# heritage knitting



## hoggie (Feb 11, 2007)

hi folks - back after a long absence again 

hope all is well and I will catch up with FAC soon, but in the meantime I hope to pick everyone's brains - please 

This is on my mind a lot at the moment in lots of different ways. How people coped with geographic problems in order to cope/survive. And along the way I started to wonder just how the different form of what I would think of as heritage knitting Arran, Guernsey, Far Isle etc came into being. 

I know the history of the Guernsey, and although it is my "local" heritage knit, the purpose behind it isn't totally relevant to the island's situation today. 

So can anyon ethrow any light on the subject of any of the other heritage knits please. Even if it is conjecture not fact, I would still like to hear it - theories are great by me. 

Thanks in advance - my mind is working overtime on this as a whole problem (not just knitting, the whole how things came to be issue), so any thoughts you have on the matter would really help a lot 

hoggie


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## Marchwind (May 10, 2002)

Hoggie how wonderful to see you back :sing: YOu have been on my mind a lot over the last few weeks. How is your daughter? How is her knitting? How is your spinning? I hope you will be staying awhile, I've missed you and your stories.

It seems to me that most of those richly patterned sweaters that we all love so much tended to have the designs at the tops for the warmth factor, it was their was of trapping air and making a warmer insulated sweater. The Irish Fisherman sweaters and I would assume most of the ones from fishing villages would have used raw fleeces (with the oils still in them) to help make them water repellent. The Lice in Nordic knitting, the color changes of Fair Isle, cabling of the Irish fisherman sweaters, the patterns of the Gansey(sp) and the Guernsey. All made for a much warmer sweater for that particular climate and trade. That is my understanding. I have a book up stairs that has some of the fishing village history of New England here in the states and the knitted thing they have discovered. Very interesting, it's mostly gloves, mittens and hats.


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## Maura (Jun 6, 2004)

What we think of as "Nordic" ski sweaters are actually a product of the last century, being designed in the 50s and later. When knitters used two strands of yarn, as with Fair Isle and Swedish twining, the idea is to form an insulated garment where two strands knit separately are warmer than two strands knit at the same time.

Aran/Irish knitting was done in the round. It was changed to being knit flat when the English started knitting the patterns. It is easier to knit a sweater in the round from the bottom up, or even better, from the top down.

I love to knit.


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## MullersLaneFarm (Jul 23, 2004)

Marchie, Could you give the name of the book you are referencing?

Maura, you are a wonderful nit of knowledge! I just love it when you chime in!

I love to knit also .... almost as much as I love to spin .. which is why I have more yarn than I do FO


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## MullersLaneFarm (Jul 23, 2004)

Marchie, Could you give the name of the book you are referencing?

Maura, you are a wonderful nit of knowledge! I just love it when you chime in!

I love to knit also .... almost as much as I love to spin .. which is why I have more yarn than I do FO


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## Katherine in KY (May 11, 2002)

Hoggie, it's great to see you back. As March said, do tell us how you're getting on.
As for heritage knitting, you well know how many traditions were passed on by sailors who brought back knitted items from their travels. In Shetland knitting was a major source of income for many families, especially if the man were lost at sea. On Fair Isle, the locals never wore the patterned sweaters; they were only for sale, and they sold so well that the Mainlanders started knitting them too. Originally the colors were all naturally dyed using local plants and lichens plus imported indigo. But aniline dyes replaced natural dyes fairly early on. The patterns were traded back and forth as sea trade flourished so it becomes hard to tell sometimes where certain ones originated. Old Fair Islanders though will tell you which ones were traditionally Fair Isle and which were added by Mainland knitters.


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## hoggie (Feb 11, 2007)

- thanks for the welcome back folks 

Marchwind - ye sDD is still knitting and is coming along nicely - my spinning has very much taken a back seat recently, there always seems to be so much to do an dnever enough time to do it in. But I hope to do more over the winter. I also bought myself a loom which I hope to play with - I still havent' collected it yet (bought it in the summer) but that will hav eto go in the workshop as I have no space at home.

The Guernsey's for sure use oiled wool, and they always recommend washing them with oil in the rinse water to re-oil.

WIHH - that is interesting about the Nordic sweaters - I have never thought about the double colour making it thicker/warmer.

Maura - Guernseys are traditionally knitted on a round needle too. I did kni tmy mum an arran jacket on a round needle once - boy did that get heavy by the time it was finished.

Mullerslanefarm - I love knitting too  - just never get as much time for it as I would like LOL

Katherine - interesting that the knitting was a major source of incoem at that end of the country too. I'm glad that the locals still know which are the traditional knits - I hope someone somewhere writes it all down while it is still lin memory - all but a couple of the true Guernseys have gone now 

From what I can gather with the Guernseys - the original industry was in knitted stockings - and the island had a licence to import the wool and export the stockings. Both men and women used to knit - in fact for a lot of the men it was a second income when they couldn't fish. Each household had it's own pattern of stocking and knitted nothing but that pattern making it easy to knit faster. Something went wrong with the stocking industry probably to do with the trade laws, and so the islanders turned their stocking knitting skills into knitting sweaters, but continued using their family patterns for it. So each family had their own Guernsey, which was passed down by word of mouth. One by one they died out until there was only a few and the remaining family patterns became thought of as parish patterns although I believe it was still usual to knit in the wearer's initials (I think under the arm). Eventually someone thought to try to find otu the pattern and managed to get one written down, and that is what we all know as the "Guernsey" today. The ribbing does have some symbolic meaning - rope ladders, stones on the beach etc but I don't know what it all is. There was never any cabling or colour changes in them and, when I queried that with the lady at the museum, she said that they wouldn't have known how to do those things - the Guernsey people only patterned with knit/purl combinations. 

