knitting help

[KarinTimour]

Re: knitting help

Dear Clark:

I don't know if this will help, but I'll try to walk you through the knit stitch on line and through words.

First, some orientation. You shared that you've gotten through casting on, so I'm assuming you've got a number of sitches on your left hand needle and are looking to knit them on to your right hand needle.

Again, I'm holding my yarn in my left hand -- if you've got it in your right, someone else is going to be more helpful.

1. Look at the first stitch on the needle. Holding the needle for a minute as though it were a gun pointing directly at your eye, look at the first stitch. Think of it as a little face, with the "knot" at the bottom as the "throat."

2. Take your right hand needle, and hold the point BEHIND where the left ear would be if the stitch had a left ear.

3. Insert the needle so that the trajectory is a) going in under the left ear, coming out under the chin and above the throat of the little face.

4. Your needles at this point should form an "X" shape. Lay the yarn down the middle of the "X", from back to front, so that the yarn is now flowing down in front of the stitch.

5. Keeping your needles crossed, think of you needles as the hands of a clock. Move the right hand needle so that it is pointing at 12 and the bottom is pointing at 6. Now, swing the bottom of your right hand needle so that it is pointing at 3. The tip of your right hand needle should now be pointing at 9.

6. Keeping the bottom pointing at 3, start to pull the bottom with your right hand away from you. As you are doing this, the yarn that you placed in the "crotch" of the X above, should now be under neath your right needle. As a beginner, you can also sort of hold it there with your left thumb as you are pulling the right needle's bottom away from you (keeping it aimed at the 3).

7. When the tip of your right needle is almost about to slide off the left needle, here is where the tricky part comes in.

8. Do not let the tip of your right needle lose contact with the left needle. You are going to use it as a "finger" to trace from the "right ear" of your original stitch down the "side of the face, until you get to the place where the "chin and throat" were on the original stitch.

9. When you get to this point, right under the old chin of the original stitch, start to push the end of your needle toward you, so that it is now "crossing" under the left hand needle". It may be a bit easier to let the bottom of the needle fall a little so that it is pointing at the 4 on the clock face.

10. When the right hand needle has about an inch of the point on your side of the needle, pointing at 10 on the clock face, stop sliding the point of the needle forward. Now stop for a minute, holding the needles in this position.

11. The next step is easier if the original stitch is within an inch of the point of your left needle. Keeping both needles in the same relationship, if this entire operation isn't within an inch of the end of your left needle, move it down so that it's now located there, keeping the same relationship between the needles and the yarn.

12. Keeping the needles in the same position, hold your left needle and hand completely stationary, and grasping the right needle firmly, gently pull your hands apart, which will pull the old stitch off the left hand needle. I find that it's also helpful to swing the bottom of my right hand needle to the left, which causes the point of my left hand needle to slant to the right as I'm sliding the stitch off the left hand needle.

You now have knit a stitch!

Hope that works, try it and report back. If you can only follow it to a certain point and then it gets bolloxed up, let me know what step it works to, and I can try and walk you through from that point.

Hope it's helpful,
Karin Timour
Period Knitting -- Socks, Hats, Balaclavas
Atlantic Guard Soldiers' Aid Society
Email: Ktimour@aol.com

[Fiddlebum]

Re: knitting help

Now see, I knit American, and I can go really fast. I can do Continental if I have to, as in 2-color knitting, but I don't particularly like it. Of course, I also drove nothing but a stick shift until just a few years ago...

Kim Caudell

[USSanCom]

Re: knitting help

I know this is a really old thread, but I thought I'd add this to it. My great-grandfather was born in 1892. It was his grandparents who served in the ACW. When I was growing up, he always told me our family were Dutch and Scots-Irish. Then, he would say, "Sprechen Sie Deutsches?" My father's family were Germans who had been in the same area of (W)VA for 200 yrs.

In the same manner, the Pennsylvania Dutch are also known as the Pennsylvania Germans, so I think that leaves little doubt to the meaning of the period Dutch reference.

As a child, I couldn't learn to knit, but I learned to crochet from my mother and did so without patterns until quite recently. I continued to have trouble knitting until I switched to the Continental style. This is because it is so similar to the way I hold the hook to crochet. Is there any evidence that crochet (which I assume to be a French word) has any German foundations? This might explain the Continental method and I think it fits the timeline for when crochet came into being, doesn't it?

