"Richard Eney" wrote in message
...
In article ,
wrote:
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It would be very interesting to see what you could do with 4mm needles.

This result was published because it was the first time I had worked with
this yarn and I had never expected that the yarn would make such a
difference in knitting speed. It opened my eyes.

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Thus, *the rules of the knitting competitions are set to exclude the
speed
knitting tools and techniques of traditional hand knitters*.

A good traditional knitter can adapt to whatever size is available,
according to the product wanted

Wrong!
The physics are different. With a 4 mm needle there are twice as many hand
motions.

Second, I time myself on a single straight knit row. The Champion's time
was for very different and more difficult task. You can not compare
"Quarterhourse Race" times to "Steeple Chase" times, and you can not
compare my straight row times to the Champion's time. They are very
different tests.

True, it is a more difficult competition. Nevertheless:

My knitting one row is more similar to the rules for 19th
century speed knitting, when they knit rounds so there were needle
changes,
but no turns or purling.

...the 19th century knitters did knit flat and do purling on the yokes of
the ganseys. The "knit round and cut steeks" method is Scandinavian,
not traditional UK. Those heat-retaining knit-purl patterns require
purling.

Yes their daily knittng did include purl stitches but the speed trials
claiming speeds of over 200spm were for just knit stitches.

Before we dismiss the reported speeds of 200 stitches per minute for 19th
century speed knitters as unlikely, let us think about this for a
moment.
At that time, contract knitting was a profession with tools, methods, and
supplies optimized for fast hand knitting. Many thousands of people were
trained in specialized methods of speed knitting, and they were highly
incentivized to knit as fast as possible.

That's overstating the case. Contract knitting was a subsistence-level
job, done in spare time and with whatever you could get. Supplies were
optimized for the merchants' profit - yarn was weighed out and the ganseys
were weighed when they were turned in. Needles/pins/wires were often
badly pointed, soft non-springy steel that stayed bent, or even cheap
iron. Most knitters were taught to knit, but not taught to knit fast.

Broad generalizations for a activity that spanned hundreds of years over a
very borad area.
In some cases, you understate the grinding poverty of the contract knitters.
In other cases, they were guild craftsmen doing work for nobels and the rich
that wanted the best.

The "furious knitters of Dent" did train children to knit very fast
but it was not successful with all children, and their training method was
to set conditions of speed and let the children flounder until they either
managed to discover some method on their own that produced fast work or
gave up and ran away. I would bet that most of those methods were very
stressful and hurt their hands.

I find that using a knitting sheath to knit 170 stitches per minute is less
stressfull then hand held knitting at 40 or 50 stitches per minute. That is
the most important result of my research.

They didn't have the time to experiment

Most did not, some did.

and find better ways, nor did they have spring steel needles to add speed.

Steel was expensive, but it was available. It is the same steel that the
vikings used for their steel tools used to build their ships. Just as
master ship wrights had their own sets of good steel tools so did master
knitters. It was the better nourished and better equiped knitters that knit
fast, and held the speed records rather than the poorer knitters.

Those speeds of 200 spm were not for modern
contests of back and forth production of stockinette on fat needles - it
was knitting rounds on fine steel needles, with knitting sheaths, so the
spring of the steel finished the stitch in a flash,

No, the needles bent and stayed bent. Surviving antique needles from
those gansey knitters are curved like a bow when nobody is touching them.

The needles may have been deliberately bent into that bow shape to
facilitate knitting. What makes you think the that the needles bent during
use rather than having been bent as part of the manufacture process? Who
says that straight is the best shape for a needle? The next generation of
my needles will be annealed, bent to shape, and then heat treated to restore
temper.

and they were using the fastest yarn available.

They used whatever yarn was available that would sell. Some merchants
supplied the yarn. Other gansey knitters (in the Netherlands, for
instance)
used the cheap local yarn, yet the same "200-stitches/minute" story is
told
there.
Turns out that what was a very cheap yarn for years and years was also one
of the very best for speed knitting. It did not get to be expensive until
after WWI


We do not even teach speed knitting any more.

We teach it to each other, voluntarily instead of by fear of starving.
Knitters discuss methods here and in other Internet locations - weblogs,
discussion groups, etc - methods for efficiency, methods for reducing
RSI, etc.

I did ask, and this group in particular advised me to switch to continental
knitting to increase my speed. But beyond that, issues such as texturing a
band around the tip of metal needles to increase speed, using a knitting
sheath, and the impact of yarn on knitting speed were never suggested by
others as ways to increase my knitting effectiveness. I had to learn those
myself.

The number one way to reduce RSI is using a knitting sheath. Who else
besides me talks about knitting sheaths?
The Shetland production knitters do knit fast, but *traditional Shetland
yarns do not lend themselves to real speed knitting*. Thus, Shetland
production knitting is not the kind speed knitting with *wassit* that
was practiced by contract knitters of the Channel Islands or Cornwall
or The Dales.

Traditional Shetland yarns are a bit thinner than traditional gansey
yarns were; ganseys were considered thick sweaters. Shetland yarns
may allow faster knitting because they don't have to have every end
worked in immediately to prevent raveling.

Last month I would have agreeed with you. Now, after knitting with a yarn
that can be speed knit, I say that Shetland yarns are not suitable for
"speed knitting".

Moreover, real speed knitting
tools are not allowed in the knitting competition. snip

Today, we want yarns that "feel good." When was the last time anyone in
this group selected a yarn primarily because it knit fast?

Well, you did. You're in this group.

No!! No!! I selected a yarn for other reasons and was shocked and
astonished to find how much faster it allowed me to knit. I had no clue
before I put it on the needles.

A knitting sheath will almost double your knitting speed, but
who uses a knitting sheath any more?

You do.

We no longer select hand knitting needles just because the are very
fast. We are not hungry, so we want needles that "feel good."

We want needles that don't give us RSI. I seem to recall your posting
a few years ago about how wonderful dogwood needles feel, and how they
let the yarn move smoothly along.

'Addies" are not the fastest needles out there,

They certainly have that reputation, though.

but who, here can stand up, and say confidently say, "My needles
are faster!"?

You say that.

These days we do not knit fast because we do not really try.

Do not blow off claims of fast knitting just because you have not put
thought into what it would take to knit fast.

You don't know how much thought I have put into it.

snip
Unless you have really thought about knitting fast, then you can not
judge the validity of claims about knitting fast.

I can judge the likelihood of mistaken estimates, especially when the
identical myth is claimed by several different areas.

(This reminds me strongly of the fact that modern horses, timed by
accurate stopwatches over measured miles, somehow never match the
speeds reported for certain horses in the 19th century.)

They were not handicapped and thereby were carring less weight than
modern
horses of the same classs. 60 pounds can make a difference : )

Some of them were carrying more weight - heavier saddles, bigger jockeys,
running before the change to saddles that held the weight over the
withers instead of the mid-back.

Like Seabiscuit? Why don't more modern horses have as many wins as
Seabiscuit? It may be the same question.

If you don't want to try the international competition, why not
go for the Guinness record? All that takes is contacting them, and
knitting in front of a reliable sworn witness with an accurate stopwatch.
Then you could use all your preferred methods, tools, and yarn.

That might just be the best idea that I have seen in a very long time. I
would have thought that the Guinness record for speed knitting would have
been well over 200 spm.- and set way back when when knitting sheaths were
more common.

=Tamar