Enough claptrap.

Excellent post!

That brings back memories for me, Olwyn Mary.

I was born in 1942 and until the age of (about) 12 or 13 always had "hand me downs". Only then were we able to obtain material to make new and the only skirt material you could get was barathea. Being a wool worsted it soon became shiny on the backside. I remember unpicking side seams on skirts and turning the inside material to the outside and re-sewing them so you got twice the wear from the material.

Any tattered/unusable clothing was cut into strips and made into rag rugs for on the the stone floors of kitchens or sculleries.

My parents were Irish and spoke Erse (one of the Gaelic languages). The word "ganzey" actually refers to the Aran sweater. The sweaters are distinguished by their use of complex textured stitch patterns, several of which are combined in the creation of a single garment. The word choice of 'jumper' or 'sweater' (or indeed other options such as 'pullover' and 'jersey') is largely determined by the regional version of English being spoken.[2] In the case of Ireland and Britain 'jumper' is the standard word with 'sweater' mainly found in tourist shops. The word used in Irish Gaelic is 'geansaí' (pronounced "gahnzee"), rendered 'gansey' in English.

The full article is at

an excellent post and thenk you - it got me remembering again.

Thanks Mary....very interesting read.

Donna

It certainly revived a lot of memories for me:)

Olwyn Mary and Bernadette! This is interesting! Both the history; (I can recognice MUCH of it!) and the words. In Norway we call a sweater: Genser (More like: Gensar , you hear the last "r" load and clear) An open Norwegian cardigan(?jacket?) is "kofte"

"lusekofte". Lus= lice(!!!), because we call the small one-stitches in contrasted colour: "lus" !LOL! also use the word "jumper", most about a lighter long armed sweater.Not so much now, but in my childhood after WW2, it was much used. I think we got lots of words from england, not least because the close relationship/friendship with England during the war.Aud ;-)

That is fascinating about the word "gensar", Aud.

So many words in English have been "borrowed" from other languages (Roman, German, Greek and French to name but a few) it is good to think some are being "exported" to Norway. It really makes it all international and much more friendly. ;-)

Bernadette

I was born before the war in Yorkshire (wool country) and have lived there ever since - a long time.

I suspect that such terms are local. For us a sweater (an American term for a garment we didn't see until after the war) was a long sleeved jumper with a high neck, usually made in thick wool. A jumper was a long sleeved knitted garment with a round or V neck. A pullover had no sleeves and had a V neck. A cardigan was a long sleeved jumper which buttoned down the front. Later, if it buttoned right up to the neck, it was called a 'lumber jacket' - again, I think, an American term.

All the patterns I have for those days use smaller needles - for three or four ply wool. Double knitting wool hadn't been invented :-) this afternoon I've been going through those old patterns looking for something, nothing larger than a size 14 was used and even some on size 16. the gauge I have measures from size 18 and I have lots of steel needles which are size 16, all handed down.

Again, I suspect it was regional, although jersey was common..

Not so, but even wealthy English people mostly were careful with their resources. When you've been through hard times it happens.

Our children still did, in the 1960s. As did our grandchildren in later decades. As Spouse and I still do. Why waste resources?

I never saw that and most of the women (and girls) I knew knitted. We couldn't afford to buy knitted garments.

Knitting isn't 'just sitting' :-) We didn't have the distractions of modern times, as a family we always sat round the fire in the evening, listening to the radio and playing games or knitting or sewing. My father read the newspaper and went to the pub. In summer we children played in the street until bedtime except when we went to clubs, e.g. Brownies, where I got a badge for turning my first heel.

My mother did both, I was lucky.

Not in our family. My mother crocheted curtains and other items and taught me how to embroider. Only recently I had to discard the first linen tablecloth I embroidered. I began it in the 1940s but it wasn't finished until my late teens. Since it was linen I cut it into squares and hemmed it, my handkerchief drawer is now well stocked :-)

'Potatoes' (holes) in socks (toes or heels) weren't a problem, we darned them ourselves, using a wooden mushroom. I still have ours but we don't wear socks any more so it's not used. I loved darning. I even darned that tablecloth but it really got past it.

I don't think I've EVER seen one!

I've had a couple of machines, still have a twin bed one with bells and whistles which I used when our five children were growing and in constant need of school jumpers or pullovers but I prefer to hand knit.

It's fascinating!

Mary

Sorry to put you through all of this.

My interest is "How did fishermen stay warm prior to the adoption of synthetic materials? "

Modern hand knit woolen garments will not keep you warm while fishing! I know.

