Friday, July 30, 2021

Sheringham

›
 I have known this day was coming since I bought Gladys Thompson's book on Patterns . (and I spilled red wine on page 82.) I have cleane...
Thursday, July 29, 2021

Sock fabric!

›
Elastic, durable, good moisture control, with minimum bulk Early last spring, I set a goal of learning to knit "sock fabric". I wa...
Monday, July 19, 2021

Fresh Fiber

›
 I am sure, that by now, you are sick unto death, of my saying "Fresh fiber is good". Here in California, we have been having some...
Saturday, July 17, 2021

Spinning and Swatching like a demon

›
  What I really want  is a "gardening gansey". Something like a "rugby jersey" but in finely knit wool.  The fabric shou...
Friday, July 16, 2021

Old dog learns new tricks

›
I have been sampling/swatching/ playing with old yarns like Paton’s Beehive, Froehlich Wolle Blauband yarns, and Jamieson’s   of  Shetland ...
Monday, July 12, 2021

A Rabbit Hole

›
As I started knitting,  yarns seemed to be based on singles of 5,600 ypp.  Gansey yarn was 5-ply (1,000 ypp, allowing for contraction as a r...
Sunday, July 11, 2021

Irish Cottage or Lever Knitting

›
 It can be fast! It  can reduce stress on the wrist and hand. It can be done with tools bought at any knitting store. For some knitters thes...
Saturday, July 10, 2021

Knitting needle tips

›
 I have been moving toward blunter/flatter knitting needle/ knitting pins/knitting pricks for several years now. For a long while, I thought...
Friday, July 09, 2021

The Click of Knitting Needles

›
 In the book Heidi by Spryri, her blind grandmother's knitting needles clicked as she knit by the fire. And, there are other literary r...
Wednesday, July 07, 2021

Sock Fabric

›
 I was going to spin the yarn, and knit a fine gansey this summer.  Then, I realized that the fabric I wanted was actually " sock fabri...
Saturday, June 19, 2021

Lifelines

›
 I certainly used them when I started knitting ganseys.  Now, I knit finer, more intricate objects, always from wool yarns, and I do not use...
Tuesday, June 15, 2021

How fast can a hand spinner spin - part 2

›
 Twist allows short fibers to become yarn or thread. Twist organizes "fibers" and holds them together. Thin yarns and thread need ...
Sunday, June 13, 2021

How fast can a hand spinner spin?

›
This is a question that has several answers. For woolen, even a simple drop spindle will insert twist faster than most treadle spinning whee...

Learning to knit again

›
 The fastest that I have ever knit a good weatherproof gansey is about 2-weeks. Two hundred years ago, a good professional knitter could kni...
2 comments:
Friday, June 11, 2021

Polished wool

›
 A textile professional that frequently makes reproductions of old textiles for museums was asked to make reproductions of knit hats from th...
Friday, June 04, 2021

Needles and knitting sheaths for sock yarn

›
 I have knit dozens of pairs of socks from "sock yarn" on 6" - sock needles.  I wore out Addi Turbos knitting socks. I broke ...
Wednesday, May 19, 2021

Sock yarn is not like gansey yarn!

›
 Alden told me to over spin singles and under ply. For gansey yarn that worked brilliantly. The firm singles endured, and the yarn spread in...
Sunday, May 16, 2021

How big should a knitting sheath be?

›
 As I began this exploration, I read a lot of discussion about the size of knitting sheaths in collections. Now I know those folk did not kn...
Monday, April 26, 2021

Handspun Sock Yarn

›
 I returned to knitting in 1999. I started working on how to hand knit objects well suited to keeping fisherman warm on a square-rigged ship...
Friday, April 16, 2021

Lazy Kate

›
 Nothing is more indicative of the loss of traditional technologies for  hand spinning is the loss of  using a "tension box" to co...
1 comment: