Statement of errors (again)

 Since taking Gladys Thompson as my primary teacher some 15 years ago, I have focused on uncrossed stiches. Neglecting crossed stitches in knitting gear for outdoor gear has been  a serious error that I made that leads to other serious errors.

For example, I can knit crossed stitches flat with blunt needles, but I have not figured out how to knit  alternate rows of left over right and right over left in the round with blunt needles. 

There is some evidence that the Knitters of Dent, used crossed stitches in their products. If you have information on this topic, please let me know.

Thus, for now,  I am knitting outdoor gear with very pointy needles.

Not Magic

There is a class of knitters that knit as a social pastime.  Social pastimes have conventions that function like the rules of a game.  Like a game, social pastimes have winners and losers. (see for example the work of  Eric Bern,  http://www.ericberne.com/structure-and-dynamics-of-organizations-and-groups/ , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_(norm) )  The pastime of recreational knitting results in some knitters acquiring higher status.  This has significant value in their circles.

One of the social conventions and contracts of modern recreational knitting is that it uses hand-held needles. The use of other technologies would allow production of  high quality knit objects with lower effort, and thereby diminish the status of  recreational knitters who produced their objects using only hand held needles. The use of other technologies is thus not allowed except in the past, in  far away places, and behind the closed doors of commercial establishments.  Breaching this convention against such other technologies is met with shunning. Advocating that others also breach this convention is met with the full spectrum of social enforcement mechanisms.  People with high status, tend to vigorously defend that status.

Mary Thomas writing in the 1930s consigned knitting sheaths to museums, even though she knew that knitting sheaths were still being used professionally because they allowed faster knitting of finer and more uniform fabrics.  Rutt interviewed elderly knitters that had swaved in the 1930s, but he made no effort to preserve the technology.  Thomas and Rutt were recreational knitters, and they conformed to the social conventions of the pastime even as they discussed other hand knitting technologies.  Gladys Thompson used a knitting sheath, but does not mention that fact in her book, Patterns for Guernseys, Jerseys & Arans.  Nor does Elizabeth Zimmerman mention the fact in her 1971 Note for American Knitters, where she does talk about long needles. This was dishonest in the extreme.  Only in the context of knitting sheaths is Patterns for Guernseys, Jerseys & Arans a useful book on knitting.

Thus, recreational knitters made no effort to preserve the knitting technologies that use a knitting sheath.  These were not mythical or magically ways to knit; they were real world textile production technologies in use by professionals.   We know something of what they were, and we know something of what they were not. From that information the technologies can be reverse engineered.  Come on, this is knitting, it is not rocket science.

Anybody that needs to knit a large number of objects quickly, discovers that with hand held needles, the knitter's hands get tired and their wrists get sore. Eventually the other end of the working needle gets wedged in the thigh crease or tucked into the arm pit. More advanced are pads of straw and feathers as discussed in Mary Thomas.  However, professional knitters need better tools, and leather pouches stuffed with horse hair are much better than pads of straw and feathers.  However, Mary Thomas gives straw pads and Shetland knitting pouches each a single paragraph suggesting that they are equally valuable to the modern knitter.  In this, she dismisses both, and I at least did not find her instructions for using either a knitting sheath or knitting pouch to be useful. Certainly her illustrations of how to knit are for a Weldon style of  needle management. This is not fair to the reader that needs to knit a large number of objects quickly and picks up MT hoping for hints on how it can be done.  One might use Weldon for test knitting a pattern, but a professional knitter with an order for 6 dozen pairs of hose did not to use Weldon.

MT gives knitting sheaths 3 paragraphs of their own, but there is no hint in MT that knitting sheaths in fact support 3 very different knitting technologies; one based on the pitch/yaw of a stiff needle, one based on needle flex and spring, and one based on the rotation of a curved needle.  Thomas,  Rutt, and even Brears display an astonishing lack of interest in the functional details of how knitting sheaths were used.   The only explanation is that they considered all  use of knitting sheaths and knitting pouches to be outside the social conventions of modern recreational knitting.

