Gansey Needles Revisited

I went to 18”, pointy gansey needles because that was the conventional wisdom on what was used to  knit fine ganseys, and I wanted very fine ganseys. It took me a long time to learn to make them really useful. Folks sold “gansey kits” of yarn and needles, but the long pointy needles are not useful without a knitting sheath that can be fastened over the right buttock.  The physics are strongly against hand held “gansey” needles.  And, long steel pointy needles have issues - I had to get bigger knitting bags to hold 18” knitting needles.  I had to make point guards to keep them from sliding right through the fabric of my knitting bags. And, pointy needles cause more wear on knitting sheaths.  On the other hand, the spring action of these needles driven in a vertical motion by the weight of my right hand, was the very fastest and easiest way I knew how to knit.

However, for the last few years, I have been making better knitting sheaths that can attach to a strong belt below the right elbow.  These sheaths can comfortably take the stress of flexing the 3/32” spring steel that I like for knitting cold weather gear.

Now that I am using blunt needles, less needle motion is required, and I can get the required motion from 12” needles.  The motion is still driven by the weight of my hand, so it is a very fast, low effort way of knitting.  I use 6+1 needles for a gansey to fit my ample girth, so the weight of a set of needles remains the same, but they fit in a much smaller bag, and because they are blunt, I do not have to worry about them going through the bag.  Overall, 18” needles are faster because there are fewer needle changes.  With long needles, if you have some space to spread out without poking someone with your needles, you can use vertical or horizontal motions that change the working muscle, without changing the fabric (with practice).  And, 18” US3 needles is the only way I know how to do good tight weatherproof Aran (10-ply/500 ypp) fabrics.

 

(If you are doing brioche stitch or lots of bobbles, stick with pointy needles and a not too splitty yarn.)

These days, I often use finer sock needles, so I can get almost the same motion from 9” needles, but the needles are soft enough to flex sideways (or vertically) with just the effort from the base of my thumb, opening up additional styles of knitting small objects. Since, I now use the same needle adapters for straight needles and swaving pricks, in a small knitting bag, I have the tools for a good variety of knitting styles that quickly produce good uniform knitting, for when I need to get a knit object finished quickly without over working one set of muscles/joints. If you are going to knit seriously, you need different knitting techniques that use different muscles, but which produce identical fabric. The shorter needles also allow knitting in the car or plane or boat.  Long gansy needles (even blunt needles) are not well suited to knitting on public transportation.

One can make a good pair of fine, warm socks in a couple of days. If you can get someone else to drive, you can get much of the work done on the ride up to camp.  And yes, I still think the motion of the longer needles is smoother. But swaving works very well even on rather rough roads.

In the old days, I often knit while walking and hiking – I saw the old pictures of people knitting as they walked and thought it was “cool”. After I discovered knitting sheaths and knitting belts, I found that knitting sheaths were not very good while walking, and I decided that hand-held needles could not produce the quality of knitting that I could make with knitting sheaths/knitting belts.  Thus, I gave up on knitting-while-walking. If I am going to knit, I sit or stand in one place. Knitting with a knitting sheath while standing does work fairly well.  In Jane Austin’s time (and before), women often had knitting sheaths in the form of jewelry stitched to the gowns they wore to social assemblies, so they could knit lace while they stood together and talked. The first time I went to the V&A, such knitting sheaths were only labeled as “jewelry”.  It is worth noting that Jane Austin did not knit.

Better Knitting sheaths

The usefulness of a knitting sheath depends on many things, what one is knitting, the chosen technique, and what one is wearing.  It also depends on the posture; sitting (lounging) in my  yellow leather chair in front of the TV offers a different posture than sitting in a straight backed chair, or the seats in my wife's car, or in the kitchen chairs.  A specialist, who knits in one chair, wearing business clothing, can have one specialized knitting sheath.  I have spent much of the last couple of years lounging in that big yellow chair wearing a sweat suit, leather apron, with a wide leather belt and a knitting sheath - and it was good knitting but it was never just right.  The knitting sheaths wanted a more upright posture - like the one in the kitchen chairs.

Then, recently we visited friends at Textures in Santa Monica.  My knitting perch there is a bar stool that enforces proper posture.  For that travel project, I had summer boot socks from a 6-strand cabled, worsted weight yarn, knit on 2 mm needles to produce a 7 spi by 9 rpi fabric, and I really wanted a better knitting sheath.

