knitting journal

Hi All,

You are too funny for words about hiding gifts and not finding them or putting
them in plain site. I used to try and find gifts that my Mom hid, but never did
find all of them.

Aaron, loved the story on the Aran patterns. Now, did you find all your gifts?

Hugs,

Nora

Oh, yes, plus one pair of pink fuzzy socks that seem to fit my wife.
Everyting is in little piles in the family room. I should be in there
wrapping right now.

Aaron


"NoraBalcer" wrote in message
...
Hi All,

You are too funny for words about hiding gifts and not finding them or
putting
them in plain site. I used to try and find gifts that my Mom hid, but
never did
find all of them.

Aaron, loved the story on the Aran patterns. Now, did you find all your
gifts?

Hugs,

Nora

I agree that the first "Aran" sweaters knit from a light colored yarn appear
in the early 20th century - presumably to be sold to the tourists that
flocked there after a series of books popularized the Western World as a
place to visit. However, while I can not find a reference at my fingertips
just now, I believe the area has a long tradition of knitting seaman's
sweaters from a tightly spun yarn that was somewhat heavier and courser than
that used on the Channel side. I believe that it was traditional to knit in
the round using goose feathers as knitting needles.

There are good references to show that Norse navigators in the Viking era
kept a person knitting so the progress of the knitter marked time, and thus
how long the boat had been on a particular course. Irish ships were fishing
the Newfoundland banks by the 12th Century and by the year 1412, cod from
the Newfoundland banks was a major commodity in Liverpool. I expect that the
Irish navigators on the cod ships used the same methods as their Norse
forefathers. Thus, there would have been a long tradition of knitting among
Irish seamen and fishermen.

Sometimes seamen/fishermen must wear an "oil skin" to keep out rain and
spray. If you wear an oil skin over a flat sweater, then condensation on
the inside of the oil skin flows into the sweater and you stay wet and
uncomfortable. If the sweater has stitching such as bobbles or cables that
holds the oil skin away from the main body of the sweater, some of the
condensation flows down the inside of the oil skin and some of the
condensation is carried away by a flow of body warmed air flowing up under
the oil skin and out the neck. A dryer sweater is much warmer and more
comfortable. Thus, decorative stitches on seaman's sweaters had a real and
useful funcition. A cable pattern on your sweater could save you from
hypothermia - and death.

The Arans, the Shetlands and the Channel Islands have different climates.
This affected the local knitting style from a Norse tradition they had in
common. The Shetlands had the coldest climate, and knitted for the
continental market which was even colder (in winter). Thus, they developed
Fair Isle which is the warmest of the knitting styles. Since the Shetlands
did a lot of knitting for market, they had to produce a reasonably fine
wool. Until the 20th Century, the western most islands of Ireland knit
mostly for their own use. Their sea farers needed a maximum of ventilation
under their oil skins. Since that area had been settled by the Norse, they
must of had a breed of mountain sheep similar to the Icelandic mountain
sheep, and would have been spinning a course yarn from the tog, similar to
the course yarns being spun on Iceland at the time or they could have been
using yarn from Iceland. That would have been the "seaman's iron" that
they knitted into the sweaters that they wore as they stood in their barrels
fishing for cod. (Aside from seaman, there would have been very little
market for a sweater made of seaman's iron. lol) I expect that a another
source of wool had to be introduced into the Arans before they could develop
what we call the Aran sweater. (It is worth noting that Lopi was developed
starting about 1896, changing the availability of Icelandic yarns.) In
contrast, the Channel islands have more contental influence such that
ventilation can be decreased and the finer Yorkshire wools favored.

I have seen drawings of traditional Norse knitting patterns marked as
arrays of "V"s and inverted "V"s. I have also seen Norse runes on stone,
wood, and metal.. The thing that struck me about the Norse knitting patters
was how much they looked like runes, and how easy they would have been to
mark in wood or stone. Since wood has been scarce in western Ireland for a
thousand years, did they mark knitting patterns on stone? So the question
remains, has anyone seen arrays of scratches on slates in old (300 + years)
Irish cottages? Has anyone looked? Wouldn't it be neat to see a 600 year old
knitting pattern?

My point is that I know some archaeologists, and as late as the 1970's,
these kinds of scratchings would have been dismissed as a simple tally
rather than being recognized as an informationally dense symbolic code,
i.e., a kind of writing.

I guess I have to start keeping a bibliography on references to knitting.

Aaron


"Richard Eney" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Agres wrote:
snip

What brings this on is trying to knit complex Aran patterns flat. I can
see how complex Aran patterns can be knitted in the round by an
illiterate
person with with fairly simple mnemonics. And, I know that the Norse
culture had sophisticated symbols for recording and manipulating knitting
patterns. But, after spending the night working on an old Aran pattern
that
was knit flat, I firmly believe that Irish wemen were much more widely
literate than is recognized. I think they were reading and writing to
record knitting patterns if nothing else. I do not think the MEN that
ran the museams and wrote Irish history understood the sophistication and
density of information in the knitting patterns that the women recorded
and interpreted. Men in the countryside that also made a living knitting
understood, but they were not running museams and recording history.

