Clarifications

 It turns out that it is perfectly possible to hand knit (with no knitting sheath) with flat tipped "knitting pins".

It takes learning the knack, and being careful about the orientation of stitches, but that said, there is no problem either in knitting or purling. On the other hand, hand held needles do not allow knitting as fast or as long as when used with a knitting sheath.

When I said blunt needles were not suited for hand-held knitting, I was working with very fine, very tightly knit fabrics, and it was the tightness of the fabric that caused the problems, not using blunt needles, per se.

For the last day or so, I have been using flat tipped, 2.3 mm needles to knit 4-ply, worsted weight yarn at 6 spi and 6-ply gansey yarn (1,000 ypp) at 7 spi. Neither are weather proof fabrics, but they are nice firm fabrics. These fabrics could be fulled and oiled to be water repellent. However, once they did get wet they would be a pain to dry, and would not be comfortable to wear within 15 minutes of putting on, like a true weatherproof fabric where a thin layer of wool next to the body dries almost instantly, and protects the skin from the still wet and cold bulk of the fabric.  Gansey knit, weatherproof wool fabrics are special, they require effort to knit, but they are special.

Moreover, since the knitting motions using blunt needles can be much smaller than is possible with pointed needles, the knitting can be faster, with less stress on the hands considering the knitting speed and type of fabric. Early on, I was told by champion speed knitters that more pointed needles could knit faster. Those champions specialized in a narrow segment of the craft, and had a very narrow view. The key to fast knitting is small motions, and no extra motions. Yes, I use my right index finger as a shuttle to loop yarn, but the motion is only a few millimeters. The flat tip of my working needle only protrudes a few millimeters from the working stitch, so all my knitting motions are very small, and can be made quickly.  If I am using sock needles, most people will not notice I am knitting. (These days I mostly knit socks on 12" needles.) If we are talking, I look at them, and not my knitting.  If I am out and about, I watch for people and particularly kids moving about.  I can watch a movie, and not look at my knitting. Some of my knitting sheaths have all the dimensions required to knit various kinds of socks that fit me notched into them. I have "storyboards" with notches for the dimensions needed to knit socks other other people.  

The key to getting a lot of knitting done is ergonomic knitting. Let the big muscles, and tendons of the arms and shoulders do the work. Use the leverage of the knitting needles to put less stress on the knitter's body. And, I like to use the spring of steel needles to do part of the work of knitting. 18", 2.3 mm blunt spring-steel, "needles" with a good knitting sheath on a heavy leather belt worn over a stout apron or bib overalls is the most productive hand knitting gear that I know.  (Actually, these days, socks are knit on 3+1, 12" long needles.) The leather belt and apron stabilize the knitting sheath, and make it a more powerful tool.  This has been a major epiphany over the last few months. 

And, knitting is athletic activity. You cannot sit around for months, then expect to go out, run a marathon and not be sore. You need to train for knitting just as you would train running. Yes you will be training different muscles and tendons, but the idea of a gradual build up in duration and intensity of the exercise holds.

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.

How fast?

I getting asked, "How fast can you knit?"

Knit what kind of yarn?  What grist of  yarn?  On what size needles? In what pattern?  At what tension?

It is obvious that both the grist and the construction of a yarn affect how fast it can be knit.

The design, absolute size of  the needles, and the size of the needle relative to the grist of the yarn affect the rate of knitting.

The stitch being knit is critically important to how fast one can knit.  For example, stockinette knit flat is much slower than stockinette knit in the round.

People that want to be speed knitters practice with the yarns and needle types and sizes acceptable in the standard knitting contests.  I practice with the yarns and needles that produce the fabrics that I like rather than what is acceptable under knitting contest rules.

So, a while back I was in a knitting group, knitting along on US1 needles with a knitting sheath  at a good pace.  I had gotten there early and had been knitting for a couple of hours. A lady sat down next to me, and began to knit using US6 needles and  the newly popular Irish Cottage technique. Everyone mentioned on how fast she was knitting, but said nothing about how fast I knit, despite the fact that I was knitting 8 stitches for every 5 stitches she knit. Anyway, she knit for ~3/4 of an hour, put her knitting aside, sat and chatted with the group as a couple of us continued to knit.

Since then, I have doubled my knitting speed, while she still knits with the same technique at about the same speed.  Thus, I now knit at about 16 stitches for every 5 stitches she knits, but if you ask the most of the members of that knitting group, she knits much faster than I do.

But then, I use smaller needles, I use flat ended needles, I use gansey yarn, and I knit stockinette in the round. It is not a level contest.  If I was knitting woolen yarn, flat, with big needles, I would knit slower.

When she knits a sweater, it has about 25 stitches per square inch.  When I knit a sweater for wearing around town, it has about 88 stitches per square inch, so we knit at about the same number of square inches per hour, but with a knitting sheath my knitting is almost effortless, and I can do it all day, while she is lucky to do it for an hour.  The point is that knitting fine does not mean that an object must take longer, because fine stitches can be knit faster because the motions can be smaller.

In the days when I knit with Addi Turbos, I looked at the old stories of  knitters knitting at 200 stitches per minute,  the knitting of Hazel Tindall and Miriam Tegel, and considered the stories implausible.  Today, I consider 200 stitches per minute a reasonable pace for certain kinds of knitting. It is not a pace that can be sustained for very long, but for bursts of stockinette, it is feasible.  

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.

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.

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.