Let’s go to England!

I think my favorite travel is when I can do a deeper dive into knitting culture, history, and its tools, methods and products.  So for me, the UK always checks off all the boxes!

My focus for this trip was a visit to Sheringham to look at their gansey collection, the Yorkshire Dales to look at knitting sheaths, and the Victoria and Albert to see their textile/fashion gallery and the Cartier exhibit.

There were plenty of other adventures in between, but for now I’ll just share a little about the sweaters, sheaths, and jewels with you here.

GANSEYS

Let’s start at the Sheringham Museum to see their gansey collection. I love gansey sweaters. First and foremost, they are beautiful, practical and have a rich history in both the world of knitting and fishing. They have a simple but interesting construction making them a really fun knitting project. 

If you’re unfamiliar with what a gansey is, you probably just know it by another name, a Fisherman’s Sweater. Many books have been written about these sweaters. Port towns in the UK and Europe, especially Netherlands have very distinctive styles and this is reflected in the literature. If you’re interested in learning to knit one, I’d recommend starting with the work by Beth Brown-Reinsel and her website Knitting Traditions.   Beth is such an authority that even the folks in Sheringham know her as an expert. 

Thanks to the kindness of Lisa Little, curator and manager of the Sheringham Museum, I was able to see museum’s collection dating back to the late 19th and early 20th century. I’ll share some photos below. One of the things that made this visit so special is the continuity of history here. Lisa knows the families of some of the fishermen who wore these garments. She even know the knitters in many cases. Her knowledge is expansive and I’m so grateful for all she shared with me. 

Now, ergonomically speaking, these sweaters are intriguing, especially if knitted in the traditional method with a knitting sheath or a knitting stick. The museum had many of these on display as did the Dales Countryside Museum (which I ‘ll talk about below). The sweaters are knit at a small gauge and the amount of stockinet does expose the knitter to concerns about repetition. But if you’re using a sheath or belt, the concern is much less.  I’d suggest that if you knit one, be sure to incorporate frequent breaks, or pair it with another project that has your hands doing other movements (i.e., lace or cables) to break up the repetition. You’ll find stretches in my book and tips for project pairing.

For me, what makes gansey sweaters so fun is that their simplicity of stitches produce such intriguing texture. And, of course,  their interesting construction.

Traditional gansey stitch patterns rely on knit-purl textured stitches to create patterns and motifs. Knit with a tightly spun and plied yarn, the patterns are crisp and distinct. They might be nautical references like waves, anchors or flags, but not always. Knitters would learn new motif patterns from knitters at the docks from other villages. The sweaters represent a sort of real-time stitch dictionary. Contrary to what you may have heard, the motifs are not family or fisherman specific, nor were they used to identify dead sailors. Although I suppose the knitter might recognize a sweater they’d made. But probably you’d recognize the face without the sweater anyway. Still, it makes for a romantic thought about knitting, I suppose.

They’re knit bottom-up in the round (less purling) with a faux seam that runs from the bottom all the way to the underarm and then down to the cuff (built-in stitch marker). After the bottom edge treatment – perhaps a simple rib stitch or even garter – much of the torso is knit with plain stockinet. Why? Because fishermen wore high-waisted pants to stay dry. So, why knit pattern if it’s covered up with pants? Smart! This makes for a fast and efficient knit. Things get really fun at the underarm where a diamond shaped gusset is made to allow for shoulder movement.

The traditional sweaters were knit with a fine gauge of between 13 to 15 stitches per inch. (I cast one on while I was there and I’m working at about 7.5 stitches per inch on a 2.5mm needle with a commercial yarn spun for ganseys.) It’s a lot of plain knitting! Of course these knitters used a sheath and traditional means of tensioning yarn, holding needles, etc., so they were fast!

The garments were made by family members for them men of the family who fished. Lisa informed me that sometimes ‘spare parts’ of sweaters were shared to make garments for men who didn’t have knitters to knit for them. Community knitting! I love it.