Thoughts from the peeler: The artisan obsession and where does it end?

There is in just about every artisan, a touch of obsessive compulsion. Whether or not it's a disorder depends on how you feel about being both obsessive and compulsive at the same time with sharp implements in hand.

I don't want to make light of a genuine medical disorder. As someone who suffers the black periods of lost joy and time that is depression, far be it from me to make light of someone else's affliction.

Obsession and compulsion exist on a sliding scale, which is set by the same people who have categorized an affection for coffee as a mental disorder.

So let's ignore those folks for a bit.

For all practical purposes, it boils down to whether your obsession/compulsion is positive or destructive influence on your life.

Be ye moderate in all things except moderation.

So it is with caffeine and beer and so too it is with handicrafts.

But where is that moderate line? When do I stop? How far do I take each of these explorations of a craft? When do I tie it off and call it good? Do I keep going until I've got it perfect? Is perfect the enemy of the good?

I discovered recently when I began exploring the uses of the sector, that I was wrong in a very important way when I discussed the many ways for finding the angle at which the staves of a bucket or tankard meet.

My methodology was modern. For one thing, we started with an equation. For another, it depended heavily upon looking at the tankard as an equilateral polygon and we did some really sweet math based on that assumption.

That was an inaccurate assumption.

Even though it worked.

As I examine more coopered buckets and tankards, it because clear to me that the old coopers didn't think that way. The staves of a bucket are rarely all the same size, and no two identically-sized buckets seemed to have the same number of staves.

My math was accurate, but my method was wrong.

The period method is really cool. It's easier. And it involves a sector and some different neat math having to do with isosceles triangles and dividers.

My assumptions were wrong and even my successful result was... I don't know. Was it a failure to achieve the goal by apparently modern means?

A period item was created, but it was based on best guesses made with a modern mind. My methods of arriving at that item were modern even though I used my best period tools to achieve the result.

I know all of this because I didn't finish exploring coopering when I finished writing about it. I kept going. I kept talking to other coopers. I examined barrels and buckets in antique shops. I made a bucket. Then I made a butter churn. Then I repaired some damaged buckets and barrels and tankards back to working order.

I know I was wrong because I didn't stop.

I made an ale pail that would hold ale, but did I succeed or did I fail.

Sorry, that was Seussical. Sometimes I can't resist.

At some point do I stop going back and adding to these projects?

Or is this exploration of artisans a reflection of artisanship itself in that the learning never actually ends? And if that's so, is my quest really impossible after all? Will I ever have more than the most surface knowledge of any of these crafts if I cannot devote more than the duration of a few blog posts to each of them?

How do I know when to stop?

And if I'm honest with myself, can I stop even if I want to?

- Scott

Drafting patterns for leatherworking

Note: This post isn't really about 16th century methodologies.

I've shared a few of my favorite "hacks" (as the kids say) for making leather items with a bit of improvisation in the tools department. We've used flower pots to build mugs, we've used butter knives for skiving, and my favorite cheap woodworking chisels for cutting.

So let's talk about pattern making.

If you've ever followed my maskmaking tutorial or done any other leatherworking without a pre-printed pattern, you've noticed that there's often a size discrepancy between any paper pattern you've created by wrapping the item in paper and marking seams (as we did with this shoemaking post) and the leather you're going to use.

This can cause some real fit issues.

The problem stems from the difference in thickness between paper and leather, combined with the fact that paper doesn't stretch around a form and leather does. You could use some math to account for the thickness, but the stretch is a bit more difficult to guess at, which can result in some wasted materials.

Here's my Not Even Remotely Period (NERP) approach to leather patterning that saves me a lot of time and leather when I'm winging it with a pattern: craft foam.

In the image below, I am preparing a knife sheath for one of my carving knives. I've wrapped the knife in paper and marked the seam, but to get a better handle on the actual shape of the final piece of leather, I made the pattern in the back on thin white foam which I purchased from a local Michael's craft store.

It's not quite as thick as the final leather, but it's close. More importantly, it stretches a bit in a manner that is very reminiscent of damp leather. And since this is a pattern where the fit is precise and the seams have to just meet with no seam allowance, fit is so very crucial.

It's NERPy, sure, but it works a treat.

