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.

A Pile of lies

My last post was a pile of lies.

People often come after me, when I tell the truth, so I thought I would tell a pile of lies and see if anyone noticed.

They seem not to have noticed.

 First: "Ouvre", she said coyly. 
 (Gladys Thompson on page 5 of Patterns for Guernseys, Jerseys, and Arans, third edition, copyright 1979 by Dover Publications.) is true.  Note well, that she does not mention "Spain or Portugal".  What authors do not say is often as important as what they do say.  Experts often know what their audience wants to hear, and make a point of not saying what their their audience does not want to hear, but they got to be "experts" by by being careful not to lie.  They dance around the truth, and the astute reader must learn to recognize the dances.

Gladys Thompson, seems to define "jersey" as having a warmer and usually denser fabric than a guernsey, but the rest of the post contained nonsense.  Nobody seems to have noticed much, but I am sure that now MANY will come out of the woodwork saying "Oh, I saw the error of Aaron's ways, but Aaron makes so many mistakes that I did not bother to enumerate these!"

With hand-held needles, one way to get a denser fabric is Eastern Stitch Mount which is perhaps best handled with Portuguese knitting.  (Most of the time it is really Portuguese purling.)  If you must make traditional Eastern Crossed Stitch fabric (ECS) with hand held needles, then Portuguese knitting is the way to go. At this time, you should review the discussions in Knitting in the Old Way and Mary Thomas's Knitting Book.  However, better is https://abundantyarn.wordpress.com/2010/03/22/ways-of-knitting-part-1-introduction-to-stitch-mount/ and http://petitevie.net/?p=1206.

If you need a lot of ECS fabric in a hurry, then stop; and - well the best use of Eastern Crossed Stitch fabric is socks, and the best way to make small tubular objects such as socks or gloves is swaving - using a knitting sheath with bent needles called "pricks".  In the past, I had trouble with pricks longer than 6" jamming and not turning easily in their knitting sheath. Now, pricks as long as 8" are working well for me. With a knitting sheath and pricks, Portuguese knitting will just slow you down.  With the high leverage of a knitting sheath, there are smaller motions that will do the job much faster   The virtues of practice.

If you do not need Eastern Crossed Stitch fabric, but only a denser fabric, then any stitch mount can be used with a KNITTING SHEATH and finer needles. Stitch mount ceases to be an issue.

Particularly with knitting in the round, I can switch from eastern stitch mount to western or vice-versa, and a hour later, I cannot tell which stitches were knit with which stitch mount. I can only tell by looking at the transition row. If it is a finished object, then I must look at the cast-on row to determine stitch mount. And, if it is finely knit, I need my linen tester.  I do not think that GT always got a chance to examine the cast-on row with her linen tester and thus often made her guernsey/jersey classification by the geometry of the patterns and the density of the fabric.

The fact that finely knit stitches become change shape as the fabric is knit more finely is the reason that I moved from "stitches per inch" to "stitches per square inch".  In finely knit fabrics, the stitches per inch does not convey the density of the fabric.  That is,  there are different fabrics that can be knit from the same yarn that will have the same number of stitches per inch, but have very different densities, warmth, durability, and hand/drape. Defining both spi and rpi does define the fabric, and stitches per square inch does define both spi and rpi.

Inspection of of the patterns in Patterns  tells us that Gladys Thompson considered fabrics with moderate density to be  "guernsey".  If we then take "gansey" to mean knit from fine yarns, (e.g., more than 2,000 ypp), then a sweater knit from ~1,650 ypp for Dunraven 3-ply could be a guernsey.  Guernseys knit from finer yarns  (e.g.,  ~2,500 ypp for Paton's 4-ply Behive used on pg 85),  would  also be considered ganseys. Thus, it  would be possible to have a "gansey guernsey". Note that modern Jamieson's Shetland Spindrift also has a grist of ~2,500 ypp, but being only 2 plies, produces a stiffer fabric than the old Beehive 4-ply when knit at 12 spi by 20 rpi. See  Patterns for Guernseys, Jerseys and Arans, 3d ed. pages 83, 84 and 85.  

Note also that Weldon's also provides patterns for both seamen's guernseys and jerseys, allowing additional refining of the definitions.   Weldon's does not use the term "ganseys" 

This concept of finer plies producing finer fabric is why I bother to make my own 6-ply yarn at 1,650 ypp instead of just using commercial 3-ply sock yarn.  And, with all due respect to Alden Amos, more plies means a better hand/drape when knit fine. They used 5-ply for seaman's sweaters because it was warmer AND because it gave a better hand, AND because it was more durable. Real 10-ply Aran yarn makes a nice fabric when knit tight, 2 or 3-ply  Aran yarn makes less pleasant fabric when knit tight.  One can knit a very warm jumper from Jamieson's 2-ply Shetland Spindrift , but  4-ply Behive is about the same grist and will produce a warmer fabric with better hand when knit to the same gauge.  However, good luck finding commercial 2,500 ypp, 4-ply knitting yarns these days.  Good luck finding hand spinners that can produce 2,500 ypp 4-ply yarns these days.  You will likely have to order such a yarn from a mini-mill.  That is the difference between a skilled professional spinner, and a hobby hand spinner.  I am somewhere in between.  I am a hand spinner with a DRS wheel that makes spinning 2,500 ypp, 4-ply yarns easy.  I wish we had such spinning wheels for more hand spinners. with such a wheel, one can learn to spin such yarns in a few days.