Just a couple of comments. The earliest documented Aran patterns (meaning
knitted on one or another of the islands including the isle of Aran) only
go back to the early 20th century. The legend that they are ancient is
just that, a legend made up during the 1930s. The guernseys knitted in
less-bulky stitch patterns are traceable to early 19th century (by
photoraphs) and may go back earlier in the Netherlands.

Also, it's not all that hard to work an Aran once you get used to it.
You start out, do what looks good, and keep looking at what you're already
done to check what you need to do next. Flat or round, it's about the
same process.

Guernsey patterns tended to stay the same in one area for several reasons,
one of which was that people copied the old sweaters to knit the new ones.
Bits and shreds of old knitting that had an interesting pattern were
carefully kept as models to copy.

Ok you say, "Why don't we have little scraps of paper with knitting
patterns on them scattered all over the Western World?"

We do.. oh, you meant from the past. :-) They had scraps of old knitting,
but eventually the moths got at them or they rotted or wore out.

They were knitting with goose feathers!

Where did you hear about that?

=Tamar

But if you make it, won't it be an "Aaron" sweater?

JJMolvik

It was assigned; that would make it an "errand" sweater. Actually what I am
working on is to replicate a hat from the Swedish Textile Museam. The
example is a childs size and I want to scale it up for an adult. Last
September, I thought the whole thing would take no more than 20 hours. Now
I've spent more time than that frogging practice patches and I have not
even cast on with the intended yarn yet.

Aaron.
"JJMolvik" wrote in message
...
But if you make it, won't it be an "Aaron" sweater?

JJMolvik

In article ,
Agres wrote:
I agree that the first "Aran" sweaters knit from a light colored yarn appear
in the early 20th century - presumably to be sold to the tourists that
flocked there after a series of books popularized the Western World as a
place to visit.

Hans Kiewe, who owned a knitting shop and had, so to speak, an ulterior
motive in pushing interest in knitting, first spread the story that the
Aran style was 'ancient'. He had some other peculiar ideas about
knitting, including a claim that rough textured Egyptian stone surfaces
represented knitted clothing, and mistaking the beaded network overdresses
in some Egyptian paintings for knitted network. (He was writing before
the original dresses had been excavated so he had only pictures to go by.)

According to what I read, the earliest recorded * white * Aran sweater is
in a film made of a group of people at a First Communion service; one of
the small boys is wearing a white Aran sweater. The film was made shortly
_before_ the film, "Man of Aran", which I believe showed no knitting at
all; the film makers went to extreme lengths to show only traditional
clothing, and knitted sweaters weren't traditional at that time in the
Aran isles. The fashion of fancy guernsey patterned sweaters (in dark
wool) apparently was just spreading to the area.

However, while I can not find a reference at my fingertips just now,
I believe the area has a long tradition of knitting seaman's
sweaters from a tightly spun yarn that was somewhat heavier and coarser
than that used on the Channel side.

From what I read, that's true of the UK in general but not of the
Western Isles.

The UK in general had a tradition of knitted seaman's sweaters using a
yarn of five very tightly spun thin plies that made a very firm, thin
yarn. It became known as guernsey, jersey, or "jarnsey" yarn by the time
of Queen Elizabeth I, and stockings were made of it also. There was a
commercial business of having seaman's sweaters knitted by everyone who
needed money that badly. Handknitting sweaters for the family was done,
but it was also done for money. Having the complicated patterns knitted by
hand in the round was cheaper for the manufacturers and the quality was
better, so they outsold the machine knitted ones (which were generally
plain and flat knitted and then sewn together). Round knitted sweaters
didn't pull apart at the seams so they lasted longer under stress and
were worth the extra money, but the sewn ones still were bought because
every penny counted.

Once machines could do complex round knitting (early 20th century), then
the guernsey hand knitting trade died out because you couldn't earn enough
at it to make it worth what they were willing to pay.

According to a book that I think is called Knitting in the Netherlands,
the guernsey yarn was finer than the yarn commonly used by the Dutch;
also the styles were different though of the same general idea.

I believe that it was traditional to knit in
the round using goose feathers as knitting needles.

That's the part that I'm immediately curious about. Goose feathers, like
other feathers, are fairly fragile, and knitting sweaters would destroy
them very quickly. I've read that goose feathers would be bound together
with ribbons to make a sheath to use for a knitting sheath; one end of the
metal needles would be shoved into the sheath so one hand was freed to
manipulate the yarn faster. There are some photographs of that kind of
knitting sheaths on the Shetland Museum website. There's a story that a
goose neck with pebbles in it would be used as a 'core' for a ball of
yarn, so it could be found easily in the dark. But I've never before read
of knitting with goose feathers.

There are good references to show that Norse navigators in the Viking era
kept a person knitting so the progress of the knitter marked time, and
thus how long the boat had been on a particular course.