Are there any directions in Weldon's or in the children's books on knitting?

[KarinTimour]

Re: knitting help

Dear Dutchess:

Thank you for reviving this thread -- always happy to talk about knitting. First of all, Weldon's magazines and books are from the 1880s, so they aren't period correct for our time period. These were thin British magazines, published in booklets of 20 pages or so staring in (if memory serves) 1880-81. They were so popular that by 1885 the company republished a "collected" version called "Weldon's Encyclopedia of Practical Needlework" which ran to over 20 volumes. They just gathered twenty issues of the previously published magazines, bound them together between hard covers and reissued them. Interweave Press has been reprinted the first 12 volumes of the set in a modern hardcover binding.

In Weldon's Encyclopedia, volumne 1, there is a section on how to hold the needles, how to cast on, etc. First of all, it's a British publication, so it's teaching knitting with the yarn held in the right hand. Second, it's clear that women in the Victorian age aspired (or were supposed to aspire) to be social climbers. The method they illustrate for holding the needles is designed more to show off your beautiful hands and nice rings, and in modern terms is ergonomically tiring. You won't be able to knit as long or as quickly if you hold the needles with your hands underneath them, as opposed to holding them with your hands above them.

I can't speak on all girls' books, but I have read through the sections on knitting in the "Girls' Own Book" which is correct for our period and does deal with the basics of knitting and how to cast on. Again, what they cover even in that source, is a lot easier to understand if you've got a mother, grandmother or aunt somewhere in the house to ask questions of if you get into difficulties.

Hope that's helpful,
Karin Timour
Period Knitting -- Socks, Sleeping Hats, Balaclavas
Atlantic Guard Soldiers' Aid Society
Email: Ktimour@aol.com

[turfwriter]

Re: knitting help

I would recommend checking out Robin Stokes' website, www.robinstokes.com. It contains a knitting section with both information on period knitting and reproduction books (one, the 1857 Ladies' Dictionary, even has descriptions of how to do each stitch).

Good luck!

[Becky Morgan]

Re: knitting help

There are also many, many free videos at

http://www.knittinghelp.com

and crochet videos at

https://www.crochetville.org

I never could learn much from the diagrams in books. The '60s and '70s instruction leaflets always featured disembodied hands waving in midair with string levitating near needles, none of which seemed to be having anything to do with each other.

[Gwendolynn]

Re: knitting help

YouTube actually has many, many excellent how-to videos for knitting. I've been using it lately to try to perfect Continental knitting. You don't have to worry about trying anyone's patience. If you don't understand, just hit replay! I've always knit English style - albeit with an adapted sheath method. I want a sheath so badly, but the only original one I've found was $800!

Incidentally, I was knitting on a train in Germany once, and this darling little old lady sat next to me. She watched me for a good fifteen minutes with an amused look, then finally said, "Bless you, dear. What a lovely sock. Slow, but nice!" Apparently, she had never seen English style knitting before and thought I was using a "special" method all my own! I politely informed her that much of the rest of the world knits the way I did!


Gwendolynn

[Spinster]

Re: knitting help

Here's a type of sheath at a reasonable price --my understanding is that they've drilled a nostepinne for the task.

http://www.schoolhousepress.com/needles.htm

Scroll way down.

Also on the page--leather knitting belts.

[Tabbico]

Re: knitting help

And may I suggest the yahoo groups cwneedleworkers with lots of free knitting and crochet patterns and cwneedleworkersKAL where we do knit-a-longs with lots of help. The KAL group is currently doing the Norwegian Cap from Godey's.

A comment on knitting with the wool held and thrown by the right or left hand. The British hold the wool on the right hand AND suggest holding the knitting needles as you would hold a spoon because it looks more genteel. Emmigrants or descendents of British families would most likely knit this way as it was the way they learned in the old country, whereas Germanic folks would knit with the wool on the left hand. So if you are portraying a specific ethnic group, you may want to knit the way that ethnicity would knit.

[Clark Badgett]

Re: knitting help

WOW, this has to be some kind of record. I posted this about 5 years ago and it's still going. Now to get back to learning tyo knit, which when I stopped wasn't voerly hard, well at least the basics anyway.