More questions from the inbox.

Sport weight = 5 ply gansey weight?

Not really.  As the "5 ply" weight designator implies, Gansey/Guernsey is in between sport weight (6 ply)  and fingering (4 ply).  There are yarns labeled as sport that are on the thin side that work up nicely at the 6.5 spi Gansey target as well as yarns labeled fingering that are thick and also cover that gauge. But not every sport or fingering can be used as a sub for it.  Plus Gansey weight usually imples a classic smooth finish, dense yarn that supports superior stitch definition.  Wendy/Peter Pan still makes traditional Guernsey 5-Ply, now a superwash.  It is labeled at 7spi, but is denser than fingering/sock yarn at that gauge. 

Washing yarn in a front loader washing machine with a wool cycle?

Front loaders are known for gentle action compared to aggressive water-hogging top loaders, so I suspect that you'll be able to wash the spinning oil from loosely wound hanks using one.  I know people who complain about the flip side of this problem, that it's impossible to get their front loader to full yarn for felted projects.  BUT there are caveats.  The machine has to have settings that control water temperature in both the wash and rinse cycles, so that you can set the same temperature for both.  It has to have the ability to retain water for soaking (some use very little water and getting a a pool for the yarn to sit in may be problematic). 

One other challenge:  it also has to have controls that let you either eliminate agitation, or that let you advance the cycle past the agitation stage of the wash to plain old drain then spin.  If the machine relies on side-mounted flanges on the inside of the drum to churn the contents as the drum spins, it will be impossible to eliminate agitation-like movement of the stuff being washed.  I don't have a front loader, so I can't speak to whether or not the agitation inherent in that type of action would allow washing yarn with no risk of fulling.

As for pre-programmed wool cycles on all machines,  I'm very skeptical about them.  My own top-loader has an alleged wool cycle that's pretty much useless.  All it does is put the wash through a shorter (though not less vicious) agitation cycle.  It does nothing to govern water temperature, and the rough treatment although shorter is still enough to induce fulling.  I wouldn't risk using my machine's wool cycle for finished items, and especially not for more vulnerable un-knit hanked yarn.   I know some of the more expensive European washers handle wool extremely well.  Experimentation here is warranted.  Since seeking reliability of results in knitting always leads to a pile of swatches somewhere, here's a chance to put them to constructive use.  If you want to determine the usefulness of your washer's wool cycle, gather up a bunch of swatches then put them through a cycle and observe the result.

Tracey asks if I plan on washing my Webs-acquired Highland Tweed before I work with it, or if I plan on washing the sweater after it has been knit. 

I think in this case, I'll wash my yarn first.  A couple of years ago, I knit something in a yarn that like the Highland Tweed was full of whatever they use to make machine spinning easier   It was a cone of some unidentified 100% wool I got at the old Classic Elite mill end store.  I swatched it up, got gauge, washed the square, re-gauged and knit up Flor's gansey pullover for my older daughter.  (Flor's pages are off-line, but the pattern can be found in the Internet Archive.) Then I washed the thing.  I was never quite pleased with the fit.  The yarn relaxed and fluffed out a bit, but looked "strangled" in the sweater.  Proportions shifted slightly in unexpected ways.  I'm sure if I had taken the time to wash the yarn first, then take a gauge on it rather than doing the lazy route, everything would have worked out better.

That being said - how to wash yarn?  It's easy.

I take my swift (or two chairs back to back in my pre-swift decade) and wind a fair bit off the cone.  Then I'll take some cotton string and loosely tie the newly made hank in two or three places.  I note that many hanks I buy are tied in a two or three "stitch" manner rather than in one big clump.  It looks like the person who did it took a length of tie string and looped it around the accumulated hank.  Then, he or she bunched up about a third of the hank's yarn and plunged one end of the tie string through the thing from top to bottom, and the other end through at the same spot, from bottom to top.  Then they grouped up the next third, and repeated the process.  The whole idea is to keep the yarn in an easy to unwind hank, but not tie it so tightly that the yarns rub up against each other and encourage fulling.