Even with a knitting sheath, it is a significant effort to produce that density of fabric with 6" or even 9" sock needles.  Oh, it can be done, but it is an effort. However, with 12" needles, it becomes routine knitting.

Thus, I needed a knitting sheath that allowed use of 12" needles, when traveling - when wearing jeans or Dockers, and the belt holding my knitting sheath goes through the belt loops.  This brings me back to my often repeated statement the the hardest part of using a knitting sheath is learning how to keep it in place.  I needed a knitting sheath that would always in the right place when used with a belt at the height of jeans belt loops.

There were a lot of prototypes and mis-steps:

In baby steps, I got to:

These thread onto the belt, so they are not lost in transit, and the 6" can be flipped to work with 6" sock needles or 12" "gansey needles" or 6" swaving needles.  The 4" version works with 6" sock or swaving needles and with the needle adapter at the bottom, works with 8" to 10"  DPN.

With the needle adapter angled out a bit, this style of knitting sheath provides the same spring effect knitting as 18" gansey needles with the knitting sheath over the right buttock.  Knitting while sitting on a bench, the long needles are still faster, but in with most modern seating, having the knitting sheath under the right elbow provides better access, and hence is faster.

The parts are fairly simple once one thinks it though :

However, this is not the end.

We can change the form-factors a bit so that needle adapters work as as tightening knobs:

This knitting sheath now works very well for either 2 mm or 2.25 mm needles in either 12"  or 6" lengths, including swaving pricks, I think one knitting sheath that works well with 6 different kinds of needles is neat.  If you remember, when I first worked with goose wings, I was very impressed  with the power of the knitting technique where the goose wing rocked on the tip of the hip.  A very similar technique emerges from this knitting sheath by loosening the tightening knob so the shaft holding the needle adapter can rotate, providing a rotating fulcrum for the needle.  Thus, this knitting sheath can support swaving, spring needle techniques, and rotating fulcrum techniques.  Using a softer belt or loosenting the belt slightly, the Dutch knitting stick techniques can be used.  I never had one knitting sheath that could do all that, as well as these do.

These knitting sheaths are smaller and less bulky than a knitting belt.  In the context of a casual belt through the belt loops of  jeans or Dockers, they are much less noticeable than a leather knitting belt. And, while a knitting  belt is less likely to damage wooden or tubular needles, it will never provide the speed and power of a knitting sheath. Leather and horse hair simply does not withstand the force of  steel needles used as springs. And, knitting belts do not support swaving.

Four knitting sheaths set up for swaving socks. The two traditional designs (goose wing and Durham)  on the left, are fine for sitting and working, but are a nuisance if one is out and about.  Note that  the current design is less bulky, but just as stable or even a bit more so than the traditional designs.


Notwithstanding all of the above, today is May Day, and I am wearing shorts with their belt loops in slightly different locations than jeans or Dockers.  Knitting in the garden, on the straight backed patio chairs, the best knitting sheath I can find for 12" by 2 mm needles is the new style short knitting sheath.  This for blunt needles being used with a spring technique, for a fine gansey fabric of  140 stitches per square inch.

Old Needles

I was flipping through Weldon's Practical Knitter, First Series and got to looking at the drawings in the Details of Knitting. I noticed (with the aid of my linen tester) that the ends of the needles looked very much like the ends of the needles in sets of antique needles that I have.  Some are flat, some are pointy, some are blunt, and some seem to have just been cut with a wire cutter, leaving a sharp wedge at the end of the wire.

This suggests that artist doing illustrations for Weldon's used whatever needles were available as the illustrations were being drawn. Likely, the available needles were those owned and used by the knitters that knit the examples in the illustrations.

Since many of the cuts show needles with rounded or blunt or flat ends, and flat or rounded ends do not work nearly as well when hand-held as when used with a knitting sheath,  and blunt needles work better then pointy needles with a knitting sheath,  I  deduce that many of the fabric samples were knit using a knitting sheath. Then, the fabric and needles were held in the Weldon fashion as a model for the illustrations.  After all, knitting sheaths were tools of professional knitters, and the artist was likely to hire professional knitters to make the knitting samples and then use the same knitter as the hand model.  Oh, yes, objects like the Ladies Knitted Under-vest, Child's Shetland Sleeveless Vest were clearly drawn from real models, and it would have taken a professional knitter or group of professional knitters to produce the examples of the various articles to meet the publishing schedule.