- Scott

Status Report

So, the reason we've been delayed this time is because our camera is screwed up. It doesn't recognize the SD card and none of the many suggestions from the online "What to do when your Canon DSLR loses its mind" fora have helped.

I would just carry on anyway, but I screwed up my hand last week in my typical too-humorously-clumsy-to-be-real fashion.

While out trolling for rusty tools in Port Orchard on a rainy day, The Engineer and I were walking back to the truck when I reached into my pocket to fish out my keys. My pinkie finger went through the key ring and I pulled the keys out and flipped them up into my palm in a jaunty manner to unlock the truck with the remote fob. After the truck chirruped in greeting, I let the keys dangle from my pinkie while I got into the cab.

My wet boot sole then slipped on edge of the door sill and as I fell forward, the keys caught on the edge of the seat and my poor little finger was pointing the wrong direction.

Which isn't a good look for anybody. It makes your gloves fit funny.

If my youthful experiences as a drummer taught me anything it's that my left hand isn't really game for anything too intricate, so I'm on hold for the nonce.

In the meantime, I've made a felt prototype of the shoe and discovered some fit issues that I'm glad weren't discovered after we went to full leather. I'll document those and the changes I'll be making to the shoe pattern once the camera has recovered. Also, my experiments in 16th century joinery are similarly impacted by not being able to hold a hammer or pretty much anything else heavier than a serving spoon in my right hand at the moment.

It's amazing how such a seemingly inconsequential finger plays into everything you do with that hand.

On the bright side, I have this DVD of Peter Follansbee teaching 17th Century carving techniques and you don't need your pinkie to hold a remote control. So there. Once I can again wrap my hand around a carving chisel or a sewing awl, I'll have a lot of pent-up and lovingly hand-crafted artisanal frustration.

So we have that to look forward to, I guess.

C'est la vie.

~ Scott

Learning Curves and the State of the Project: I know now why apprentices are a Thing...

Part One: History and Hubris 

“History celebrates the battlefields whereon we meet our death, but scorns to speak of the plowed fields whereby we thrive; it knows the names of kings’ bastards but cannot tell us the origin of wheat. That is the way of human folly.” – Henri Fabre

That sounds familiar.

That quote, attributed to Henri Fabre[1], sits at the top of page one, chapter one in the book Six Thousand Years of Bread: Its Holy and Unholy History by H.E. Jacob. The book is a vast and noble attempt to fix Mssr Fabre’s problem, and it goes a long way toward doing so. It is the latest of many books I’ve found and wished I had and/or read before we embarked on this journey. At risk of stacking quotes, an old adage that’s often attributed to Abraham Lincoln says that the purpose of reading is to remind us that our original ideas aren’t all that original.

Touché, Mssrs. Lincoln, Fabre, & co. A hit, a palpable hit...

What 6,000 Years of Bread really does well, though, is map out a very reasonable twenty-years spent by the author trying to understand the origins of bread. And it reminds me that what I’m doing here has become less and less about the world, trade, and tools of the renaissance craftsmen and more and more about their tools.

In other words, I’ve gone about this entire thing in entirely the wrong way. 

For instance, when I ventured into the world of the Worshipful Company of Turners, I spent quite a while trying to figure out what kind of lathe to build, how it operates, and how to build one. Then I built one. From scratch.

Now, while I knew this would be part of the process, I wildly under-estimated how long it would take to build all of these tools. (Or perhaps underestimated the size of my own creative ego, you be the judge.)

The next project includes baking and cooking.

Now, I don’t know about you, but my house didn’t come equipped with an Elizabethan spec kitchen any more than it came with a wood shop, which means there’s a cob oven and hob rising from nothing in my back yard. And I’m doing everything myself except baking the bricks.

And I really ought to be baking the bricks except that I haven’t found someone with a large enough kiln yet who will let me near it. 

Which all sort of argues that my project has veered more toward a re-imagining of the renaissance as something that was invented from nothing. Or perhaps springing from some post-apocalyptic hellscape where each piece of technology has to be re-created from stuff I find lying around. 

 Mad Max, circa 1560.

Part Two: Tools and Their Users

Sometimes I feel like I’m not so much learning how an Elizabethan artisan lived his life as reenacting the 1600 odd years that preceded his life as we moved from whittling to bow lathes to springpoles and treadles and onward. Sometimes it’s a bit like studying the lives of Indy drivers and starting by learning how to make tires from scratch...