Once my hank is loosely tied, I'll wash it the same way I wash my finished items.  I'll fill my washing machine part way with cool water and add a wash agent.  Right now my favorite is Kookabura Wool Wash, but I've also used Eucalan in the washer.  If I were doing this OUT of the washer in a tub sink or bucket and had no wool wash to hand, I'd try a liquid dishwashing detergent or inexpensive shampoo.  Warning though, adding either dishwashing liquid or shampoo to a washing machine can mean a Lucy Moment as you deal with the resulting overflow of lather.  

With the washer's wash cycle off, but with the wash agent mixed well in the water, I submerge my hanked yarn in the tub and let it soak for a while.  I might swish it a bit very gently in the water to encourage the process but I don't turn the washer on, or otherwise squeeze, rub, or agitate the yarn mass.  Once the yarn has soaked for a bit (usually about a half hour, or until I remember I've put it in), I advance the washer dial to rinse.  I let the machine empty, then refill partway with the SAME temperature water in which I did the wash, but stop it before agitation begins.  I let the yarn sit a bit in the cleaner water (again with perhaps the most gentle of hand swishes), then advance the machine to final spin.  This time I let the water drain out and let the machine go through its final spin, to fling as much water out of the yarn as possible. 

After the wash I take my hanks and loop them around plastic hangers, then hang the hangers somewhere to dry.  Over the shower rod with a towel underneath is fine.  The trick is to find somewhere out of direct sun that's un-humid enough to encourage quick drying.  My basement in this case is right out, as it is too damp down there for quick drying.  On a very humid day I might direct a fan to blow at my drying hanks in order to speed the process.

Am I doing this right now?  Not yet.  I admit I've been sidetracked (the story of my knitting life).  I'm playing with the nifty cotton I described yesterday, messing with gauge measurements and stitch count, trying to establish my flash dimension.  It's a bit harder than before because although the yarn has the right dimension and color placement to flash, the color set doesn't have a wildly obvious marker like a screaming orange stripe.  A visually distinctive bit helps eyeball where the repeats should overlap.   More on this as I work the problem through...

It's been a week of yarny goodness here at String.  Not only did I go on a shopping expedition on my own, but The Resident Male went on a trip to Arizona and brought me back a present.  Now this is a Big Thing because althogh he's been supportive of my needlework obsessions over the years, he's never before been a direct enabler of them. 

So I am picturing him at the knit shop he found out in Scottsdale, Arizona.  He says he went in and asked the committee sitting around the back project table for help selecting something unusual.  He was shown a pile of various foofy/fuzzy/overadorned novelty yarns, and being observant knowing that I rarely use them, insisted on something less "demonstrative" but still unique. 

The committee came through.  He ended up buying this:



It's a hank of mercerized 100% cotton, hand-painted in blues, teals, and greens, with a touch of a mauved brown.  The effect when wound is a ball reads "camoflage."  It's got a house label on it (no brand name), stating that it knits to Aran gauge (4.5spi on a US #8), and that it's got 997 yards total.

Looking at the stuff though it reminded me of Rainbow Mills Crayons Lite, the yarn included in their "Grandma's Little Darling" toddler sweater kits (shown here on Younger Daughter when she was three):



Sure enough, a side by side comparison of my leftovers from the sweater above and my new yarn shows that they're near identical.  Amazingly enough not only are they structurally the same, the wind-off hank diameter is the same, and the hues of the teal, brown and khaki in the two are spot on identical (the toddler leftovers includes magenta and orange in addition to all the colors in the new stuff).  I wrote to the yarn shop, and they confirmed that the base stock for this yarn is the same as the Rainbow Mills product.   I haven't seen Crayons Lite sold outside the toddler kits, and having a known weakness for variegated yarns, I've always wanted to use it again. 

