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#1
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The Gross Errors of a Needle Maker: 000, 00, 0,
What size is that needle? Hard to tell.
I really do not care. I knit swatches with different sized needles and then use the needles that produced the fabric that I liked. If you want to do better, get a micrometer and measure the actual diameter of your needles. The traditional needle gauges with holes in them make errors in needle naming easy. Consider US # 1 needles. The holes in the "Boye" standard knitting needle gauge and the "Susan Bates Knit Checker" have holes for that are just larger than 2.50 mm in diameter so that the Boye and Susan Bates # 1 needles are just under 2.50 mm in diameter and *just* fit in that gauge hole. However, in the Knitter's Companion, there is a cardboard needle gauge that the hole for #1 that is 2.25 mm in diameter, but the text in Knitter's Companion says that US #1 is the same as 2 mm?!! Then, when I look at the needle size chart in Mary Thomas/ Dover reprint, the diameter of the spots she provides in her needle size chart do not match up with the diameters given in the text. Moreover, my AddiTurbo needle sold to me as a US #1 is about 2.51 mm in diameter, thus does not fit in the gauge holes for #1 needles. It is hard to tell that it is just a little bit over and so and it must be a # 2?? : ) Skipping to the chase here. Measuring my Susan Bates Knit Check (aluminum knitting needle gauge), the sizes of the holes are as follows: 1 - 2.50 mm 0 - 2.25 mm 00 - 1.85 mm 000 - 1.50 mm However, the sizes of the handmade steel needles that I use a 1 - 2.32 mm 0 - 2.00 mm 00 - 1.65 mm 000 - 1.20 mm Which is about what you will get if you make your own steel needles from music rod available in the American market. However, precise metric sized spring steel rod is available on the world market. Of course, you could make those size needles and rename them After all, what I call a #1 is only 0.07 mm larger than SB's "0" but 0.18 mm smaller than what SB calls #1, so by actual size it is much closer to being a "0" than a "1". But, it fits in the "1" hole and not the '0" hole, so for me, for now, it remains a "1". This why I say that hole based gauges introduce real errors in needle naming. The really bad news is that last night, I did gauge swatches on the cashmere yarn that has been sitting like a lump in the middle of the stash, and this morning at the breakfast table my wife said that the swatch from the 1.2 mm needles is the best fabric. It is a lovely fabric, but that is a lot of knitting. Maybe she would like matching hat and gloves rather than a sweater. Aaron |
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The Gross Errors of a Needle Maker: 000, 00, 0,
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The Gross Errors of a Needle Maker: 000, 00, 0,
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#5
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The Gross Errors of a Needle Maker: 000, 00, 0,
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#6
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The Gross Errors of a Needle Maker: 000, 00, 0,
Somewhere in the archives of this group is a detailed description of my
needle making. I think there is also something on my blog - http://gansey.blogspot.com/. I started making wooden needles because I wanted to understand how tip shape affected my knitting - Why buy commercial needles if you are just grind the heck out them? Wooden dowel is cheap and easy to find - unfortunately the kinds of woods that are used for cheap dowel these days do not make *great* knitting needles. However, with a pen knife and a bit of sand paper, very functional knitting needles can be made. (Once you have learned the technique, you can get more suitable woods and make some really fine knitting needles. (And, once you have confidence, you can buy a set of commercial wooden or bamboo needles and use them as blanks to make needles that really suit your knitting style and that really work with the yarns that you like.) I harvest dogwood twigs in the spring, split them, whittle them to shape, and make fine knitting DPN with a minimal investment in time and materials. I feel that those dogwood needles are as good as the best (or most expensive) commercial wooden needles. I believe that dogwood is the very best wood for knitting needles. This puts me in the minority as *rosewood* is the official religion in this group. I am interested in traditional knitting methods that used long steel needles. Such long steel needles did not seem to be commercially available. After some experimentation, I settled on using a small, electric bench grinder to form the tips by rotating commercial "music rod" against the grinding wheel with my screw gun. Music rod or piano wire is available inexpensively in most hardware stores. This process produces a DPN blank. These were tools that I felt many "handy" households were likely to own and which produced a good needle. The blank is then hand polished with emery paper and crocus cloth. The result are quite satisfactory for using with a knitting sheath to produce traditional fisherman's ganseys