Thus, I conclude that the various knit objects illustrated in Weldon's were in fact knit using knitting sheath(s) and were not knit using hand-held needles as shown in the illustration. In comparison, I would say that the examples in Mary Thomas were knit with hand held needles and those in Gladys Thompson were knit with a knitting sheath.

Gauge

Many knitters do not believe the gauges that I knit. That is because they are lazy.  they did not do their homework.


For example, look at The Sweater Workshop by Jacqueline Fee. She shows gauge swatches done on 11 different sizes on needles including US#0 and US#1.  Anyone andeveryone that has knit such gauge swatches, has knit at the gauges that I knit.  Every serious knitting book from Mary Thomas's Knitting Book on has similar passages.


I took those passages to heart and knit gauge swatches.  It was my homework.  I did my homework.  Any knitter that did not do this, was not doing their homework.


I liked the tighter fabrics, in fact, I wore out 2 sets of Addi  size US#1 turbo circs knitting such fabrics. However, knitting such fabrics on circs was hard on my wrists.


So I looked for a better way to knit such fabrics. There it was, right there in Mary Thomas's Knitting Book.  Knitting sheaths!  Such tools in the form of Shetland knitting belts show up again in Wendy Keele's , Poems of Color. So, knitting sheaths and knitting belts are real tools used by professional knitters to knit decorative objects.  Mary Wright's, Cornish Guernseys & Knit-Frocks makes it clear that knitting sheaths and knitting belts were the standard tool of the serious traditional knitter.


Now, many modern knitters want to discard these traditional technique, and knowledge of  textile production for loosey-goosey knitting that is suited only for "art" knitting.  They want to kill and bury traditional techniques, and the associated knowledge of  textile production.  They denigrate and depreciate people who use such tools.


In doing this, modern knitters are no better than some terrorist group that wrecks museums, destroys historical sites, and plunders archeological sites.  In either case, it is the deliberate destruction of  knowledge and history as a result if ignorance and ideology. 

Inventory of knitting methods

Most modern knitters would say that one's method or style of knitting is purely a matter of personal preference.  I add that a knitter's knitting style affects the fabric that they produce.

First, I would divide knitting styles by the tools used:

1. single point needles (SPN) (including single point cable needles)
2. double point needles (DPN) (including hand held sock needles)
3. gansey needles (DPN)  (hand held or pit knitting)
4. double point cable needles (CN)
5. nalbinding needle 
6. sock needles with knitting stick
7. gansey needles with knitting sheath
8. Shetland long needles with knitting pouch
9. swaving pricks with knitting sheath
10. Portuguese knitting hooks 
11. other hooking and frame knitting tools

On Ravelry, they take the first 4 of those tool kits and claim to find a couple of hundred different knitting techniques. I am not so sharp eyed, and would say that these are all variations on a few knitting methods, that include, but are not limited to: English, American, continental, Portuguese, Irish Cottage, and Weldon.

For me, the English style produces better gauge, the continental is faster, and Irish Cottage /Weldon are remarkable for showing off a young woman's pretty hands. (With hand held needles, I revert to continental, which I learned because I was told it would allow me to knit faster.) 

Kits 1, 2, 4, and 5 are tools that are easy to carry to a tea, to market, to court, and while traveling.  The downside to these tools is that they do not facilitate knitting very fast, or very tight. Nalbinding can produce Eastern Cross Stitch, but slowly. Portuguese knitting hooks (10) are also portable, and allow production of ECS faster than nalbinding, but slower than knitting with a knitting stick.

Any knit fabric can be done by Nalbinding. It is the most versatile, and the slowest method of producing a knit fabric. It is widely used for repair and restoration, so it is well known to museum curators. Nalbinding can also produce fabrics that cannot be knit. On the other hand, knitting can produce fabrics that are not economically practical to nalbind. 

Over the last 15 years, I have visited archaeology sites and historical museums around the world. By and large, I found archaeologists woefully ignorant of knitting sheath technology. Curators at knitting museums in the UK, knew about knitting sheaths, but had not made replicas and learned to use them.  They could not produce fabric samples that could be handled and tested. And, they did not have working knitting sheaths with appropriate needles to test and identify wear marks that could be used to separate broken DPN from broken  "awls"  at  archaeology sites.  The nature of broken DPN was the first lesson that I learned as I started using knitting sheaths.  This constrained my thinking until Pressfield pushed me to look at metal trade routes in the late Bronze Age.

