A Day at Ruddington

Over to Ruddington today to take the Sock Collection ready for sale in the shop. Eight pairs in their own yarn, a 60/40 wool/nylon mix, the kind the CSM likes best, and half a dozen pairs in Opal Harry Potter and Trekking yarns.

They have a Fashion Knitwear student on a three-month “work” placement, and I have been asked if I will show her the workings of the CSM and talk a bit about the history of knitting. H is very amenable and amazingly comes from Godalming, where Keith was born and my No.1 son works. By coincidence (or not?), Godalming was also a small pocket of the framework knitting industry. So we had a good rapport from the start. I started straight in with William Lee’s invention and why he could do it at that precise time in history - Nottinghamshire had good supply of trees for the frame in Sherwood Forest, bags of local sheep, and a new wire works had opened near Belper in 1561. The wire was necessary for the flexible needles with beards on them. I took H over to the West frameshop to show her how the frames worked, from the Victorian one there used for most demonstrations, up to the last one made in the 1950’s. These all produced flat pieces of work, ideal for shawls, but stockings had to be seamed. However, these needles were fixed rigidly horizontally in the frames, and it wasn’t until Matthew Townsend took out a patent in 1847 for the latch needle that needles could be mounted in a machine at any angle. Hence the circular (sock) machine where they are vertical with the working part at the top. Straight or Flatbed machine are generally set at about 45 degrees with ribbers at right angles to this. H has used Dubied at the Poly, but luckily not too much, as you have to “unlearn” some bits. THE CSM only tolerates the needles in two positions, up (out of work) or down (in work) and they have to be moved manually from one to the other, such as in heel shaping.

I started H off with plain knitting to get used to the feel of the machine, which is a Griswold and is dedicated to her for the full length of her stay. We then went back to the very basics, starting from an empty machine. This is slow and fiddly, mad most sock knitters used heaps of waste yarn in between socks to avoid this stage ever again!. We did a small amount of lace holes, picking up a picot hem, tiny cables and tuck stitches, as well as the all-important heel shaping. Of course, several stitches were dropped, all due to the heel spring weights being set not quite right. I advised H to practise this the days I couldn’t be there, and next Wednesday I may let her loose on the ribber, which is a whlol different ball game.