I would love to know what references say that. I have a friend who reads
Norwegian and Old Norse and she could check them for me. I'm always happy
to find 'new' sources that I didn't know about. The ones I've read say
that there is no archaeological proof of knitting in Norway before the
late Middle Ages, long after the Viking era which was only around the
eighth to tenth century AD. There is evidence of other fiber skills,
such as nalbindning and tablet weaving. Nalbindning could be done on
board a boat since it makes a fabric that doesn't ravel and there's
no way to drop a stitch (though you could lose a needle). Some kinds of
nalbindning look something like knitting but the kinds most often used by
the Norse were quite different.

snip

I expect that a another source of wool had to be introduced into the
Arans before they could develop what we call the Aran sweater.

In the books I've read it's said that the development of a breed of sheep
that had white wool rather than gray did lead to the development of the
_white_ Aran sweater, though early Arans (that is, around 1938) were made
in all colors including bright red.

Since wood has been scarce in western Ireland for a thousand years,
did they mark knitting patterns on stone?

Why bother? Basic knitting can be done without a pattern at all. Patterns
can be made up easily, and if you have a nice one to copy, you don't need
a written pattern. If you're traveling, it's a lot easier to carry a
scrap of wool around than a rock.

So the question remains,
has anyone seen arrays of scratches on slates in old (300 + years)
Irish cottages? Has anyone looked? Wouldn't it be neat to see a
600 year old knitting pattern?

2000-600 = 1400. Knitting seems to have entered Europe around the 14th
century (1300s, or perhaps 1200 if what I heard about a recent dig is
true), so there are actually some 600-year-old knitting patterns in
existence. Most of them are from Egypt, a few are from Spain, a very
few are from farther north. The farther north, the simpler the pattern.
They aren't written patterns, they are surviving scraps of knitted fabric.

My point is that I know some archaeologists, and as late as the 1970's,
these kinds of scratchings would have been dismissed as a simple tally
rather than being recognized as an informationally dense symbolic code,
i.e., a kind of writing.

From what I've read, regular scratches on stones in Ireland are more often
considered to be Ogham writing, which was invented in imitation of runes.
The rules for Ogham were written down in Latin codebooks. It would be very
interesting indeed if they also made a knitting pattern.

But then, it's documented that some "runes" (and, I believe, some "Ogham"
writings), are meaningless and are assumed to be made by an illiterate
person who wanted a rock with runes on it. It could be that some
"illiterate" Ogham might be something else entirely. There are some rock
scratchings in Scandinavia that are identified as a common medieval puzzle
game. Some arrays of standing stones seem to be examples of geometry
problems. So why not a knitting pattern? I'd like to see the
translation, though: find a set of scratches and knit them, and post the
results on Martin's site!

=Tamar

In article ,
Agres wrote:
It was assigned; that would make it an "errand" sweater. Actually what I am
working on is to replicate a hat from the Swedish Textile Museam. The
example is a childs size and I want to scale it up for an adult. Last
September, I thought the whole thing would take no more than 20 hours. Now
I've spent more time than that frogging practice patches and I have not
even cast on with the intended yarn yet.

Trying to scale up an Aran pattern is very tricky. Could you use Meg
Swansen's trick of breaking the motifs into blocks and filling up spaces
between motif blocks with double seed stitch or moss stitch? Then you
could adjust the size by adjusting the size of the moss stitch areas.

=Tamar

Considering my progress so far, it is going to be an Errant hat.
I wish I had your advice (below) last September. In which case I would have
promised the hat for Xmas 2004 not 2003. LOL

I have to go at it a little smarter. I have to stop, and chart it to figure
out where the various elements of the stitch patterns begin and end.


Aaron

"Richard Eney" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Agres wrote:
It was assigned; that would make it an "errand" sweater. Actually what I
am
working on is to replicate a hat from the Swedish Textile Museam. The
example is a childs size and I want to scale it up for an adult. Last
September, I thought the whole thing would take no more than 20 hours.
Now
I've spent more time than that frogging practice patches and I have not
even cast on with the intended yarn yet.

Trying to scale up an Aran pattern is very tricky. Could you use Meg
Swansen's trick of breaking the motifs into blocks and filling up spaces
between motif blocks with double seed stitch or moss stitch? Then you
could adjust the size by adjusting the size of the moss stitch areas.

=Tamar

Sounds to me, with that much practice and frogging, it's an "errant"
sweater.

Amber

"Agres" wrote in message
. ..
It was assigned; that would make it an "errand" sweater. Actually what I
am
working on is to replicate a hat from the Swedish Textile Museam. The
example is a childs size and I want to scale it up for an adult. Last
September, I thought the whole thing would take no more than 20 hours.
Now
I've spent more time than that frogging practice patches and I have not
even cast on with the intended yarn yet.

Aaron.
"JJMolvik" wrote in message
...
But if you make it, won't it be an "Aaron" sweater?

JJMolvik