For the record, to make the yarn flash in the toddler pullover, I needed to get 5spi on US #7s, and predicated the circumference on a factor of about 12.5 inches, then steek the armholes.  This sweater is done on 125 stitches (about 25 inches around).  I think that I'll try to use my hank to make a short tee on 250 stitches, and see if I can get the same kind of flash.  I'll use a provisional cast-on so that I can go back and add ribbing or edging later so I can maximize use of the yarn I've got on the body itself.   I even have enough of my coordinating (but brighter mix) leftovers to do the rib or edging, should I so desire.  If that doesn't work and I come up short, I'll see if I can do something on the same narrow strip principle as my Typeset Tee.

The upshot of all this is that Resident Male came back with just about the perfect choice:  a yarn that isn't available locally, in colors that I enjoy, and in quantity that's just right. 

Keepers, both!

I've gotten some questions via eMail about yesterday's yarn crawl.

How do you know what to buy?  Do you go with a list?

Some people do.  My pal Kathryn did.  She had a prepared list of patterns and requirements, and went looking for yarns specific to those needs.  I don't.  When I go to an "exotic" yarn shop I look for things that aren't available at my local yarn store.  Most of the stuff in the front retail store area at Webs is available in my own neighborhood.  (I am lucky enough to live in one of the most yarn-shop-dense areas in in the US.)  I went looking for back room bargains, off labels, mill ends, and other oddiments that I am leery of purchasing sight-unseen over the 'net.

In terms of what I was looking for, I do admit that experience with yarns is a plus.  I know a bit about different types of yarns and their properties.  Not as much as a spinner - but enough to know what yarns are likely to improve with washing, and which ones will remain prickly for their entire life.  I've got a rough grasp of what both yards per pound figures and the number system of yarn descriptors used for woolen and cotton yarns translate to in standard hand-knitters terms and gauge.  I've played with wraps per inch (though I admit I didn't use that measure this trip).  I've got a calculator and know how to convert pounds to grams, so I can figure out a rough equivalent cost per mythical 50-gram skein.  Plus I have a good idea of what colors appeal to me, look well on me (or my target),  have classic appeal, and would be fun to knit. 

So what I did was wander the back aisles in the walk in warehouse, looking for goodies on special.  The goodies had to be of excellent quality, in an appealing color that will transcend trends, of versatile type or construction (not a novelty yarn that will look dated in a fortnight), and represent a significant cost savings.  If any "spoke to me" (inspired a particular creative idea upon first sight) all the better.  But I was not buying for immediate consumption and went with no particular  projects in mind.

Have you ever bought "the wrong yarn"?

Yes and no.  I've got all sorts of things that have sat in my stash for extended periods of time, but I've never bought anything I wished I could return.  For example, right now I've got two bags of well-aged Classic Elite Artisan in a deep green somewhere between khaki and hunter.   At the time I bought it (circa '99) I had an idea that I'd use it for a cabled sweater.  But since then I've reconsidered.  It's a bulky weight (3.5spi) and has alpaca in it.  A cabled thing in it would end up being both weighty and ultra-warm.  Too warm to wear as an indoor/outdoor sweater.  Plus I've found I prefer knitting in smaller gauges.  So it sits, awaiting inspiration, but I wouldn't say it was a bad purchase or it was "the wrong yarn."  Eventually I'll figure out what to do with it, or I'll swap it for something else. 

How much did Webs pay you to post yesterday's ad?

Nobody pays me nothin'.  I go where I want, and I write what I want on String - bad or good.  Please send my greetings to the other conspiracy theorists whose company you must enjoy.

So what are those number system/yards per pound bits you mentioned?

(This wasn't actually asked, but I'm sure it will be if I don't address it here).  There are several very cogent explanations of the number system and how it's calculated elsewhere on the Web, but here's a quick cheat sheet of equivalents for wool.  Remember that although this chart makes it look like there are absolute definitions of size, these are approximate average numbers.  There is considerable overlap with the values shown above and below each category, dependent on all sorts of things including fiber blends, texture, or how tightly the stuff is twisted (how dense the yarn is).