American fishermen started adopted machine knit woolens starting around

1610. Why did not British fishermen also start adopting machine knit woolens?

My answer from experimentation is that the kind of knit sweaters decorated with fancy stitches documented by Gladys Thompson and Mary Wright were/are much warmer and dryer than any machine knitting available before WWII. Britain had the skilled labor to produce such garments. America did not. Such a garment is as warm and dry as the best synthetic, high tech, multilayer garments. British fishermen's sweaters are a treasure of elegant and very sophisticated garment design that has been essentially lost. The British fisherman wore one gansey, the American cod fisherman wore two machine knit sweaters and shivered.

Note that the super high tech companies that make very expensive clothing for extreme athletes are starting to offer fancy knit woolens.

Aaron

In message , Ophelia writes

It does for me too. My mother used to unpick woollies and re-knit them. However when I started grammar school at the age of 11, I needed a swimming costume. The family one which had come down so many generations no longer fit me. During the war swimsuits could not be bought for love or money in our neck of the woods. At that time I was a well developed girl. Mother went to the wool shop and came home with a pattern but no wool was available. It was something that they then called Yarn, more string like. She knitted this swim suit in school colours of brown and blue.

Off I went to the swimming pool with my class at school. Into the water I went. Oh my!. The top being a bib type went down showing my bosom and the gusset was somewhere below my knees and the waist round my bum.. Grabbing yards of soggy wet knitting and wrapping it around myself I made a hasty retreat to the changing room. Was my face red with embarrassment.

Mother unpicked it and re-knitted it and sewed a deep waistband of strong corset elastic in the waist band. I never felt happy with it and a neighbour came to the rescue with one of her daughters swimsuits that she no longer used. That was ancient too but it was one that fitted. Shirley

I not at all sorry, Aaron. I'm glad this discussion occured whatever brought it about.

While each of us has memories of different experiences dependent on which area we lived in, it has been a fascinating lesson in history and the diversity of the ways in which people managed during difficult times.

It has also been interesting to see how certain words are used in the English language and how that usage may have developed through time.

Bernadette

LOL just like my swimming cossy when I was wee:)))) Pics of me coming out of the water with my gusset wayyyyyyyyyy down me knees

...

Yes, but only recent history, what we remember ourselves might be very different (no matter how hard our times were) from what happened centuries ago.

The discussion began (I think) because I hoped for authoritative references to some statements, they haven't been forthcoming. I want facts, not opinions or anecdotes when considering earlier history. That means using contemporary references which aren't always easy to get for ordinary mortals. I'm not doubting that there are any, just that they haven't been given here.

I'm going to have to ask my friend whose Masters was in mediaeval textiles.

It IS, I'm also fascinated by regional differences. I can't understand the way people adopt regional words from where they live instead of using their own ones from where they were reared, which are just as picturesque but not pretentious :-)

Mary

We did digress from the original subject, didn't we? :-(

It's so easy to do when there is such diverstiy of thought and experience.

I believe some people may adopt words from the region in which they live, instead of using words they were reared with, because the words they were taught as children are not understood in the area in which they now live. I found a lot of regional differences just in the few areas of England in which I've lived.

It was only when I came to Scotland that I again recognised words which my mother and father had used when I was a child and which nobody in regional England had heard of.

Bernadette

Interesting post.

One point: I believe that the word "gansey" is Irish/Gaelic for sweater.

The term easily could have migrated into the vernacular as a slang word.

Nyssa, who remembers the oddest facts At River's End

With all the influence the Vikings had on Ireland, and all the to-ing and fro-ing of people I would think it would be hard to decide who had first dibs on the word 'gansey' but I wouldn't be surprised if 'ganser' evolved into 'gansey', or maybe 'gansey' is a twist on the word 'guernsey'. Most of the time they're just 'jumpers', anyway ! LOL!

People from Ireland, like me, don't use the word "Erse" . Our language is simply called "Irish" or "Gaeilge" (GUAYL-geh with hard 'g's and a short 'e').

Eimear

SNIP

In this group, when I posted "facts" with authoritative references, they were often shouted down by folks who said, "So and So said something else!" and we do not believe your "facts". However, no rational is provided for preferring So and So's version over my reference.