I am not a recreational knitter.  Some days, I am a researcher.  Some days, I am a  textile artist. Some days, I am a subsistence knitter.  And, some days, I am a professional knitter.   I am not constrained by the social conventions of knitting as a pastime. Therefore, I am free to knit with any technology necessary to produce the fabrics that I want at the rate that I need.  I am willing to talk over the heads of all the  modern recreational knitters to other researchers, artists, subsistence knitters and professional knitters.  I want others to be able to knit better, and knit faster. I want others to know that there are a variety of hand knitting technologies.

One of those knitting technologies is based on the "roll" (rotation) of  a short, stiff, curved, blunt knitting needle with the axis of the roll fixed by one end of the needle inserted into the bore of a knitting sheath. A short forward stroke followed by a back stroke comprises the knitting technique that I call "swaving".  Details of needle and knitting sheath design and materials make the technology more functional, but do not change the name.  However, as I review the account of the invention of the knitting frame and the resulting mechanics of  frame knitting, it is likely that it was based on a knitting motion resulting from the rotation of curved needles.  Thus, circa 1590, what I call swaving was likely also known as "knitting".

As  S. M. McGee-Russell told us on the first day of class, "Everything has a proper name.  Use it!  If you find something without a proper name; name it, and write a paper."  If you go for a walk, you are likely to see plants and critters.  Most have species names, but finding those species names may take some work and require specialized knowledge.   Knitting by rotating the working needle has a name, and knitters that know their craft can figure it out.  The knitters that only knit as a social pastime are unwilling to say what swaving was, and what swaving was not.  They want swaving to be something very vague, that cannot occur today.  This is logically equivalent to asserting that swaving (was) a mystical, magical activity.   

Getting to swaving

Some seem to feel that what I do is either an arrogant lie or an accident.

No it a matter of taking some clue out of history and working on it until I come up with something useful.

Perhaps the Holy Grail was "swaving".  (After," How did the old fishermen on the banks stay warm?)  My grandmother told stories of very fine, hand knit, camel, ladies gloves.  And. we had limited information on the Terrible Knitters of the Dales swaving fine gloves.  The hints were tantalizing, but,  "What was the truth?" What was the technique?

Clearly the needle rotated in the knitting sheath.  This makes swaving dramatically different from any other modern hand knitting technique. Lever knitting was based on needle pitch / yaw motions. In contrast, swaving was based on  needle rotation.

So I bent some DPNs and tried it. The fabric was wonderful, but the process was so high effort that a 2" by 2" swatch knit in an evening would leave my hands stiff and sore for days.  For several years, I could not find a needle configuration that reduced the effort. I could produce wonderful fabric, but the effort was impossible.  I came to believe that swaving was inherently, a high effort activity, and that the high effort required was why it disappeared.  I was wrong.

Then, I saw a glover's needle in a museum collection that was obviously used for swaving and I made a set of replicas.  They worked - for glove fingers. All of a sudden, swaving (glove fingers) was an easy and low effort way to knit. Scaling that needle/sheath geometry to longer needles suitable for socks and glove cuffs and palms was matter of many generations of needles over a period of 3 years. So, when I say that I can "swave" it is not the result of  one trial or a few trials, it is the result of many trials, and taking many little baggies of swatches to many guild show and tells.

 Everyone is so accustomed to knitting being a pitch/yaw motion, that their eyes are fooled, and nobody sees the rotation of the needle in  swaving.  No wonder Rutt did not see it. It is an optical illusion, and I must apologize to Rutt.

 Here is a pictorial history of the tools I have tried and abandoned, to the tools that I currently use:

Note that the needles that work well have their bend about 2" from the end of the needle.