Because I’m almost literally reinventing the wheel with every one of these projects, it eats into the time I can spend actually learning about the craftsmen and the things they made. Which is fine, studying the tools is a fine thing and I’m learning a mind-blowing amount of information about fabricating my own tools. But I think that the key thing I’m learning is that this should have been two projects: a yearlong preparation stage where I build the tools and then a second year when I learn to use them to create standard period artifacts and study the people who used them.

Which isn't the worst idea I've ever had, actually.

There's an inherent drawback to inheriting your tools. You were either not alive or too young to care when they were purchased. (Actually, in my case, my grandpa was either not alive or too young to care when some of them were purchased.) So you don't have a really close relationship with that punch to the wallet that accompanies some tool purchases.

Seriously, I bought my first new hammer ever just this year.

When I first embarked on this project, I thought that with easy access to the internet, I could get my hands on anything I really needed to get a project done. Going out into the community to see if I could source things locally was a bit of a lark because I could always just order it online. And that's certainly true, as it turns out... but there's a hitch.

Take this adze for instance.

If you've never seen one of those before, that's okay; it's not exactly a common tool in modern America. An ancient tool, the adze is sort of a sideways axe, used to dig out hollows (as with a dugout canoe) or smooth a surface (as shown above).

The adze in the image above was an adze-shaped ball of rust when I found it in the bottom of a bin at a flea market. The seller thought it was a gardening tool, and priced it at the princely sum of $5.99. In the past couple of months, I've procured three adzes in precisely the same manner, and in the same state of disrepair. As followers of the Facebook feed know, I recently spent the weekend bringing them back to life.

That one tool took six hours to bring back to life. I worked the sun into and out of the sky and still wasn't finished with the smaller of the three, a cooper's adze.

It was time well spent and it makes my heart glad. This tool is truly a joy to use, as are the other two.

My forbears left me a big box of serious tools because they took their tools seriously. And even if that wasn't true, standing opposed to the disposable aesthetic is part of maker culture.

Part of what makes me... me.

I also refuse to spend the money on anything that won't survive regular use. (Except computer equipment, which is a rant for a different time.) There's no economic sense in spending a $100 for a tool that will last five years (maybe) when you can buy a thirty or hundred-year tool for $200.

This is complicated by the fact that at the outset of this endeavor, I had to agree not to bankrupt us in my quest. The Engineer is smarter than I am and always has been. She's followed me into many a woodworking store and while I was oohing and ahhhing over the figured cherry, she was flipping price tags. She knew this would not be cheap and extracted a promise from me before I caught on.

See? Smarter.

Everything I could ever possibly need is indeed available to me via the internet, but there's a catch. Real tools cost real money.

Three: The Internet & the Deep Blue Sea

As we've discussed before, when Henry VIII's flagship Mary Rose went down on July 19, 1545, she sealed for the ages a time capsule of life in Henrician England. The artifacts preserved included the tools of the ship's carpenters. Eight chests of period tools, preserved by the waters of the Solent and a strange quirk of unkind fate.

Despite there being eight chests of tools, this is not by any stretch an elaborate or even complete example of a wood worker's trade. The tools aboard Mary Rose were specific to the task of keeping her upright and fighting. Nevertheless this gives us that rarest of gifts for a project like this one: an intact example of a 16th century tradesman's tools.

Which made me wonder what it would cost if I just went out and bought the modern interpretations of those classic hand tools. Hewing as closely as possible to their historical counterparts, of course, and bearing in mind the quality standards already outlines, I pretended I had a Hollywood budget under my belt, composed a selected list of key tools from Mary Rose, and went window shopping.

Broad Axe (Woodcraft).... $300.00

Broad Hatchet (Amazon).... $125.00

Carpenter's Adze (Lee Valley).... $250.00

Hand Adze (Lee Valley)... $50.00

Wimble (A wooden brace or hand drill)... Metal varieties are a dime a dozen. No one seems to sell wooden ones anymore and anyone that wants one, makes one. Antiques are priced from $50 up.

