice.  It is paired with 5 spring steel, flat ended knitting needles. 

If you want learn to knit fast, I suggest practice with fine sock yarn and 1.5 mm needles. That develops the small, precise motions that are necessary for fast knitting. And, a little bit of yarn lets you make a lot of stiches,  which is a lot of practice, and practice makes perfect. Over the last few months, I was practicing Sheringham style fabrics knit finely from high grist yarns. I found a byproduct was that I knit a lot faster.

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. 

 

More crossed stitches

 I have been working on crossed stitches for a while now - there were little swatches, some approaches did not work, some sort of worked. So, I stared doing bigger swatches to see if the approaches might work with a lot more practice.

This last week the swatches were hats. And, I woke up this morning feeling like I had been doing contests with Bruce Lee on who could do the most pushups on fingertips. I knew the feeling - my tools were wrong.

I had been using 7" pointed 2.25 mm steel needles.  I went back to the tool chest, and dug out the Shetland Making Pins I bought a long time ago and had not used for years and years. Fourteen inches of stiff, polished, pointed, steel; 3/32" in diameter.  They went into a knitting sheath that hangs below my belt.

An Edison moment; the right tools for knitting a hat from 2-ply woolen yarn with crossed stitches. 

The take away- - Old School Tools work for Old School Knitting.  I think this is the reason that crossed stitches have been less popular since Victorian knitters tried to do away with traditional knitting tools.