The needles that I currently use are about as blunt as possible. This goes against current thinking that one needs sharp needles to knit fast. Needles that work very well have just enough bend to fit snugly in 3/4" pipe, regardless of the length of the needle.  Needles that work best are less then 8" long.  My glove needles are 4" long with the bend in the middle.  Thus, the glover's needles have a sharper bend.

Today, swaving is my preferred way to knit. It produces a very nice fabric (with ridges when knitting back and forth). It is very fast.  It is very easy on the hands  It is very low effort.  The needles are compact and blunt (read as "safe in a knitting bag").  The bent needles (pricks) tend not to leave ladders, even in sock fingers.  And, it is very easy to  knit firm (weatherproof)  fabrics from even very fine yarns. Thus, the technique is ideal for gloves and socks. Today, I have, and use swaving needles down to 1.2 mm.

In contrast, gansey knitting with long straight needles and a knitting sheath is a fast and easy way to knit large objects such as sweaters.  Gansey knitting is for objects involving cabling, bobbles, and lace. Gansey needles  are long, and sharp enough to slide right through most knitting bags and poke holes in anything that might be precious or valuable.  On the other hand, when you must knit a very warm sweater, very fast, gansey needles with a knitting sheath are tool of choice.  And one can knit back and forth without ridges.  :  )

A sock and glove kit that is going to a friend next week. 

(I am moving from storing needles in irrigation pipe to storing needles in acrylic tubing.)  

It is one of those Love/Hate relationships

I am coming to really like swaving.

• It allows the production of very fine, very consistent, very tight fabrics. 
• Minimal stress on the hands.
• The knitting tools are very compact. 
• The knitting implements are not sharp.  One can work very fine yarns into very fine fabrics with tools that are not very pointy. 
• Swaving is very fast. 

Swaving has some real downsides.

• "Lace stitches" are difficult.  
• Decreases are so difficult that for cuff down socks I switch back to sock needles for the toes.
• Repair of mistakes is difficult, NO!, I mean really difficult. Picking up stitches after frogging is difficult.  On the fabrics where I really need them, I have not been able to make life lines work.
• Soft fabrics with loose gauge are difficult.  
• It requires a good knitting sheath with a needle adapter that allows easy rotation of the needle/prick.  the needle adapter may have to be oiled or greased - that means gunk on the knit object.

I am sure that I will find other issues, as I have not tried a large object like a sweater yet.

On balance, the speed of production, ease on the hands, and beauty of the fabrics wins.  Yes, it is the right way to knit socks and gloves.

Starting first swaved object

3-Ply fingering swaved socks started:

Those are 2 mm pricks, and they produce a firmer, denser fabric than 2 mm sock or gansey needles with the same yarn. It is a very nice boot sock, glove or mitten fabric. The fabric is very consistent and uniform (for somebody just learning a new knitting style.)

Tools for knitting gloves

I understand that new new edition of The Hand Knitters of the Dales will be out shortly, and I thought I should revisit glove making tools.

Certainly, in 1848, knitters in the Dales were still knitting a full range of items, and would have used a full range of knitting tools including long gansey needles and knitting sheaths optimized for such long needles. However, commercial hand knitting of fine women's gloves persisted into the 1930s.  Ladies gloves were the last commercially produced hand knit objects in Yorkshire.  Later Shetland and Bohus professional knitters used leather knitting pouches.

This post is about the tools that I have found to be most useful for knitting gloves.

I differ from most authors writing bout knitting sheaths (including Peter C. D. Brears) because I make knitting sheaths of various materials, styles, and sizes, then I knit with all the tools that I make.  The tool making informs the knitting, and the knitting informs the tool making.

Early on, I found bout 11 different knitting techniques that used a knitting sheath. or knitting stick. Some used the spring action of the needle, some used the spring action from the rebound of the knit fabric, and some used the elasticity of the cow band or the spring action of the compression of the knitter's abdominal tissue.  These spring action motions were faster than knitting that required two separate motions of the hand controlling the working needle. ("Cow band" the technical term for the belt that holds a knitting sheath.)

