Many people that see my gansey have to be convinced that it is not felted.
They just assume that anything that tight MUST have been felted.

Much of a seaman's / fisherman's duties involved heavy labor with the arms -
rowing, hauling, furling sails.... One virtue of knitting is that it can
accommodate motion. I wonder if felted material could accommodate the
motion? I feel an experiment coming on!

Aaron
"Vintage Purls" wrote in message
ups.com...
On Jul 11, 12:41 pm, "Aaron Lewis" wrote:
Has anybody ever hear of "fisherman's sweaters" that were knit large,
and
felted to size?

van der Klift-Tellegen claims that fishermen from Bunschoten and
Spakenburg:
"owned two kinds of sweaters: a heavy one to wear at sea and a thinner
one for onshore wear: the Sunday sweater. The sea sweaters were
"felted," treated in a special way to make them wind-and-water-proof.
An oversized sweater was knit with heavy sajet, a sweater at least
twice the desired size. The sweater was then submerged in a tub of hot
water and rubbed and punched until it shrank to half its original
size. The result was a piece of clothing heavy as lead, water and
windproof." (pages 39-40)

A photo on page 36 shows a man whose sweater "strongly resembles
felt".

I also note that she claims that sea sweaters were never worn on shore
and may of the photos in her book show men posing for a professional
photographer - clearly you wouldn't pose for a photo in your sea
sweater but rather your sunday best. Maybe little photographic
evidence exists for this reason.

VP