While any knit fabric can be made by nalbinding, the process is too expensive for some purposes. For example, socks worn with sandals in a sandy environment have a short life span. Socks made by knitting would have half the cost, and be more practical. On the other hand, for a sentimental keepsake, no price is too high, and nalbinding is the perfect production technology. Here, a rare (keepsake) item is more likely to be preserved, while the more common item is likely to be discarded and not preserved.  In such analysis, one must consider not only the cost of the particular object, but also the time invested in the development process to work out construction details. Objects with sophisticated detail are likely to be the result of generations of design. Generations of design suggest a lower cost method of production such as knitting rather than nalbinding.  That is, a room full of knitters, each knitting 3 pair of socks per week is more likely to get all the details correct, than a wife nalbinding one pair of socks per year.  (It is one thing to work from a written pattern, and something very different to just work from memory.)

Tool kits 6 to 9 can be used to produce any fabric produced by tool kits 1 to 4, but they can also be used to produce fabrics that cannot be reasonably produced by kits 1 to 4.

Short DPN with a knitting stick (tool kit 6) is the right tool kit for knitting socks with patterned stitches including Eastern Crossed Stitch, clocks, and Argyle. Knitting sheaths/sticks change the physics of the process, and allow faster and tighter knitting.  

With a knitting sheath, I use an English style of knitting that give me a tighter and more consistent gauge. Knitting English style with a knitting stick, I knit much faster than I can knit continental with hand held needles, so I do not feel that I need the extra speed resulting from knitting continental. And, with a knitting sheath, I do not find continental to be that much faster.

Modern knitters (using hand held needles) dismiss the virtues of Eastern (or Western) Cross Stitch because it is not worth the extra effort. However, it is so much extra effort because they have forgotten how to use knitting sheaths or Portuguese knitting hooks to knit such fabrics rapidly and easily. The right tools and skills make these fabrics feasible. Choice between ECS and WCS for a project depends on direction of ply twist in the yarn. 

Gansey needles with a knitting sheath (tool kit 7) allow faster, tighter, and more ergonomic knitting than any of the above methods. the flex of the long needles give more power than can be achieved with short DPN. While the finger motions of English or continental knitting with Gansey needles with a knitting sheath are somewhat similar to those of knitting with hand held or pit knitting, the physics are different, allowing faster and tighter knitting with much less stress on the hands and wrists. This is very suited to worsted yarns and knitting patterned stitches. Gansey knitting with a sheath has no equal for knitting weatherproof sailor's sweaters from worsted yarns. Thus, the resultant fabric is very different from the techniques above. Jerseys are also knit on gansey needles/ knitting sheath. 

Gansey knit fabric can be replicated with nalbinding, but it is very hard work, and not an economically feasible technology for equipping a shipload of fisherman. 

Shetland knitting (8) is very similar to knitting with gansey needles, but done in a different position.  In shetland knitting some of the effort to drive the working needle comes from the knitting pouch, and part come from the knitter's upper arm. While gansey knitting is driven by the weight of the right arm and the spring of the spring steel needle. Thus, the Shetland needles can be stiffer or less springy than gansey needles. Shetland knitting is also very suited to fast, sustained knitting. I think Shetland knitting has the advantage for knitting woolen spun yarns and Fair Isle knitting.  A Shetland knit fabric can be as warm as any gansey knit fabric, but you may have to use hand spun yarn to get such warmth. Shetland knitting is also suited to knitting large lace objects, however, I do not find it suited to small objects such as lace points for collars and lace cuffs.

I like ~8" DPN and a knitting sheath for fine lace points and lace cuffs. A knitting sheath or knitting heart stabilizes the needle, and makes fine lace much easier and faster. Fine lace is more fun when it can be knit faster. In theory, it can be done, but good luck nalbinding fine lace.

Swaving (9) or knitting by rotating a curved needle, can rapidly produce very fine, tight fabrics. It does not do well with pattern stitches including ECS.  It is not suited for knitting out and about.  It does not work well for Fair Isle.  However, for knitting strips of garter stitch or small objects (socks and especially gloves) in the round, swaving has no equal. Swaving pricks apply compound leverage so the applied force can be small, but produce a large effective force resulting in a very tight fabric.  Needle and hand motion is tiny, and guided by the knitting sheath, and can thereby be very fast. Needle motion feels very different, but looks to an observer to be rather similar to sock needles with a knitting sheath. 