For a very long time, I thought that long knitting sheaths supporting short needles required two separate motions of the hand controlling the working needle.  I knit a large number of very nice socks and mittens this way, and everyone was amazed at how fast I could knit.   However, I thought the the two separate motions were intrinsically slower than gansey knitting with long steel needles .I tried using pieces of gansey needles with brass tubing to act as springs shorter needles.  I tried a lot of stuff.  A lot of it did not work.

 I have found that large knitting sheaths can use the elasticity of the cow band and the knitter's abdomen to deliver a spring action that be used to drive small (sock & glove) needles. It is really not that uncomfortable.  It would not be that bad to knit 50 pair of mittens in year using this technique.  What is required is a fairly large, broad knitting sheath and an elastic cow band.  After much evolution, the tool kit that I like for gloves is:

I use a cow band of hand knit garter stitch about 2" wide.  It goes around my waist twice, and is knotted.

I use a big knitting sheath of pine with chip carving that tends to help stabilize it in place. (It is tucked into the cow band.)  That thing is 14" long.  It is ugly, but it works.  It is not something most people would drag around and use to knit in public.

I use 6" long US 1 DPN for the cuffs and wrists. (set of 5)

I use 4" long glover's needles in sizes 1, 0, 00, and 000.  (I work with sets of 4.)

And, I like a fine steel crochet hook.  Not shown is the tapestry needle that is always in the knitting bag.

The system is wicked fast, and produces fine uniform product.

The patterns that I like for making gloves that fit are in Mary Thomas's Knitting Book.   Good patterns for mittens are in Latvian Mittens by Lizbeth Upitis .   However, I change the gauge around, and knit much tighter fabrics.  I do this, because tighter fabrics are warmer and more durable. And, I do it because I can.  A knitter with a knitting sheath can easily knit fabrics that are much tighter than any fabric knit by a hand knitter without a knitting sheath. Thomas's and Upitis mittens are better than those in Weldon's.  Robin  Hansen's Favorite Mittens has some useful material in it, and has more about fit than Upitis and less than Thomas.

A knitter with a knitting sheath can easily use the small fine glovers' needles. Trying to use such needles without a knitting sheath is a slow and uncomfortable process.  This is why we do not see many glovers' needles anymore.  And cables? they just cannot keep up at all.

Commercially knit gloves may have had cuffs and wrists that were produced using swavling.  Swavling is a knitting technique where the rebound of the fabric provides the spring action for fast knitting.  Swavling is done with blunt, curved needles called "pricks" and it also required a knitting sheath.  In swavling the prick rotates in the knitting sheath.  Swavling can be very fast, and produce a very fine, uniform fabric, however it is high effort!

Curved Needles and Sock Yarn

OK! Curved needles do work for sock yarn, I just had to drop down to 1.5 mm pricks, and it gives me about 10spi. The yarn band says 7.5 spi for Amrican size 2 needles. I like the firmer, 10 spi fabric better. In fact, the firmer fabric is much more like the fabric in those nice Smart Wool socks that my wife just bought. (Those Smart Wool sock are knit at ~32 spi so I am not even getting close to their gauge.)

This swatch was started on 2.38 mm pricks, and I just could not make those big needles work with the fingerling yarn. You can see the big stitches at the bottom. Besides, I do not like the fabric.

The wood thing is the knitting stick I am using.

Curved knitting needles in the style of the Yorkshire Dales

I am simply amazed at how little has been written about curved needles (pricks) as knitting tools.

My first swatch with the first curved needles. There is some junk stitches, but the last 300 were very nice. And, since then, better pricks, have resulted in better knitting.

Mary Thomas, at least wrote briefly about knitting sheaths, and had pictures and drawings of knitting sheaths in her classic book on knitting. Certainly Mary Wright talks about knitting sheaths at length, and I even found a paragraph in one modern text explaining how to use a knitting sheath. However, there is even less on curved needles.