Weight (ply weight descriptor equivalent)	Most Common Gauge	Approx. Average Yards/Pound (Wool)	Approx. Average Wraps/ Inch	Some Count Numbers* For This Weight (100% Wool)
Fingering (4-ply)	7 spi	1,920 wool	16	4/30, 2/15, 4/24
Sport (6-ply)	6 spi	1,500 wool	14	6/24, 2/16, 3/9, 3/11
DK (8-ply)	5.5 spi	1,400 wool	12-13	3/8,
Worsted (10 ply)	5 spi	1,280 wool	11-12	2/10, 10/24, 4/8
Aran (12 ply)	4.5 spi	850 wool	10-11	12/24, 2/4,
Bulky (14 ply)	3-4 spi	680 wool	9-10
Super Bulky (16 ply+)	3 spi or fewer	500 or fewer	8 or fewer	2/2

*In wool the first number refers to the number of plies (physical construction, not "ply weight equivalence"), in cotton, the second number refers to the number of physical plies

Please feel free to send me corrections and additions.  I'll be adding to this chart as time goes on, and possibly supplementing it with one for cotton when I get a chance.

I'm catching up on lots of things this week - appointments, activities, deliveries - plus I'm regaining equilibrium.  As part of my stress dissipation strategy I went to Webs.  Actually I went with my houseguest -  long-time needlework buddy Kathryn (she of "too many centries, too little time."). 

Of course no trip to Webs would be complete without an acquisition report.



The garnet yarn on the right is the 2/4 Highland Tweed 100% wool currently on special.  The website lists it as an Aran weight at 4.5spi, but to me it seems a bit light for that.  I have  this cone plus a partial - in total a sqidge more than 2.5 pounds total at 992 yards per pound, roughly 2,511 yards.  Thats way more than enough for a sweater for me at any gauge down to Gansey.  The twist is a bit soft.  It's a nice deep color (not as tomato as the picture), accented with flecks of emerald, sapphire, turquoise, and topaz.  On the cone it's a soft wool, but not Merino-gentle and is imbuded with a touch of spinning oil.  It's possible that the spinning oil has flattened the stuff out and is making it look more like a DK, so  I need to either wind off some and wash it then knit up a swatch, or knit a swatch and then wash it so I can determine final gauge.  Based on the texture though, I am expecting this yarn to soften up considerably once it has been washed.  2.54 pounds is about 1,152 grams or roughly 23 50 gram balls.  My purchase works out to the equivalent of about $1.33 per equivalent 50 gram ball. This stuff is listed on the Webs site.  Mine is the cardinal color pictured there..

The yarn at the left is another back room bargain bin find.  It's a 80% silk, 20% wool blend, in a fingering weight with a slight boucle texture, about 2,400 yards per pound.  It's a nice denim blue.  I bought two cones, again just under 2.5 pounds total.   That's a mind-boggling 5,928 yards.  Again using the 50-gram skein as a standard,  my purchase works out to 1120 grams,  about 22.4 skeins.  Rounding down, my 50-gram skein equivalent cost was about  $1.12 per skein.  My color isn't shown on line although there was lots of it on the shelf.

Now.  What am I going to do with all of this?

The red should be pretty simple to use regardless of gauge.  It's light enough in color and weight and not so busy that it can't handle a bit of texture pattern knititng.  I've got enough that if I wanted to go hog wild with cables, I could.  I'll be stashing it until a perfect idea emerges, although that Gansey idea is beginning to have a bit of appeal.

The blue however may be closer in terms of actual use.  Remember past musings on the compatibility between crochet and knitting?  About how crochet  needs to be worked in finer yarns to produce a fabric comparable to knitting?  Here's a chance for me to experiment with that.  I'm thinking of doing a summer top that combines both.  I'd use this stuff single-strand for a classic crocheted yoke, adapted from an antique chemise or nightgown pattern, then using the same thread doubled, knit the body of the garment.  The weight of the products of the  two should match much better than trying to use both techniques with the same thickness yarn.  My only handicap here is that I prefer not to wear sleeveless things, so some additional adaptation may be in order if I wish to wear the final result myself.  Anything leftwover would make a nifty lace shawl.

