Authoritative sources?!
The first day of chemistry, Dr. Long said, "Read chapters 1,2 & 6 of the text with great care. There will be a quiz!" The correct answer for the quiz was, " The textbook is wrong, there is an error in the calculus". Out of a class of some 470, more than 300 flunked that quiz by accurately quoting the math from the textbook. We were supposed to know and trust our calculus. Only 28 of us became chemistry majors.
This all goes to the heart of what is an authoritative source in knitting. Consider Gladys Thompson's various works. I consider her one of the most reliable authors on British knitting. The Queen liked her work. However, as I flip though my copy of the Dover edition of *Patterns*, I see 12 or 15 errors that I have annotated in the margins. Moreover, there is her great omission. Nowhere in the book does she say that she uses a knitting sheath. She did knit with a knitting sheath, but by then, knitting sheaths had gone out of fashion, and so she does not mention her method of knitting. Then, in *Note to American Knitters* by Elizabeth Zimmerman, the gauge information that Zimmerman gives is misleading in the extreme.
So, here is the best book on British fisherman's ganseys, and it is clearly full of problems.
We move on to Mary Wright, *Cornish Guernseys & Knit Frocks*. She did a great deal of academic historical research and the book is endorsed by various academic organizations. However, she never bothered to learn how to use a knitting sheath. She knit a reproduction Cornish gansey on circs. It ruined her wrists. I knit the same gansey (a bit tighter), while my wrists were healing from too much work on the garden wall. I used the traditional tools and methods. I know the actual level of effort involved. She never developed an understanding of the art form because she never learned the tools and methods that the traditional knitters used. The tools and methods dramatically affected the level of effort and economics of professional knitting. Wright discusses the Schools of Industry and contract knitting, but without understanding the tools and methods. How can we trust her discussion of contract knitting if she has no real appreciation for the level of effort involved? Note for example, that she has pictures of
5 knitting sheaths, but really does not have any photographs of sets of knitting needles. Knitting sheaths are worthless without their matching needles. She did not understand the tools. That suggests to me, that the 4 of the 5 knitting sheaths were love tokens rather than working knitting sheaths used in day to day knitting. They do not tell us anything about how the knitting was actually done. Do we trust her work? On page 18 she says that "Experienced knitters achieved very high speeds of about 200 stitches a minute." This forum has already voted that fact down, so it is clear that this forum does not consider Mary Wright to be authoritative. And yet, it was Mary Wright that provided me the clues that proved to me that Thompson used a knitting sheath. It is the only answer. Do I have an "authoritative source" for this? No! I only have my calculus. I still trust it.Then there is Mary Thomas. She was the fashion editor of major London newspaper for years and years, so she had broad knowledge, contacts, and access. This forum has cited her 1938 discussion of "stranding" as excellent. But, this forum has also dismissed her discussion of Coptic Socks as rubbish. Is Mary Thomas an authoritative source?
Therefore, I must adopt the Dr. S. Magee-Russell approach. I will throw out tidbits, and if they interest you, you can go look them up in the literature. Google makes the process much easier, and is bringing many out of copyright books on line. Then there is