I do think, the Channel Islands got knitting from the Islamic world very early, and started buying wool from England by the time of Henry Beauclerc, and knit/ sold sweaters to English seamen fishing the Icelandic waters in the 14th century, Portuguese fishermen taking cod in the North Atlantic in the 15th century, and the seamen that explored for Henry the Navigator.  I think it would be VERY odd if the origins of guernseys and jerseys were not knit eastern stitch mount. However, that was 70 generations ago.  Since then, knitters on the shores of the North Sea, the Baltic, the Finnish Sea, the Irish Sea, the English Channel, the Mediterranean, the China Sea, the Atlantic, and the Pacific have all been linked by sea commerce.  In the way of commerce, they have sought to produce better products faster and cheaper. Improvements include knitting pouches, and at least 3 rather specialized forms of knitting sheaths. 

With a proper knitting sheath, very fine fabrics can be knit at a practical pace using any stitch mount.

Hobby knitters like to pretend that they are knitting as fine and as fast as the knitters of old, and they have told each other this since the days of Queen Victoria.  Hobby knitting is an echo chamber. Experts dance around the truth and do not say differently.  They take traditional finely knit patterns and revise them to be less finely knit. (e.g., Nancy Bush and  Alice Starmore take patterns for utilitarian objects and convert them to make very pretty, but fragile objects.) Thereby, hobby level knitters can pretend they are knitting "ganseys".  I certainly took part in this echo chamber, and knit what everyone else was calling "ganseys". They are very good sweaters, but I no longer consider those sweaters to be "ganseys".   P. A Gibson-Roberts,  D. Robson, and E. Zimmerman have  likewise been careful not to tell some truths.  One such truth is that long DPN ("gansey needles") are not useful without a knitting belt or knitting sheath to help control the long needles.  These experts set-up generations of knitters to fail by telling them that guernseys and jerseys were mostly knit on long needles, and failing to mention that using a knitting sheath was more important than the length of needles.  For example, the commercial pattern, A Channel Islands' Guernsey / Patterns for Guernseys, Jerseys, and Arans specifies 11 DPN. I usually knit this pattern on 6 +1 DPN  that are 12" long because that knitting sheath works well in the stuffed chair in front of the TV.  However, when I am in a hurry I use 18" gansey needles because they are faster. (Piece work knitters always wanted more speed.) However, with the 18" needles,  I need to sit in the wooden chair by the kitchen window where that knitting sheath works. (It rubs on my overstuffed chair.)  Nevertheless,  I can make good progress on  "A Channel Islands' Guernsey", in a doctor's office, or in the car or on an airplane using 8" DPN and (another) knitting sheath, or even just a leather knitting belt. The 8" needles provides less leverage, so there is more stress on my hands, but not enough extra stress to be a problem in less than a few weeks. (I noticed again this morning that the 12" needles used Friday evening, produce a more uniform fabric than the 8" needles used for KIP yesterday.  This was not a surprise.  The 8" needles with sheath produce a better fabric than I can knit with hand-held needles, but the 12" needles produce an excellent fabric.)

The main thing that a knitting belt or knitting sheath provides is stability that facilitates  the use of very fine needles. And, a steel needle with a knitting sheath allows knitting faster, so that the greater number of stitches that a fine fabric requires can be accomplished in a reasonable time. Knitting sheaths allow knitting a higher quality fabric. 

Guernseys vs. Jerseys

"Ouvre", she said coyly.
 (Gladys Thompson on page 5 of Patterns for Guernseys, and Arans, third edition, copyright 1979 by Dover Publications.)

Guernseys were knit with either Western Stitch Mounting or Combined Stitch Mounting.

Jerseys were knit using Eastern Stitch Mount.

The Eastern Stitch Mount produces a tighter fabric; and, a stitch that is more more square.  How the stitch is mounted affects the shape of the knit stitch.

Western and Eastern Stitch Mount do produce different fabrics, that can be distinguished by folks that have worked with both knitting methods.  The folks in Yorkshire often confuse these fabrics, and are not careful with what they call these fabrics. Jerseys have won "guernsey" knitting competitions, so even knitting judges in Yorkshire are willing to call a "jersey", a "guernsey". Their failure to be precise and accurate in their textile nomenclature is not my problem.

Rather my goal is to knit better fabrics, and understanding how stitch mount affects the  fabric is important. For me,  guernseys and jerseys are different fabrics, with different virtues, made with different knitting techniques.

However, knitting the gauge of guernseys and jerseys does require a knitting sheath or knitting belt of some kind to provide the leverage to pack the yarn tightly.  Thus, here we have two different knitting methods that produce different fabrics, but which use similar knitting sheaths.


I have been thinking about for "Ouvre" for sometime now.  Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, is the solution.  In this case. it also involved realizing that there is a serious error in Mary Thomas's discussion of stitch mount in her Knitting Book.  It is still a very good book.