This is an optical illusion as the physics of the motion are very different. The main difference is that needle motion is controlled by the knitting sheath and the tension of the fabric. Since fabric tension controls tension of each stitch, the over all tension can be very uniform. It does feel a bit weird as it is performed.  For gloves, it is a game changer. For fine gloves and fine socks, swaving is far and away the best hand craft method for producing such objects. Swaving pricks work best when less than 8" long, so swaving does work better for small objects. Sheringham Guernseys knit from 3-ply at 12 to 14 spi, are better knit with long knitting pins (1.5 mm) and a knitting sheath. However, if I wanted to knit a shirt of an even finer fabric, with good density, I would swave it, using 2 sets of swaving pricks.  I have not tried swaving yarns finer than lace weight. 

Portuguese knitting hooks (10) provide a reasonably productive way to produce ECS while out and about. I like ECS for socks because it provides great cushion, ventilation, and durability. Even linen stitch and fisherman's rib does not provide the durability of ECS.  Add-in the cushion and ventilation, and the ECS is a great fabric for sock heels and soles -- if you know how to make with with reasonable effort.

ECS on PKH does not require a knitting pin to hold the yarn. 

Thus, hats, I knit with uncrossed stitches, but knit tightly with DPN/knitting sheath. My standard tool kit for large garments is gansey needles with a knitting sheath.  Arans are knit flat with a pair of gansey needles and a knitting sheath.  All Fair Isle goods are knit with a knitting pouch (mostly with long Shetland style needles, but sometimes with sock needles). Worsted gloves are swaved.  The legs/ cuffs of hose and boot socks are either swaved or gansey knit.  The feet of hose and boot socks are knit on steel sock needles with a knitting stick so the sole can be ECS.  Summer socks for sandals are knit on sock needles with a knitting stick. Dress socks are swaved.  Large lace objects are knit Shetland style, while lace points and cuffs are knit on fine (1.2 mm) DPN with a knitting sheath.

I knit scarves, shawls, comforters and other loose fabrics on DPN with knitting sheaths because it is fast.  

Rugs, trivets, and such are knit on gansey needles because I like the fabrics and speed with which they can be produced. 

So that is how I knit from head to toe. I have put a lot of effort into discovering how these fabrics can be produced. If these fabrics could be produced by hand held needles, I would know. Fabric produced by hand held needles looks about the same, but it does not perform as well, and stress on the hands and wrists limits production. For another thing hand held knitting is slow. I have not actually knit an entire object with hand held needles since 2006, and that was only because I was on an airplane, the knitting sheath had been left in the rental car, and the knitting pouch was in checked luggage. If that happened to me today, I would just read. It is better for me to do something else than to waste my time trying to knit without the right tools.

Using a knitting sheath is so much faster and easier, that if I did not have a knitting sheath, I would stop and make myself a knitting sheath.  On any knitting project, with a fabric that can be produced on CN or SPN, a knitting sheath reduces the number of hours required to knit the object by more than the number of hours required to make the knitting sheath. This is true for any non-trivial object.  On other hand, I do put more effort into making better knitting sheaths for larger projects.

When I start a knitting project, I decide what kind of fabric I want.  Then, I choose the tools that allow me to best produce that fabric.  I have actually worn out a couple of sets of US1 Addi Turbo CN. That was a learning experience. I know what CN will do, and what they will not do.  One may succeed in knitting a swatch on CN, but trying to knit these fabrics with hand held needles either results in injury, or the fabric being so loose / uneven that it does not meet specifications. I know that sock needles and a knitting sheath allow me to produce fabrics that I simply cannot knit on CN or SPN. I know that gansey needles with a knitting sheath facilitate the production of other fabrics that cannot be knit on hand held needles.(I consider the different gansey patterns to be different fabrics suitable for jobs.) I know that swaving facilitates the production still different fabrics that also cannot be knit with hand held needles. Somewhere out there is fine lace.  I should likely  have listed a tool kit for fine lace, but nobody NEEDS lace finer than what can be produced with the 1.5 mm gansey needles mentioned above.

I consider the redevelopment and description of knitting tool kits 6 through 9 to be a significant body of work.  It needs to be organized and indexed. Whatever faults the text has, the concepts are the craft of hand knitting, where better is better. The craft of hand knitting is different from the pastime of hand knitting. The pastime of hand knitting is run rather along the rules of Queen Victoria's court. (In Queen Victoria's court, one had to be careful not to knit like a professional.)  