Let us consider the key question of knitting speed. There are historical documents that say hand knitters using knitting sheaths achieved speeds of

200 stitches per minute. I reported this with references and it was shouted down - "THAT IS NOT PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE!" - by folks in this group - who were never TRAINED to knit with a knitting sheath and who did not cite references written by authorities that had worked with knitters trained to use a knitting sheath. They simply did not like the observation, so they voted it to be incorrect. (They did reference Hazel Tindall maxing out at 85 spm, but she uses a knitting pouch; which, as I have pointed out, has entirely different physics.)

Let us draw a parallel another field of human athletic performance - marathon running. If we went out and tested non-runners who had never been trained, we would conclude that it is impossible for a modern human to run

24 miles in less than 3 hours. And, yet there are thousands of people in the world that can, in fact, run more than 24 miles in less than 3 hours. What is required? A healthy young adult, with a certain genetic adaptation, and 4 years of training. That training presumes certain equipment.

Now, one can check marathon running stats on the Internet, but speed stats on people with nimble fingers that have trained for 4 years with knitting sheaths are not on the Internet. Do we believe the observations of people in the 19th Century that worked with hundreds of young adults that had trained for years to use a knitting sheath as fast as possible? Or, do we accept the shout of someone that has never seriously trained with a knitting sheath? In their day, "The Terrible Knitters of the Dales" were just as much elite athletes as the leaders of the Boston Marathon are today. The Terrible Knitters were just as different from you as knitters; as the leaders of the Boston Marathon are different from you as runners.

Now, I cannot knit 200 spm with my knitting sheath, but then I am still working out the details of the equipment and learning how to use them. Just a month ago I had a major break through. I expect it to result in substantial additional speed, but I have only been training with those tools and this method for a month. How good are you only one month after you start a new sport or hobby? Dr. Emma Popek (A shameless plug for her book) is one of the fastest knitters with circs that I know, and she is very knowledgeable about ergonomics and kinesiology. (She was a competitive athlete.) Our back- of- envelope conclusions are that 200 spm by an elite knitter with a knitting sheath is plausible. That observation is more valid than an observation made by someone that has done less work with knitting sheaths.

Do not ask me for facts until you have read the chapter on data quality in Emma's book (Second plug), which is a summary of

(and related) that are based on workby ASQC technical committees that I served on. I literally helped write THEbook on quality plans and data quality in the early 1990's. I do notbelieve in "facts." I believe that there are systems of valid observationsthat are consistent within some standard measure of error. That is truewhether I am talking about ganseys or groundwater. In my day, I have beengiven millions and millions of fully documented and referenced "facts" aboutgroundwater that turned out to be just plain wrong! I once had to call upthe client and tell them that, "I found 6 million errors in that databaseyou were about to CERTIFY under penalty of law to the US EPA!" It was allcontemporaneously documented "facts" by qualified professionals, and it wasall wrong! You can trust that I will give you a system of valid observationsthat are consistent within some standard measure of error.Pictures; my computer was set up for data base programming. It does notlike graphics. My graphics are all done by others, and just now they are very busy, so my gansey picts are slow. But, it is worth the wait, last night Emma saw it finished for the first time. She said it was unlike any handknit object that she had ever seen; and, she was born and educated in Siberia!

Aaron

None of those documents refer to timed trials, only to folklore.

Yes, the existing timed trials don't address your technique and tools at all. One reason I am avidly following your reports is that I am very interested in historic knitting and any valid historically used technique that would improve my speed.

The problem that I have with that is that we don't actually have _their_ observations; we have someone else's reports being quoted by other people.

Yet. :-)

Well, some people are "naturals" - I met a man in college who had taken a pottery course because his engineering major required that he take one artsy course - he discovered to his amazement that he was a natural potter. By the end of his first month after touching clay, he was making earthenware that beat the professor's work (and the prof was very good indeed), and he began using porcelain before the end of three months - he was that good. (He also switched his major to pottery.)

But your point is well taken; the rest of us were still making flowerpots.

So what's the title of the book?

What is the URL?

=Tamar

There were indeed a lot of different influences over the centuries.

When Da was alive he called it "Irish" but, as he worked with a lot of Scots he referred to the language as "Erse" when they were with him. He was even given the nickname "Mac" because he had so many Scottish friends, although he was broad Irish and never lost his lovely accent.

It was the language he and Mam used when they wanted a private conversation without interference from us children.

Aaron

I mostly lurk quietly here, but I always read your posts with interest BECAUSE you seem to do your homework before committing to writing. I hope I can look forward to picking up more useful information from your future posts.

I am also looking forward to your book/DVD, which promises to be of great interest to me and (I believe) many others.