such as described in Gladys Thompson's and Mary Thomas's books. The needles are 2 to 3 mm in diameter and 12 to 18 inches long. My handmade needles have a much lower level of polish than the commercial cast and plated needles that are available in 10 inch lengths. Thus, my needles are less slippery and I find them easier to use. Also, 10 inch needles are also much harder to join with without twisting when you are working with cast-ons of more than 220 stitches. Knitting with a knitting sheath allows much faster knitting than knitting with SPN or cable needles. Knitting with a knitting sheath and spring steel needles uses the spring of the needle to perform half of the knitting motion, reducing joint rotation and stress on the hand and wrists. The sheath frees the right hand to focus on tension control, and supports the work. Knitting with a knitting sheath and long steel needles has dramatically improved the quality of my knitting, increased the speed of my knitting, and reduced the stress on my hands and wrists. On the other hand, knitting in the round with long DPN is very dangerous. These are the knitting needles that your mother warned you about. When knitting in the round, long sharp needles poke out from your lap - you do not want a child running up to you while you are knitting with long DPN. One needle is poking up just below the knitter's eye level. Bend over to look more closely at your knitting and you could get a knitting needle in the eye - wear eye protection when knitting in the round with long DPN. Moreover, long DPN can poke and scratch furniture. Aaron "lanfear32" wrote in message oups.com... Cool! How do you make your own needls? What tools do you use, and what made you decide to do that in the first place? wrote: What size is that needle? Hard to tell. I really do not care. I knit swatches with different sized needles and then use the needles that produced the fabric that I liked. If you want to do better, get a micrometer and measure the actual diameter of your needles. The traditional needle gauges with holes in them make errors in needle naming easy. Consider US # 1 needles. The holes in the "Boye" standard knitting needle gauge and the "Susan Bates Knit Checker" have holes for that are just larger than 2.50 mm in diameter so that the Boye and Susan Bates # 1 needles are just under 2.50 mm in diameter and *just* fit in that gauge hole. However, in the Knitter's Companion, there is a cardboard needle gauge that the hole for #1 that is 2.25 mm in diameter, but the text in Knitter's Companion says that US #1 is the same as 2 mm?!! Then, when I look at the needle size chart in Mary Thomas/ Dover reprint, the diameter of the spots she provides in her needle size chart do not match up with the diameters given in the text. Moreover, my AddiTurbo needle sold to me as a US #1 is about 2.51 mm in diameter, thus does not fit in the gauge holes for #1 needles. It is hard to tell that it is just a little bit over and so and it must be a # 2?? : ) Skipping to the chase here. Measuring my Susan Bates Knit Check (aluminum knitting needle gauge), the sizes of the holes are as follows: 1 - 2.50 mm 0 - 2.25 mm 00 - 1.85 mm 000 - 1.50 mm However, the sizes of the handmade steel needles that I use a 1 - 2.32 mm 0 - 2.00 mm 00 - 1.65 mm 000 - 1.20 mm Which is about what you will get if you make your own steel needles from music rod available in the American market. However, precise metric sized spring steel rod is available on the world market. Of course, you could make those size needles and rename them After all, what I call a #1 is only 0.07 mm larger than SB's "0" but 0.18 mm smaller than what SB calls #1, so by actual size it is much closer to being a "0" than a "1". But, it fits in the "1" hole and not the '0" hole, so for me, for now, it remains a "1". This why I say that hole based gauges introduce real errors in needle naming. The really bad news is that last night, I did gauge swatches on the cashmere yarn that has been sitting like a lump in the middle of the stash, and this morning at the breakfast table my wife said that the swatch from the 1.2 mm needles is the best fabric. It is a lovely fabric, but that is a lot of knitting. Maybe she would like matching hat and gloves rather than a sweater. Aaron |
#7
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Aaron! The Gross Errors of a Needle Maker: 000, 00, 0, (was: The Gross Errors of a Needle Maker: 000, 00, 0,)
On Thu, 15 Jun 2006 17:11:59 GMT, spun a fine yarn