First video of swaving

The rain has paused, and there is enough light for video.  Unfortunately the I have a limited number of good swaving needles at this time the the good needles have this 6-ply navy yarn on them that just sucks light out of the frame.

Here are some very short clips.  These are done very slowly for the camera, and the motions do not really work that well when done slowly.

Swaving "needles' are called pricks. The pricks, sheath and setup are here: 

I find that short pricks work better.  Long pricks tend to get torqued  off axis and become difficult to rotate. Thus, I like swaving pricks that are no more than 8" long. The curvature is so slight that the needle will fit into 1/2" pipe.  Thus, when the prick is rotated in the sheath, the tip describes a circle of less than 1" in diameter. The arc of movement is limited by the legs of the previous stitch.  Thus, fine motion control of the  working prick is not required.  Then the left prick simply follows the right needle, and since they are both in the same stitch, the left prick follows the same circular motion as the working needle.

The are three motions in the formation of a knit stitch.  Push into the stitch. Loop yarn. Pull back.  At the end of the pull back the stitch pops off the left needle, but remains on the working needle.

For a purl stitch (not shown) the yarn is brought forward, the working prick is pulled into the stitch, the yarn looped, and the pricks pushed away so the yarn pops off. 

While there are 3 motions, the yarn looping is a continuation of the first motion, so the direction of motion of the hands only changes once in the course of a stitch, and is very fast.  The tension of the stitches is also very uniform (and tight!)

For comparison here is my knitting with the same yarn and needles:

Note that there are 4 motions, each of which require fine motion control.  Yes, swaving is faster.  And, while knitting can be done with a loosely secured needle, swaving requires that the working needle rotate easily on a fixed axis.

Swaving has become my knitting style of choice because it is fast and it gets more knitting done for the same effort.  On the other hand, it must be done fast.  It does not work for slow knitting for relaxation.  It is a high effort activity, that results in getting a great deal of knitting done rapidly.

  

Knitting sheath with clew

A very functional knitting sheath with a clew to hold the yarn.

The wide hook of the clew was made to hold the big center pull cakes of yarn from my jumbo winder. Clews to hold other shapes of yarn balls have other shapes.  Clews to hold yarn balls being unwound from the outside need swivels.   

Yorkshire Goose Wings

The first time I made and tried knitting with a Yorkshire "goose wing" knitting sheath, I was just amazed at the perfection of the concept. They tuck into apron strings and sit on the point of the right hip and hold a knitting needle in just the right spot for good knitting. Over the last few years, I have made a bunch of them.

When I did not want to wear an apron to knit with them, I would just tie sash around my waist and tuck the goose wing into the sash.


However, goose wings do not work so well with the wide leather belts I tend to wear with jeans around the house. The Cornish "knitting fish" have always worked better wide belts. And, the goose wings tend poke the leather easy chair that my wife made me buy to be my "knitting chair" in the living room. (During the day, when she is not home, I like to knit seated in a folding chair in the kitchen.) Think about how many of the old drawings show knitters seated on stools or benches rather than seated in chairs.

The other day, everywhere I went seemed to have nice work aprons on sale. I took it as a sign that should do something with goose wings. Then Abbot, my favorite Smith, asked about goose wings and I knew it was time to revisit goose wings. He also likes to wear wide leather belts.

They poke, so grind off the "pokey" tips. Done!

Now grind groves so the apron strings stay in place and anchor the sheath firmly in place. DONE!

[With goose wings in apron strings the resistance of the knitter's abdominal tissue provides some spring action allowing fast, low effort knitting even with ridgid (brass & aluminium), or weak (wood) needles. This is particularly useful for lace which is too loose a fabric to use the fabric as a spring to assist the knitting. The goose wing really is a brilliant tool design. ]







Cut the "blade" thin enough to slip under a leather belt. Grind an offset tab at the end of the blade to catch on the lower edge of a leather belt to anchor the goose wing under a leather belt. Done!




















They work exceptionally well with steel needles from ~6" to 12" long, but last night I was using them with 18" gansey needles and they worked very well indeed! A heavy leather belt was worn very low around my hips and the sheath was tucked in over my right buttock. Close to perfect performance (in my folding chair -I do not use the gansey needles in the leather chairs. The arm rests impair needle movement.)







Sometimes, I live in a bent world.

UK knit circa 1800?

How did folks in the UK knit circa 1800?