I also got a bag of Rowan Rowanspun 4-Ply in Holly - an intense blued deep green.  I've been collecting colors of this stuff for a while, all in the jewel family. (notice a theme here?)  I finally have enough to do something spectaular.  What exactly, I haven't a clue. 

So there you have it.  Skid marks on the old Visa, and depending on the sizes/gauges used - most or major parts of 3-5 adult size garments, all for about $80.  I'm stoked, I'm de-stressed.  Now on to the knitting!

Corrections made

J Scholes is absolutely correct!  The book I mentioned two days ago is Odham's Encyclopaedia, not  Oldham's Encyclopaedia.  I plead an absent title page, a rubbed spine, and bifocals.  Of course I have no excuse about missing the obvious on the various Internet sites I looked at to document the probable date of origin.  I've fixed Sunday's entry accordingly.

An evening with Christine Duchrow

In other news, in an idle l moment I took up a book I bought a couple of years ago and  tried to decipher the knitting instructions.  It's The Knitted Lace Patterns of Christine Duchrow, Volume I, edited by Jules and Kaethe Kliot (Lacis, 1993).



 Duchrow wrote in Germany in the early 1900s.  She's one of the early proponents of charted instructions for lace knitting.  The editors do say that some of the book's patterns contain errors or are incomplete or damaged.  To top it off the text is very sketchy and in German, and the symbol set used is a difficult one.  For example, purls are represented by a lower case L and YOs are represented by the number 1.  The printers didn't always get the distinction correct, and even when they did - the blackletter font style l and the 1 are perilously close in appearance in the photo-reproductions presented in the book. 

But not to be daunted, I try any way.

I started out with a relatively straightforward scarf/jabot pattern named "Muschelschal" (Mussel Shell).  The photo isn't very good, but the pattern looked simple.  After wrestling with it for a couple of hours, I retrenched and went back to the basic edgings shown at the beginning of the book.  I am ashamed to admit that I didn't make much headway with them, either.  

I've got the easy stuff down pat - that the patterns only show right side rows (wrong side rows are plain knit); that there is potential confusion between 1 and l (compounded because it looks like many patterns frame YOs with purls), and that I do need to rely as much on the picture as I do on the directions to figure out what's going on.  But I can't make the stitch count numbers work.  The cast-on value is clearly stated for each design, with each pattern starting off with a row of plain knitting. However, when I count up the stitches consumed by the first patterned row, I never come out with the number currently on the needle.  Sometimes I'm one short, sometimes I'm one over.  If I were always one short, I'd make the assumption that the slipped edge stitch isn't calculated into the cast on number - but I'm not.  Clearly more experimentation is needed as I am missing something here that's very fundamental.

In the mean time, more on reading Duchrow's patterns can be found on Judy Gibson's site (thank you Judy!).  Additional advice is always appreciated.  If you've ever worked from this book successfully, please feel free to chime in with tips.

It's true I've had precious little time for much of anything lately.  Including knitting.  And the last thing I wanted was something challenging.  Since small, soothing, quick to finish, and materials-on-hand were the orders of the day, I did several miniprojects. Most have already ended up as gifts - more booties, a baby hat, and several scarves. 

The scarves were all done from my Kureopatora Snake pattern, some in various variegateds, and one in a solid color.  I even bowed to the begging of Younger Daughter, and finished out the hideous short-repeat white, pink and grey Red Heart scarf for her to wear.  (I may think it's detestable, but she likes it).

I also went stash diving and came up with the remnant from this vest.

The vest was knit in 1987 or so, and at the time was a Major Investment for which I skimped on lunches, saving up for the purchase.  The yarn is an old Silk City yarn I bought at Washington D.C.'s late, lamented Woolgatherer shop in Dupont Circle.  It is worsted weight, mostly raw silk, with a touch of wool.  The label departed company with the stashed remains years ago so I'm not quite sure which yarn it was.  The stuff itself is soft and spongy, and over time becomes even nicer.  Down sides include an abundance of very sharp chaff - almost thorns; plus the general non-stretchy nature of silk.  The vest was adapted from a commercial pattern, now lost.  I do know that I substituted yarns, messed with a new gauge, introduced the cables and removed some pockets. 