Somewhere in the archives of this group is a detailed description of my needle making. I think there is also something on my blog - http://gansey.blogspot.com/. I started making wooden needles because I wanted to understand how tip shape affected my knitting - Why buy commercial needles if you are just grind the heck out them? Wooden dowel is cheap and easy to find - unfortunately the kinds of woods that are used for cheap dowel these days do not make *great* knitting needles. However, with a pen knife and a bit of sand paper, very functional knitting needles can be made. (Once you have learned the technique, you can get more suitable woods and make some really fine knitting needles. (And, once you have confidence, you can buy a set of commercial wooden or bamboo needles and use them as blanks to make needles that really suit your knitting style and that really work with the yarns that you like.) I harvest dogwood twigs in the spring, split them, whittle them to shape, and make fine knitting DPN with a minimal investment in time and materials. I feel that those dogwood needles are as good as the best (or most expensive) commercial wooden needles. I believe that dogwood is the very best wood for knitting needles. This puts me in the minority as *rosewood* is the official religion in this group. I am interested in traditional knitting methods that used long steel needles. Such long steel needles did not seem to be commercially available. After some experimentation, I settled on using a small, electric bench grinder to form the tips by rotating commercial "music rod" against the grinding wheel with my screw gun. Music rod or piano wire is available inexpensively in most hardware stores. This process produces a DPN blank. These were tools that I felt many "handy" households were likely to own and which produced a good needle. The blank is then hand polished with emery paper and crocus cloth. The result are quite satisfactory for using with a knitting sheath to produce traditional fisherman's ganseys such as described in Gladys Thompson's and Mary Thomas's books. The needles are 2 to 3 mm in diameter and 12 to 18 inches long. My handmade needles have a much lower level of polish than the commercial cast and plated needles that are available in 10 inch lengths. Thus, my needles are less slippery and I find them easier to use. Also, 10 inch needles are also much harder to join with without twisting when you are working with cast-ons of more than 220 stitches. Knitting with a knitting sheath allows much faster knitting than knitting with SPN or cable needles. Knitting with a knitting sheath and spring steel needles uses the spring of the needle to perform half of the knitting motion, reducing joint rotation and stress on the hand and wrists. The sheath frees the right hand to focus on tension control, and supports the work. Knitting with a knitting sheath and long steel needles has dramatically improved the quality of my knitting, increased the speed of my knitting, and reduced the stress on my hands and wrists. On the other hand, knitting in the round with long DPN is very dangerous. These are the knitting needles that your mother warned you about. When knitting in the round, long sharp needles poke out from your lap - you do not want a child running up to you while you are knitting with long DPN. One needle is poking up just below the knitter's eye level. Bend over to look more closely at your knitting and you could get a knitting needle in the eye - wear eye protection when knitting in the round with long DPN. Moreover, long DPN can poke and scratch furniture. Aaron --- Aaron! You're not a minority... rosewood is nice, but I'd agree that dogwood would make gorgeous needles, and if I could find some dogwood, I'd give it a try. HINT HINT, If you'd make me a set, I'd gladly pay! (but, they have to be SHORT, which is another subject) (go to my blog @ http://noreensknitche.weblogs.us/ - then click on connect in the right side-rar and emal me!) Noreen who only snuck in to check on one little thing and ended up posting.... yeesh! -- I am not young enough to know everything. http://www.lulu.com/content/292418 - - - - - --- avast! AV: Outbound message clean. Virus Database (VPS): 0624-2, 06/15/2006 Tested: 6/15/2006 12:52:36 PM avast! - (c) 1988-2006 http://www.avast.com |
#8
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The Gross Errors of a Needle Maker: 000, 00, 0,
Yes, real camel, in a nice sky blue, but I do not have much - maybe 100
grams. She has many sweaters and not too many hats. ; D Aaron "Katherine" wrote in message ... wrote: "Katherine" wrote in message Well, the sweater would definitely prove how much you love her. g Ya, But there is this hat that she has been wanting (Aran Pattern XIV in Thompson), for three years, and only last December did I figure out how to size it for her, and then it turned out that the yarn (real camel) that I had put aside for it would not work, and then I got to working on a gansey, so I do owe her a hat or two. And , I must design and make a new knitting sheath for 1.2 mm needles. Real camel? Yarn made from a camel???? But you know, she would adore that sweater. g Higs, Katherine |
#9
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Aaron! The Gross Errors of a Needle Maker: 000, 00, 0, (was: The Gross Errors of a Needle Maker: 000, 00, 0,)
In article , YarnWright
wrote: who only snuck in to check on one little thing and ended up posting.... yeesh! Sneeky woman..LOL Els -- Ja for Jazz and cobra loose the rrrrrrrr |
#10
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The Gross Errors of a Needle Maker: 000, 00, 0,
I beg to differ; there is no official needle preference here. Personally, I
have never used a rosewood needle and don't care if I never do. -- Jan in MN wrote ... This puts me in the minority as *rosewood* is the official religion in this group. |
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