Good Socks!

Good socks last long enough to be worth the effort to knit.

Good socks are made from good yarn, and good yarn is made from good fiber.

In my view, the best wool sock yarns are worsted spun from medium to fine long wools with their scales intact, and functioning. I think the best wool  for socks is Suffolk, but any of the long wools with diameters of 25 to 35 microns are very good. Perhaps the best socks I ever knit were from Shetland fiber.

I think the texture of a good sock should be very smooth and silken against the skin rather than soft. Smooth lustrous socks have good durability and maintain their appearance for a long time.  Soft socks tend to deteriorate more rapidly.

The Camilid and Capra fibers do not have scales on the fibers, so exceptional care must be taken in spinning them into sock yarns.  The fine wools (Merino and Rambouillet) are fragile and best reserved for ladies that are careful not to walk or dance in them. There are some very robust commercial Merino socks, but they are exceptional well spun - not the kind of yarn one finds at LYS. The yarns are more tightly knit than most modern knitters have the patience or tools to knit.

Nylon is slippery and it stretches.  Spin any significant amount of nylon into a yarn and  unless the other fibers are carefully locked into the fabric by very tight knitting, the other fibers will come out of the yarn under stress, leaving the nylon fibers thread bare. Nylon is also very cheap.  If you want to pay wool prices for cheap synthetic fibers, the yarn mills are perfectly willing to take your money.

In super wash wools, the scales on the wool are either removed or sealed to the fiber shaft. Thus, adjacent wool fibers cannot lock scales to form a more competent yarn structure.

We are told that worsted yarns should be combed so that they can be spun "butt" first into the yarn.  This does make a more lustrous and silken feeling yarn.  However, yarns spun with the fibers oriented in both directions allow the scales to lock together and form a stronger, more competent, yarn that can be knit into a more durable sock.

I think good socks are finely knit.  I knit 5-ply or  10-strand gansey yarn (1,000 ypp) on 2.35 mm needles to make ski, hiking and fishing socks.  I knit 1650 ypp sock yarn on 2 mm needles to produce a casual sock fabric at 10 spi and 14 rpi. (140 stitches per square inch).

By now, you have all read Nancy Bush's books, including gauge and the fiber content of  the suggested yarns.  She focuses on the knitting.  I focus on the wearing.

Gauge for Socks

I tend to make notes in books.  This drives my wife crazy, so I do not write in her books, but I still write in mine. I notice that my copies of N. Bush on socks are now full of notes.

First, I encourage everyone to read and reread both of  Bush's books on socks  ( Folk Socks and Knitting Vintage Socks).  And, when I say read, I mean at a minimum knit swatches of the fabrics.  Do you love them?  That is always relative. So knit swatches looser and tighter.  Which fabric(s) do you like more?  NOT, which fabric is easier to knit, but which fabric do you like?  Pick the fabric that you like, THEN figure out how to knit it easily and quickly.

In Vintage Socks, Bush invokes this "not too tight, not too loose" standard.  She says knit too tight, the wool will thin and lose elasticity.  I look at fine old commercial  wool socks that my dad bought a long time ago, the the fabric is much tighter than anything that Bush discusses, and after 40 years the fabric is still in good condition.  I like the fabric in those socks, but I have not yet figured out how to hand  knit socks that fine and tight at a reasonable rate.

The gauge that I have settled on for sport socks is ~1,650 ypp sock yarn, knit at 9 or 10 stitches per inch. That is the yarn that results from 3-ply from the standard singles that I spin for weaving warp.  Or, I spin 20s and make a cabled 6-strand. Or, I cable together, 3 x 2-ply commercial warp.  In any case the grists of the finished yarns are very similar.  The gauge/fabric much tighter than anything in in Bush, but not as tight as the fine needle work in Weldon.  I like the fabric. I like it for socks and for other objects.

That is the gauge that I get when I knit that yarn with ~2 mm (US#0, 5/64") needles. It does not matter much if I use curved needles and swave the object or short straight needles, or long gansey needles.  The fabric is more dependent on the kind of yarn that I use,  than the knitting technique.

That is not to say that knitting technique does not matter.  You are not going to be able to knit that fabric with hand-held needles, e.g., circulars or SPN.  You will need "DPN" and a knitting sheath or knitting belt; or, you will either knit too slow to finish a project (with all due respect for folks that use  knitting as a meditation) or you will ruin your wrists.

The fastest way to make such fabric for small socks and gloves is swaving, where the curved, blunt needles rotate in the knitting sheath. The needle is popped into the working stitch with a very small motion of both arms/hands, the yarn is looped over the working needle, and the tension of the fabric along with the return motion of the hands finishes the stitch and transfers it to the working needle.  The motion is very small and because it is limited by the rotation of the needle in the knitting sheath.  The motion can be very accurate, even when made very fast with the upper arm muscles.  Done correctly there is almost no stress on the hands. Sock toes and fingertips are finished with short pointy DPN.

 2 mm swaving needles or "pricks" and knitting sheath

for a tabi from 6-strand 1650 ypp yarn.

Most of that was knit yesterday as we walked

around an outlet mall,

 so the knitting is not real high quality,

 but it will block out OK.

Medium sized objects,  are best knit on 9" to 12" long blunt "DPN". Note that is what the girl on page 18 of  Folk Socks captioned "Girl knitting on West Pier, Whitby" is using.

Full sized ganseys are best knit on 18"  steel "gansey needles" with a knitting sheath. Here the spring action of the flexed needle is used to finish the stitch and transfer it to the working needle. This it the fastest way that I know how to knit. It is how to knit a fine sweater in a reasonable length of time.