One of the thing that interests me is that they always imported the wool. No-one ever seems to have thought of importing sheep and producing the wool on the island. I am not sure whether there was ever a reason for that - or if it just never crossed people's minds to think that way. Another thign to look into.

ETA - I also have read that they reckon it takes about 80 - 85 hours to knit a Guernsey. I am not sure if that was they length of time it took the old-timers who were knitting them constantly, or if that is what they think it would take now. But it is tiny wool and very dense so I can imagine ti being all of that if no tmore 

Anyway - I have rambled enough for now - good to see you all 

I will try and post a proper update soon

hoggie


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## Katherine in KY (May 11, 2002)

"Something went wrong with the stocking industry probably to do with the trade laws..."

Hoggie, I think what went wrong was the invention of the sock knitting machine which made socks faster and more evenly than people did. Shetland exported thousands of socks for a certain period; then they had to turn to other things to knit to keep food on the table.


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## sheepish (Dec 9, 2006)

I have a copy of "Knitting the Old Way" by Priscilla A. Gibson- Roberts and Deborah Robson. They don't go a huge amount into the origins of knitting (which seems to have begun in Egypt about 1100 A.D.)

They do say that the earliest ganseys (seaman's sweaters) were made not from fine machine-made 5-ply worsted called "seaman's iron," but rather from a courser 2-ply wool. The old simple knit/purl designs changed around the 1930's when Aran patterns were popularized.


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## Maura (Jun 6, 2004)

My knitting guild held a class on Guernsey knitting. We were told that the body was all knit in plain stockinette stitch and only the yoke was fancy. I have a feeling that that is true only with the sweaters for trade and not for the ones knitted for family!

I decided that I would do one for real rather than for a wee teddy bear. I'm using my own handspun from my black sheep. Goodness, a man's sweater is slow to knit in that tiny yarn. I started last October thinking I'd have DH's sweater knit up for Christmas. I put it down on December and haven't looked at it since. I really need to pull it out and get to work on it.


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## Marchwind (May 10, 2002)

Cyndi the book I have is called, Fox & Geese & Fences A collection of Traditional Maine Mittens by Robin Hansen. I don't know if it is still in print it was published in 1983. But it not only has mittens and gloves but also hats. This book is the one where I first found fleece stuffed mittens, or what we call thurmed. Here is a bit of what it says about them:

Fleece-stuffed mittens come from Newfoundland and Labrador. She says she put them in the book because they belong to the same tradition as the Maine Fisherman's Wet Mittens. They were often knit large and shrunk to size.

There are some interesting and fun patterns in this book for anyone who likes this sort of think. They have a really nice shooting mitten too. But the book also concentrates on the patterning in the items hence the name of the book.


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## Wisconsin Ann (Feb 27, 2007)

About Aran knitting: you might find this link interesting. http://aranislands.echo.netlink-dns.com/Inis-Oiir/culture-and-heritage/the-aran-jumper_41.html

In part it says 


> Some stitch patterns have a traditional interpretation often of religious significance. The honeycomb is a symbol of the hard-working bee. The cable, an integral part of the fisherman's daily life, is said to be a wish for safety and good luck when fishing. The diamond is a wish of success wealth and treasure. The basket stitch represents the fisherman's basket, a hope for a plentiful catch.


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## hoggie (Feb 11, 2007)

Katherine - that is a very good point - i guess mechanization like in so many things, was going to hit the knitters 

sheepish - I'm not sure but I think the Guernsey (as opposed to the Gansey) was knitted with the 5ply which is what they would have used for the stockings? I will try to find out - should be doable as the stockings were very famous (one of the queens wore Guernsey stockings at her execution LOL) 



Maura said:


> My knitting guild held a class on Guernsey knitting. We were told that the body was all knit in plain stockinette stitch and only the yoke was fancy. I have a feeling that that is true only with the sweaters for trade and not for the ones knitted for family!
> 
> I decided that I would do one for real rather than for a wee teddy bear. I'm using my own handspun from my black sheep. Goodness, a man's sweater is slow to knit in that tiny yarn. I started last October thinking I'd have DH's sweater knit up for Christmas. I put it down on December and haven't looked at it since. I really need to pull it out and get to work on it.


ROFL Maura - I keep thinking I would love to knit one for DD, but I am put off by how long it would take me - I can't figure out how many sizes too big I would hav eto start it in order for it to still fit her by the time I hav efinished it  Although, with it being straight knitting, in th eround, with just the one purl stitch on the side, I would guess that you could knit that wiith your brain doing something else entirely - the fingers just need to keep going. But I have that with one fo my sock patterns too - they are knit in 4 ply and take forever.

Marchwind - sorry to be dense, but what are fleece stuffed mittens? I would love to be able to do gloves and mittens, it is something that defeats me - I always end up with loose stitches on the fiddles

Ann - thanks for th link - I will check that out  Interesting about the patterns on the aran though - I never realised. 

hoggie


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## Marchwind (May 10, 2002)

Here's a link Hoggie http://www.knittingonthenet.com/patterns/mittensthrummed.htm


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