Now for the hat.

 I've had a haphazardly wound ball of leftover yarn sitting in my stash, too expensive to fritter away, but not enough with which to do something major.  I grabbed it to work on in my small project frenzy. 



Still riffing on the Snake scarf idea and no particular pattern, I started with a strip of bias-knit ribbing.  I made it large enough to go around my head, earwarmer style and seamed it up.  Then I picked up stitches along one side at a ratio of about three stitches picked up for every four rows of the strip.  I ended up with 84 stitches, divided among four DPNs.  Then I did a couple rows of purl welting and broke back into K1 P1 ribbing.  When the hat was about 5 inches deep, measured from the bottom edge of the earwarmer band, I began my decreases.  Since the thing was on four needles and I was lazy, I settled on four decrease points, and knit the last two stitches on each needle together, doing so every other row.

When I had onl y four stitches left on each needle, I decided to be silly.  I worked about 16 rows of I-Cord using the four stitches on the first needle.  Then I folded it in half, and without breaking the yarn, knit I-Cord from the four stitches on the second needle.  I continued until I'd made four I-Cord loops, then did one row of plain knit to unite them, and one more decrease row.  I drew my end through the remaining 12 stitches to end off the piece.  I also did a little stealth fudging with the dangling end and a tapestry needle to snick up some looseness at the base of the I-Cord loops before darning the remainder in to finish the piece.

The result is a slightly goofy hat, with a finial on the top that looks like a Chuck Jones Instant Martian.  I think I'll take that tiny bit still left and add a row of knit-on I-Cord around the bottom edge.  That will echo the look of the welts and the deely-bob at the top, plus it will give a nice, strong bit of definition around the bottom.  As usual apologies for the lousy photos.  The tweedy yarn is hard to capture well enough to see details,

One final note - The abalone shell buttons you see here are the third set that's been on this vest.  Previous sets included embossed black leather, and shiny black plastic.  I've updated them several times over the years as styles have changed.  Changing buttons can be an inexpensive way to freshen the look of classic knits, opportunity shop finds, or hand-me-downs.

From the "This too shall pass" department, I announce the end of the work project that ate my life.  The final submission was yesterday.  I am now left with a horrific clutter in my office, several thousand megs of files that need to be classified and archived, and the need to make up for eight weeks of sleep deficit.  But all that aside, I also can now get back to String and wiseNeedle. 

I've processed in the backlog of posted yarn reviews on wiseNeedle, and am about to start tackling the questions inbox.  Since so many questions are duplicates of ones already answered at the site, there will be lots of "Did you look here?" notes.  If you've posted a question since around mid-January and you haven't heard from me, apologies.  I am whittling away at the stack...

In the mean time, courtesy of my long-time stitch pal Kathryn, I can post another review of an out of print Knitting Book that Time Forgot^TM.

ODHAM'S ENCYCLOPAEDIA OF KNITTING

We've all heard of James Norbury from his other knitting books.  The most notable one is his Traditional Knitting Pattens from Scandinavia, the British Isles, France, Italy, and other European Countries.   That's the one that's been widely reprinted by Dover Books.  I mentioned it in another round-up of older knitting books two years ago.   In January Kathryn sent me a copy of another of his products - Odham's Encyclopaedia of Knitting,  written in concert with Margaret Agutter.  My copy is missing its title page, but searches in used book store inventories turn up 1955 to 1959 as the probable date of publication for my edition.  Oldham's  is copiously illustrated with line drawings, sketches and a few black and white photos of finished garments.  Based on the style of of the little thumbnail cartoons and some of the on-the-needle drawings of knitting in progress, I suspect that one of the many illustrators on this project also worked on the Mary Thomas books.   