Spoon bits (no spiral bits in the 16th Century - Lee Valley).... $80.00 for a set of five

Bow Saw (Gramercy Tools).... $150.00

Wooden Smoothing Plane (Closest I could find to the Mary Rose example - Lee Valley).... $239

Wooden Rabbet Plane (Or what looks like one in the few pics I can find online - Lee Valley).... $39.50

Marking/Mortise Gauge (Rockler)..... $49.50

Dividers (Lee Valley).... $23.00

Ruler (Primitive).... It's a stick with marks burnt into it. Can't imagine buying one from someone.

Draw Knife (Daegrad).... £ 27.99 (Call it $43.00 at today's exchange rate)

Handsaw (Northwind Toolworks).... $275.00

I stopped when the total hit $1600.00 and remember that he would also have had various nippers, pliers, clamps, and miscellaneous whatnot which were made primarily of ferrous metals and therefore lost to time and tides.

I'm not saying that my tool chest is worth anywhere near that much (because it isn't), or that these are worth that much (though they are) you can see why I rely heavily on the antique stores and flea markets. And why I jumped at a carpenter's adze for under $6.00, even if it was a lump of ferrous oxide.

Also, bear in mind that this list would just cover tools for the carpenter's portion of the project. Leaving aside the overlap with the coopers, joiners, and turners which would still add to the total. There's also cooks and bakers and embroiderers and knitters and spinners and weavers and woolmen...

Thankfully, I am only metaphorically doing this on a stage, so there's no reason for me to go out and buy the perfectly period versions of these tools unless it genuinely affects the outcome in some way. Even Peter Follansbee, the joiner at Plimoth Plantation advises aspiring joiners to get close and get on with it.



So that's what I'm doing, but it's still slow-going.

Which is why a large and growing portion of this project has been about tools. Hunting, creating, rehabilitating, tools. And if at the end of the year all I've learned or earned is about the tools and toolmaking, I suppose I'll just have to spend another year learning about their users.And I'm going to call that a win.

With that settled, rest assured I will be posting more often in the coming weeks.

See you soon!

- Scott

----------------------
[1] Though the quote is attributed to Henri Fabre (inventor of the sea plane) in the book where I found it, I suspect that it’s actually attributable to Jen-Henri Fabre, entomologist and social commentator who also said “The common people have no history: persecuted by the present, they cannot think of preserving the memory of the past.” Which I find similarly germane to my mission.

Turn Turn Turn, for everything there is a cliche, turn turn turn...

I apologize for my absence. I've been having a... thing. I don't believe in writer's block so it's not that, it's just... I dunno. You can read about it at Pages to Type if you want: Dumbo's Feather Revisited: Of writers and rituals otherwise, accept my apologies and let us move on to wood spinning in a circle with a blade placed against it...

The Worshipful Company of Turners

My lathe. Up close and personal...

I've never particularly liked turning. Modern lathes are fast and dangerous and freakishly expensive, which combined uncomfortably in my mind with the idea that has often been pushed on me that all woodworkers are aspiring turners.

I am not.

At least not until I discovered that I could build my own lathe, which appealed to my "Make Neat Things" aesthetic and helped me take my first hesitant step onto that slippery slope of wood turning.

The history of lathes is very interesting and rather closely parallels the history of the spinning wheel and the pottery wheel, all of which operate on much the same principals, though not necessarily in the same plane. By the 16th century, there were three kinds of lathe existing side-by-side: the fairly primative bow lathe, the springpole lathe and the treadle lathe, which I gather was a recent invention.

Almost anything that was round in Elizabethan England was turned on a lathe. Even if something was cast, the pattern from which it had been cast was probably turned. Patternmakers love wood and they love lathes.

My old nemesis/muse Jost Amman, of course, has a turner depicted at his trade. The lathe isn't well depicted, but you can just make out the springpole coming across the ceiling and the strap or string that is driving the sphere (apparently) that the guy is turning.

The turner at his trade from Jost Amman's "Das Standbuch" of 1568

I admit I'm curious about why he'd be turning a sphere. If anyone knows, leave a comment. If that's a bowl, he has it on the lathe sideways, but an engraver can't necessarily be expected to accurately depict the nuances of every trade, I suppose.

My lathe was built on the same basic plan as this one I found on Pinterest. I made the heads from two sharpened carriage bolts, which I carefully and painstakingly aligned to give a nice, flat spin for the workpiece.