Curved needles can be used hand held to facilitate continental knitting. However, they come into their own when used with a long knitting sheath. The needle then pivots in the knitting sheath. The front leg of the stitch is used as at fulcrum to lever the yarn through the stitch. The effort comes from the large muscles of upper arm. Control and stability come from the knitting sheath and the inter–actions between the yarn, the fabric, and the needle. Therefore, the Yorkshire commercial knitting techniques do not work for all yarns and fabrics, but when they do work, they are very fast. This is a very different motion from any of the motions for using straight needles with knitting sheaths, and it certainly was not contemplated in the one modern text that describes how to use a knitting sheath.

The leverage available with a knitting sheath and curved needles is not as great as with a knitting sheath and straight needles, thus curved needles are not suitable for knitting very tight fabrics. Nor, are curved needles suitable for loose fabrics or lace. What we would call standard hand knitting (http://www.yarnstandards.com/weight.html) is too loose to use the fabric to stabilize the needle. However, I do not like those fabrics anyway. (And, I note, that the knit wool fabrics offered at good or fine clothing stores are also firmer than what results form following the recommendations of the Craft Yarn Council.) That is, professional or commercial quality knitting is firmer than the recommendations of the CYC.

However, if you want to knit a nice firm, consistent fabric very rapidly; pricks are your tool of choice. If you want to knit a fine Jersey in a day, get curved needles. If you want really consistent knitting, get curved needles.

So, she asks with a sneer, "Is it fun knitting that fast? How can you enjoy knitting that fast?" It is like riding in a car. In a new BMW, it is comfortable going 80 mph. An old Ford Model T is not comfortable at 50 mph. NO! with most needles, it would not be any fun knitting that fast, but with curved needles, when you get everything dialed in, it is just knitting at the natual speed that feels right.

I have some Special Blauband sock wool, and I have not yet figured out how to knit it with curved needles. It is on 2.4 mm pricks and I was lucky to get a thousand stitches done in 4 hours. I mean I was struggling to do 5 spm, so I do not have this all figured out yet.

Swaving

It is how the "Terrible Knitters of Dent" knit so fast.

Miriam Tegels as a speed kitter? Ha! she does not even have a "clew." See (http://www.truveo.com/Learn-to-Speed-Knit/id/144115227455160401 ) Swaving takes all that, and pushes it to the extreme; including minimal motions and keeping the shoulders loose by flexing them. Then it goes beyond that, by synchronizing the hand motions so both hands are making similar symmetric motions. This seems to make coordination of everything easier, i.e., none of this; right hand do this, and left hand do that stuff. Both hands just make tiny circular motions together.

Swaving is not continental knitting. Both swaving and continental use the left hand to tension the yarn. However, with swaving, both needles move at the same time.

It was not just a fiction. I know how it is done. I am not real fast - yet! In fact, I have not even worked out how to purl yet. But, damn it works! Wow! I have not timed it yet. Maybe it is not as fast as it seems. I doubt if I will be able to knit 200 spm – that is for nimble fingered young ones that started knitting as kids. Still the nature of the motion makes it seem very, very fast. We will see.

Very low stress on both hands. All the effort in both hands is from the shoulders and upper arms. On the other hand, knitting fast is a high effort activity, No wonder the Victorian ladies let this style of knitting die out.

This makes it clear that there were at least 4 styles of knitting based on knitting sheaths and knitting pouches:

• There was/is the English which produced very tight fabrics
• Continental was/is fast, but tended to produce looser fabrics
• Swaving
• The two handed, two -yarn techniques for Fair Isle, weaving, and twining
• There are specialized techniques for carrying two yarns in on one hand
  

On a lighter note as I pick up the sock I was – swaving – last night, I note the needles in it are cheap, old aluminum (Susan Bates or Boyle or ?) that somebody bought in a “hobby shop” and I got in a bunch of used needles on eBay years ago.