The book starts with a section on knitting history - nicely done and less folkloric than most contemporary works, although not entirely without hyperbole.  19th and early 20th century knitting is outlined, with references to many works the authors considered seminal in developing modern knitting technique - books and pamphlets I am now hungry to read.  The meat of the book is somewhat choppily arranged.  The first 70 some odd pages covers basic techniques, and is arranged alphabetically under broad subject areas.  The instructive tone is very British-centric.  For example, Continental style is mentioned as an aberant variation of "normal knitting," with the caution that it is inferior for maintaining even gauge.   Grafting is described both for stockinette and K1, P1 ribbing (done in two passes on each side of the work rather than as a linear row).  You have to look hard for it though, as the heading that starts the grafting section seems to be missing.  As in all non-North American publications of its time, the name "Kitchener" is not associated with that technique.  Crochet stitches are shown in this section, too.

The next section deals with fabrics and patterns, and covers some of knitting's basic styles.  It commingles them with texture pattern family descriptions (including directions for some of them), offered up as separate mini-articles.  Therefore you'll find small bits on  Aran (it's resemblance to Austrian knitting is noted); Argyle; bead knitting; Bohus; Faroe; Florentine/Jacquard (we'd call it Intarsia); Scandinavian styles; Shetland; and Tyrolean knitting  all mixed together with general descriptions of the families of cable stitches, feather and fan stitches, leaf stitches, bobbles, etc.  Instructions for samples of the various stitch families are presented mostly in prose, although graphs are used to show colorwork and motif placement. 

Lace knitting is next.  While the section does go into several styles, it looks almost like it was written by committee.  There are at least four different illustration styles used, some being so representational as to be almost useless to the knitter.  Most lace directions are given in prose, with a limited number at the end of the chapter being done in charts with symbols unique to this book.   It's difficult to tell from the bulk of the patterns exactly what they will look like,  but the majority are covered in much better clarity in recently published lace books.  The exception is the group of "Viennese Lace"  texture patterns.  Eventually I'll explore these further.

Norbury/Agutter go on to describe the design of classic knitted garment shapes.   There are sections on Cardigans and jerseys Yarns employed range from three-ply to DK, and sizes/styles are 1950s tight.  While sizes are small, there's a fair amount on darts and tailored shaping here that might be of use to people trying to do retro design today.  Of more immediate use are sections on gloves, socks, berets and tams, and baby clothes.  Directions for a single basic  garment are given in prose.   

The final part of the book is a compendium of garment patterns, again all in prose and to 50's size and fit.  Patterns are provided for the items shown in the black and white photos.  Gauges are small by modern standards, with most items knit from fingering weight.  But there are several cardigans and pullovers in DK weight, plus a couple in doubled DK weight (3.5spi, the equivalent of  what one would expect from a modern bulky weight yarn.)

Like many of these  older knitting compendiums, there's a strong ideological bent , a smattering of fashionable garments to keep one interested , and enough detail to pass itself off as a general purpose handbook.  But books like this weren't  aimed at people with absolutely no knitting experience.  The level of detail they provide is insufficient for a beginners' guide.  Rather they were shelf references.  Places an intermediate knitter could go to broaden a skill set, or brush up on a forgotten technique.  Finishing for example is given very short shrift.  Blocking is explained, but how one goes about accomplishing the "sew up" command at the end of each pattern is never quite elucidated.

Are modern books better?  Yes and no.  Some are, both as shelf references and as beginners' guides.  Some are shorthand cribs on just a few basic concepts, quick to master and  trendy enough to look dated after only a year or two.  Others  do contain a fair bit of info, but like this particular book, aren't organized in a way that  works as a reference or as a skills guide. 

Would I recommend buying this book used?  While it's certainly worth the time to look through on library loan, unless you're a needlework history book buff (like me),  I'd give it a pass.  For me though it is valuable, partly for its interesting history of (mostly British) knitting  before WWII, and for its mystery lace chapter.  So thank you Kathryn!  Although you were right that this book isn't for everyone, it is a worthy and appreciated addition to my  library.