1) Certainly, hand-held DPN (or needles held, supported, or controlled in the arm pit) with the yarn in either the right or the left hand. These needles develop a very slight curve and distinctive wear marks at the extreme tip that allows them to be distinguished from broken awls. The disadvantages are that knitting firmly can put a stress on the wrists, knitting is slower than with a knitting sheath, and long needles are difficult to control.

2) Short (6- 12 inches), straight (more or less), DPN held in a knitting sheath under the right elbow or over the point of the right hip, with the yarn in either the right or the left hand. These knitting sheaths were 6 to 10 inches long in a variety of designs. These designs for such sheaths included bundles of feathers bound together with a bit of waste yarn or a cone of leather filled with horse hair for tucking into the waist band. of the sheath designs work very well tucked into apron strings. Many Other designs allow for separate tapes or belts. In general, the needle flexes along its length, and does not rotate in the needle hole of the knitting sheath. Many of the needles pick up a significant curve or arc with use. These needles have distinctive wear marks in an annuls ~1 cm form the shoulder of the needle tip. If you see this band of linear striations, you know the needle was used with a knitting sheath, and that it was a knitting needle and not something else. Such knitting sheaths can be used with 3+1 needles for small objects or many needles if a large carpet or blanket is required. The side of the right hand pushes the needle into the stitch and the base of the thumb pushes the working needle back through the stitch. It is a low stress knitting technique suitable for people with tender hands and wrists. It can be a very pleasant way to knit at a reasonable pace. It can also be done quite aggressively to knit very rapidly. This technique allows knitting fabrics much tighter than any other method on this page. These are most of the old knitting sheaths that people liked, and kept, and that one still finds in the collections.

3) Knitting sheath as above in 2) but used with 2 needles for lace items knit flat.

4) Gansey needles (14 -18 inch long steel DPN) used with a knitting sheath firmly attached to a strong belt over the right buttock, with the working needle arched forward under the right arm. The belt is worn much lower on the body than in the short needle technique above. The weight of the right arm rests on the needle. The needle is forced downward into the stitch, the right hand loops yarn over the tip, and the spring action of the needle lifts the loop of yarn back through the old stitch to form the new stitch. This is a powerful, industrial knitting technology. It can be done very fast, and then it is very hard work. On the other hand it is the easy way to knit a real gansey.

5) Curved, blunt needles called “pricks” used with very large knitting sheaths (40 -50 cm) tucked into a belt worn low on the hips. The yarn is controlled with the left hand. The prick rotates in the needle hole of the knitting sheath. The prick is “popped” into the working stitch with a down and out simultaneous impulse of both hands that caused the prick to pick up the yarn as it stretches the forward leg of the working stitch. The stretch of the yarn and fabric provide a spring action that push the prick and yarn back through the working stitch, which then pops off as the next stroke starts. The process is very fast and very demanding. This was a method for commercial knitting. As soon as the need passed, these big sheaths were tossed in the fire, and people reverted to straight needles with smaller knitting sheaths. The nature of the spring process means that everyone using the same sized needles and the same yarn will tend to knit at the same speed. Thus, everyone in the room can sing to the pace of their knitting, knit to the pace of the song, and at the end of the evening, everyone will have knit the same number of stitches.

6) Knitting belt/pouch with DPN. Very similar to 2) above, excellent with the blunter needles used for the softer spun yarns used in Fair Isle knitting. The needles are not as firmly held and have less of a tendency to develop an arc and develop polish rather than marks on the shaft of the needle. Perhaps not quite as fast as knitting sheath but very good for travel.

7) Knitting hearts – very small, decorated knitting sheaths, designed to pin to a lady’s dress to support very fine knitting needles used for knitting lace.

I am a bit pedantic, but I would say that circa 1800, there were at least 11 different and distinct knitting styles in Great Britain, the use of which employed at least 7 different tool kits.

A note, at one time, I thought that gansey needles were very difficult to manage without a knitting sheath. Now, I know some knitting styles that allow use of long needles without the use a knitting sheath. One of these methods is the knitting style of Miriam Tegels. (A second is s Spanish style of "Pit Knitting.") However, I still think that if Miriam Tegels and I sat down together to knit ganseys, for the first day or two she might blow me away, but that by the time we had knit a dozen ganseys, she would be a convert to knitting sheaths. I know that I just sold a set of knitting sheaths to a knitter that had learned excellent pit knitting skills as a girl in Spain. I showed her how to use the knittng sheaths, let her play with them for a while, and at the end of the session, they went in her knitting bag.