However, the gansey needles do not have the stability of swaving, so I find that for very fine yarns swaving is better. If I wanted the 12 spi of Thomas's Norfolk II, Sheringham I would use a 4-ply or 4-strand yarn based on 11,200 ypp worsted singles, and would knit it on 1.75 mm gansey needles. If I wanted a fabric a little tighter, I would use 5-ply at ~ 2,000 ypp.  This is still well within the range of easy knitting with steel gansey needles.  The time required to hand spin such yarn is nothing compared to the time required to hand knit such an object.

One of my favorite shirts is (frame) knit at 22 spi.  It is a nice fabric, and we are talking about nice fabrics rather than easy to knit fabrics.  Mostly, finer is nicer.

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.)  

Real Hate

A lot of knitters and spinners hate me.  It is a good hate, but it is not a REAL HATE.  I have been the object of  REAL HATE.

A long time ago, I worked for Steve Weil, who had been Branch Chief at the US EPA responsible for writing the RCRA hazardous waste regulations.  So when ASQC was writing the environmental data quality standards  I was invited to join in.  The ASQC standards become part of the EPA RCRA regulations, which also applied to CERCLA.  A few years later, part of my job was to tell Program and Project Managers at the Hanford nuclear facility (US-DOE RL) that yes, they really did have to comply with data quality standards.  They had not budgeted for this, and they thought it was going to wreck their budgets. These were powerful men, who made a lot of money for Bechtel, and they were accustomed to getting their way.  They had REAL HATE for me, and the power and access to implement that hate.  It was only the direct intervention of  Dr. McHugh in US-DOE EM-63 that saved my ass.

While I was finishing up the manuals, Dr.  Tindal went around to the Program and Project Managers, and said, "Hey, data quality standards are a magical, double edged sword that can save your projects huge amounts of money." And sure enough, the Program and Project Managers, were able to save so much money for taxpayers that they got a $10 million performance bonus.  Then, they loved me.

Experienced  spinners spin and knit the way they were taught, and they have never seen anyone spin or knit differently, so that assume that they are spinning and knitting as well as humanly possible.

Then I come along and say,"No,15th - 18th century spinning and knitting was better." Experienced knitters and spinners just do not believe me.  The are experienced, and they have never such such work (actually produced), so I must be liar. They hate me for saying they are not the best that ever was. Don't these folks go to the Louvre and look at how well the threads in the tapestries were spun? It is amazing.  I spent 3 minutes looking at the Mona Lisa.  I spent 5 hours looking at a dozen tapestries.

For the last century, recreational spinners and knitters compared their output to that of other recreational spinners and knitters.They did not compare their work to to the work of professionals with the elan that separates the talented professional from the merely competent amateur.  Yes, an NFL professional football team is better than a bunch of guys that used to play in college that get together and play on the local high school field.  And professional spinners in the 18th century were better than modern recreational spinners.

And that word "competent" brings out the core of the antagonism. For a long time (centuries), it was assumed that any competent spinner could spin wool at its spinning count. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spinning_count)

The whole British wool grading and pricing system was based on experienced spinners using their little twisty sticks to determine how many hanks (of 560 yards) per pound a competent spinner could spin from that wool.  So, I say a competent spinner can spin Cotswold at 40 hanks per pound (22,000 ypp), Shetland at  60 hpp (34,000 ypp), and Rambouillet or Merino at 70 hpp (40,000 ypp.)  This drives modern hand spinners up the wall.  They do not think it can be done.  They think I must be a liar.  In fact, spinners spun this fine at commercial speeds. By taking their time, spinners can spin much finer. A number of modern spinners spin wool at over 100,000 ypp.  However, the modern assumption is that it takes years and years to learn to spin that fine.

No, it takes a set of planned evolutions to build the skills.  Not a class here, and a class there, but planned and sequential training, with extended and focused exercises.   In 1600, British spinning schools trained spinners to spin a fine linen thread in each hand in two years.  It is not rocket science.

So last summer, I did a spinning evolution to learn to spin finer.  Part of it was spinning miles and miles of 30,000 ypp Shetland singles.  I spun that because there is an easy and  accurate way to gauge grist. One cuts a short piece of single off cleanly, and drops it into soapy water in a saucer.  If the single is at the spin count, there will be 18 -20 little fibers of wool in the water. So, anyway I spun miles of those singles.  It was my spinning homework.  If your spinning teachers do not assign you miles and miles of homework, they are not doing their job. My spinning teacher is known for doing a fine job. Not wanting to do lace, I turned the singles into 10-ply fingering @ 3,000 ypp.  It is nice sock yarn.

Experienced spinners do not believe that I did it and they hate me.  (Some of them claim to have also taken classes from my spinning teacher, but if so, they did not do their home work.)

 Go buy a pair of very fine socks at an excellent department store such as Saks or Nordstroms  and look at how finely the yarn is spun.  Fine plies is the right way to make yarn for really nice socks.  Now look at the yarn they sell for knitting socks your LYS.  Knitters get all wound up over color and softness, but there is more to excellent socks than color and softness.  When I say things like this, you can see why experienced spinners and knitters hate me.

But, it is a magical, double edged, sword.  I am also giving them a way to produce much higher quality textiles.  I am not saying that everyone should knit and spin like I do,  I am just saying that as community we should keep this repertoire of tools and skills alive. Better tools and skills put higher quality textiles within reach of  more spinners and knitters.

The motto over the door of my favorite library is:  "He who knows only his own generation remains always a child."  They wonder why I am patronizing and condescending. If someone thinks like a child, I treat them like a child. 

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.