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February 07, 2006
steeks part 2
Now that I took my chill pill~ really no rant~ I am gonna approach this topic again. Insomniac me, the one with a bee in bonnet, spent some time flipping through books on Scandinavian knitwear. Not pattern books but historical ones. Sheila McGregor proposes that jumpers were made ala gansey construction: with gusset, steek, and sleeves picked up at armholes. The steek stitches became the facing at sleeve/body juncture. I thought that maybe that was due to her English Isles upbringing and knit construction prejudices but then I spied in Britt-Marie Christoffersson's swedish Sweaters several photos of old, and I mean old, sweaters with gussets. Here are zoom ins of some photos:
You don't want to see all 17 pictures I took do you? I'm getting tired of uploading them and some people are stil on dial up. Anyway then I started thinking about fit. These sweaters were short, and skin tight, and short. Did I mention short? One sweater is fully charted out and it only 8" long from neckline to hem assuming the typical close to stitch gauge stranded knitting on diagonals have on row gauge. 40sts/4" so 80 rows makes @ 8" . I honestly think these sweaters were fulled slightly. I am aware that knit sleeves that were sewn onto the boiled wool jackets were fulled then cut to fit into armscye. Maybe its because I can't wrap my head around knitting an Elka sized sweater at 10spi. One was measured at 50sts/4" but 40 seems avg. So we have the gansey construction with gusset and sleeves picked up at armhole which means one wouldn't have to worry about stitch and row gauge matching a written pattern. One author gave modern adaptions which were worked flat in pieces. Interestingly enough Annemor Sundbo states that @1850 there were knitting machines available but that they were only wide enough to work the pieces flat. Do we only assume sweaters were worked in the round? She does say " Several of the old preserved old lice patterned sweaters from Setesdal are machine knitted." pg77 BTW of Setesdal Sweaters. Factor in the fulling, which one could assume was due to numerous washes over a century instead of a Elka proposed purposeful fulling, at teensy tiny gauge one might not be able to tell if something from behind glass was knit in pieces or not... Not being a knitting historian with the handy dandy access to sweaters I of course can only speculate. To further support the fulling prior to cutting theory there is one more picture~ I had forgotten!~ of a sweater in Sundbo's book [pg 138] that was found in the ragpile and it looks as if the bands were cut off to keep clasps or some such. OK peek at the amazingly not strait cutting and lack of running:
Somebody left a comment on Wendy's blog about the sweaters just being cut without any treatment at all[at least that is how I read the comment I could be wrong] and I think it is possible that a modern knitter would cut a sweater without any sewing if she had added on say 4 steek sts and planned on picking up the sts and then stabalizing with a facing. And facings were often used in older sweaters both inside and out. I refuse to take more pictures but there was often cloth inside "for added warmth accross shoulders" and we are well familiar with the woven bands at wrists, neckline, plackets, and cardigan fronts. Could these be a throwaway to a time when cutting sans machine was a necessity? A form becoming fashion thing.... OK gonna mull over my latest theory and let me know what your thoughts are. And yes I understand most of us only have access to the same written words but isn't it fun to think about how things were done?
Posted by Elka at February 7, 2006 02:36 PM
Comments
the woven facings are also much softer than the wool! I was cataloging a (modern) sweater last week, and the donor said the wool and pattern were from the Husfliden, which is the "home industry" shop. IE, traditional stuff. The wool was very scratchy, overspun kind of stuff, so the linen or cotton facing was absolutely necessary, even at the cuffs.
Posted by: terri at February 7, 2006 04:00 PM
In Shetland, anyway, the peculiarly hairy wool and the extra caston stitches mean that the knitting is ALWAYS cut without any reinforcement. I wonder what the wool the 1900 Norwegian knitter would have used was like?
Posted by: eunny at February 7, 2006 09:48 PM
Elka the philosophers sweaters have no steek stitches! They just knit and cut!
Posted by: elizabeth at February 8, 2006 05:22 AM