Rutt – A History of Hand Knitting

For the last few years, every discussion of the history of knitting has eventually resulted in somebody quoting Rutt, and that often being accepted as the final authority, because Rutt has so many sources, he must be right! That should not be the case. A History of Hand Knitting is manifestly incomplete, and often wrong. The common theme of his errors was to ignore the traditions of professional, commercial, and serious knitters. He ignored their tools and their techniques and this inevitably lead to erroneous conclusions about their knit products.

His first error is in his definition of knitting, where he limits it to yarn. In fact, many early knitters included gold filaments, and the incorporation of such metal wires does not prevent that work from being "knitting." Moreover modern knitting machines may use strands of synthetic material which is yarn only in the broadest sense, yet the fabric is still clearly knitting. Thus, the definition of knitting must one of process and topology, and not one of material.

Rutt wonders around his description of knitting needles without ever understanding that different knitting needles were used for different knitting techniques. (While he references commercial knitting techniques, he does not actually discuss them. Thus, glosses are deliberate, rather than purely ignorant.) Most importantly he fails to point out role of knitting sheaths in various knitting techniques. He fails to note that there were long steel needles used with knitting sheaths yeilding a spring action for knitting ganseys – this is one kind of needle with its own technical constraints. Shorter DPN could be used with other kinds of knitting sheaths (and different knitting technique) for knitting other kinds of objects. Despite later extensive quotes from Howitt, on the use of curved needles in the Yorkshire Dales later in the book, Rutt does not bring this information into his section on needles. And yet, it was the physics of a curved knitting needle (with a knitting sheath) that made the very fast knitting of the Yorkshire Dales possible. This is a completely different knitting technique from what is used with gansey needles, and a history of knitting needs to recognize that. Thus, Rutt does not describe the needles that were used by generations and generations of professional, commercial, and serious hand knitters. The cottage workers in England made exporting boat loads of hand knit hose to France possible. They are a big part of the history of hand knitting. These are the tools that made fine fisherman’s ganseys possible. Those ganseys made cod fish possible. The cod fish made the Church's "fast days" possible. Taxes on the knit goods supported the British Crown. These tools that Rutt ignores were critical to history as we know it.

Then Rutt talks about holding the needles and he ignores knitting sheaths and pouches. These had been at the core of techniques for professional, commercial, and serious hand knitters for centuries. What he does get right is admitting that the knitting styles that came in at the beginning of Queen Victoria’s reign, slowed knitting down. However, those knitting techniques are the only ones he describes in detail and says little about the methods of hard working (and fast) cottage knitters. Rutt says, “Ideally only one needle should move”. This may be true for slow, elegant, stylish knitting in the post-Victorian drawing room, but it contradicts Howitt’s eyewitness description of how the fastest knitters ever known (the Terrible Knitters of Dentdale) did knit. They are an important part of the history of hand knitting and they need to be discussed by someone that understands what they did, and how they did it.

Rutt did not understand the tools used by generations of hand knitters. This is a deep and fundamental fault with Rutt’s knowledge of knitting.

Having glossed the tools and techniques of serious knitters, in favor of drawing room fashion, Rutt dismisses the work of Braham Norwick while acknowledging that the metal work discussed is topologically knit. Rutt says it is not knit because it is not yarn -that is silly! I have knit metal wire and the process is knitting; that is one must now how to knit before one can knit metal wire, and if you can knit metal wire, you can knit yarn because the process is the same. Anybody that has knit both knows this. Any knitter that has knit wire knows that after knitting wire, you go find some yarn to knit because it feels so good after knitting the wire.

And so on! That is my feelings on the first 25 of or Rutt’s 213 pages, and it does not get much better. He attributes dates without justification, and he missed important work. He makes mountains out of molehills and molehills out of mountains, and it is hard to tell what he is going to do with any particular reference.

I will gladly admit that Rutt cites a great many sources, but his analysis of those sources is faulty and out of context. If Rutt is cited, always go back and look at the original source. Rutt is not the last word in knitting. Rutt did not write a history of hand knitting, he wrote a justification of modern drawing room knitting.

More Tools

People want knitting sheaths and gansey needles.

Nobody else wanted to make them, so I am.

I bought some bigger tools.

And, I put up a store on Etsy: "Agres's Shop".

Anyway, good knitting sheaths and steel knitting needles are available.