The string started out secured to the springy limb of a pine tree, a suggestion made by Peter Follansbee in one of his videos, but I confess that I eventually swapped it out for a four-ply bungee rope when I got tired of being whipped by the tree for my temerity. 

Problems to Solve

As you can see from the image below, my oak billet (I'm starting small, a handle for a socket chisel) was chattering something fierce. This happens when the blade of the tool skitters across the work surface rather than biting into the wood as it is supposed. I suspect my lathe tools weren't as sharp as they needed to be in spite of my hours spent honing them. I shall return them to the whetstone again tomorrow and finish off with a good bit on some emery paper and then leather stropping.  

All else being equal, this shouldn't be happening.

Another thing I've decided to add to the design is a drive wheel. I got this idea from an article written by Roy Underhill, who explained that the diameter of the piece affected the speed of the turn. So I sat down with a bit I cut from one end of an old maple rolling pin and milled out a pulley, essentially. The trio of spikes will (theoretically) go into the small piece to be turned and drive it at a higher rate of speed. 

The concavity of the drive wheel should keep the string from creeping, which has been a bit of a problem already.

To compound my sin with the bungee, you can see that I began with a length of nylon paracord that I had lying around. It has abraded with a vengeance and I've already had to deal with broken lines and splicing new bits of line into my machine. 

I will be replacing the paracord as soon as I can with a proper bit of line, hemp if I can find it.

Once I have things worked out and in working order, I will get on with the real task, turning a small wooden bowl like the ones found on Mary Rose. But we're nowhere near there yet.

More to come.

- Scott

Late addition: 
Foot-powered lathes at The Woodwright's Shop with Peter Follansbee and Roy Underhill. Enjoy!

Watch Wretched Ratchet Reading Rack on PBS. See more from pbs.

And then my brain tried to kill me... The state of the project.

The other day on Facebook, I promised to update soon. I promised that I wasn't dead. And because fate has a warped sense of humor, then my brain tried to kill me.

Like it often does.

So... lots to catch up on. Coffee, for instance. Haven't had any coffee since Wednesday and I have a lot of catching up to do. Also there's a kitchen sitting around in pieces that needs to be reassembled so we can, you know, cook food and stuff. Tiling and cabinets and countertops and miscellaneous whatnot await me, but coffee first. 

Because priorities, I have them.

Which brings us back to this project, and most especially this blog, which I have been neglecting, I fear.

I seriously underestimated the toll that accepting a full-time job would have on this project. Especially with all the home renovations that have to be done. The level of organization necessary exceeded my ready supply of tools.  I'm not really good at organization on this scale at home. I do fine at work, juggling huge projects that span entire years, but when I get home... something clicks off in my brain.

Just one of the many ways my brain periodically demonstrates how it hates me.

There's a horn out in the shop that's halfway to becoming a beaker, a half-made bow-lathe that needs some attention, and all the makings of a woodfired oven stacked under a tarp waiting for a dry spell so I can call out the troops to come help build it.

Anyway, I talked to the engineer, and we're trying something new.

Because real, bought and paid for, life trumps blogging projects, the bulk of my time is spoken for. There's just no way around that. Some of what I have to do for the kitchen (tile for instance) will align with parts of this project, but most of it is too modern to fit neatly into Renaissance Artisan business.

One or two days a week, however, will be devoted entirely to this project. Building, experimenting, photographing, and documenting (cough-blogging-cough) will take precedence on those days. We're still working out which days and how, but that's the plan or this is never going to work out.

Like the Facebook thingy said: "one man, 54 Livery Companies, 111 trades, 52 weeks." And we're at the end of week 18. At this rate, it's never going to work and before you propose it, I am not yet willing to entertain the idea of cutting projects. Part of the "fun" of doing this is figuring out how to do it without neglecting the day-to-day of modern life.

Anyway, that's the state of the project.

More later. I have coffee to drink and all the aforementioned projects aren't going to get closer to done by typing.

~Scott

Sick Day: Elizabethan Knitting, Part Two.

Step Two: The knit stitch

There are two types of stitches that are prevalent in the knitted garments that have survived from the 16th century. The knit stitch and the purl stitch.  It's worth noting that unlike modern methods of using alternating knit and purl stitches to create elasticity, in the 16th century, the purl stitch was apparently used mostly for decorative purposes. The earliest example I can come up with of knit/purl ribbing used to add elasticity to stockings is this pair in the Victoria & Albert Museum dating from 1640. Though that child's vest I posted earlier today seems to me to have ribbing around the neck.

I'll let others argue the point.

Of course, now that I know how to do it, it seems a no-brainer. Of course that's the problem with working backward in time, trying to replicate items that predate modern methodology. What seems obvious to us took centuries of trial and error to accomplish.

For instance, three-dimensional knitting also seems to have been a long time coming. That's when you knit a garment rather than knitting a bunch of cloth that you then sew into a garment. Of course some sewing after the fact is inevitable when you're making something like a sweater (or so I'm told) but at times it seems like the early modern knitter saw him or herself as a weaver, making whole cloth to then sew into garments.  By mid century at least, they unlocked knitting 'in the round' which is to say knitting a tube, but things like the foot of a stocking were still knitted flat and then sewn together to form thier final 3-dimensional shape.

of course, all that is just academic if you don't know how to knit.

The Knit Stitch

Today, we're going to knit. Working from our row of cast-on stitches I made yesterday, we're going to insert the empty needle into the loop closest to the point so that they're going in the same direction, one behind the other.

Note in the image below that you can just tell that I have the trailing yarn looped around my little finger. This applies friction rather akin to a belay break in climbing, slowing the yarn as it unspools and maintaining an even tension for the loops we're going to be making.

The empty needle goes behind the needle holding the stitched.

This is sometimes called the "Thrown" method of knitting because you're going to 'throw' a loop of your yarn around the needle in back.

Then, use the point of your needle to pull the thrown loop through the existing loop...

And let the earlier loop slip off the end of the needle.

That's knit one.  Repeat that until you've moved all your cast on stitches to the other needle and you've completed your first row.

Keep going, moving the stitches from one needle to the other with knit stitches. 

The Engineer advised me that at the beginning it's important to work on keeping your tension consistent and try not to skip or drop stitches. This is more important at first than trying to actually make something, unless you want to make a scarf, which can be row after row of knit stitches. 

As you go along, you will begin to recognize the pattern of interlocking loops and you'll know you have it down. That's the basic stitch of historical knitting. At that point, it's time to work on a new stitch, the purl... which we'll do tomorrow.

Obstacles: Knittin' Kitten

One of the best things about knitting is that when you're doing it, everyone wants to help. One of the worst things about knitting, is that when you're doing it, everyone wants to help.

"Everyone" includes the local kitten.

A common obstacle my wife encounters when she's knitting her airy confections is feline assistance. I'm faring no better than she does. Unfortunately, cats make better scissors than they do knitters, but all is not lost thanks to the fact that we're both working with wool.

Wool has the blessed quality of felting when in the presence of moisture and agitation. To rejoin a kitty-clipped section of yarn, simply wet the cut ends (saliva actually works better than water, but water will do if you're squeamish).

Lay the wet ends aside one another in your hands and then rub them vigorously between you hands to bind the threads back together. 

Sick Day: Elizabethan knitting, Part One.

One of the reasons we haven't been doing a lot of textile projects is because those are inside projects and I've been saving them to pepper in along the way when I am either sick or it's just raining too hard to work outside.

Flu 2013 is a nasty taskmistress, so this has been a knitting week.

Yes, knitting. I was a Boy Scout and even used to be a mountaineer, so I'm good with ropes and knots, so how hard can it be? It helps that The Engineer is a knitter par excellence. So on this project I have a master to whom I can apprentice myself.

Knitting is, in essence, the method of using two sticks or "needles" to weave yarn by knotting it, weaving it through itself in rows to create cloth.

My first ever attempt at knitting received a resounding chorus 

of "Not bad, but have you tried..." which is what I love about 

knitters. They're always so helpful.

Rudimentary knitting can be traced back to the Egyptians. I'm not going to dig too far into this, but rather refer you to the excellent History of Knitting written by the scholarly Bishop of Leicester, Richard Rutt. It is not a perfect book, which is noted by the author in the forward, but it is a very readable and excellent bit of scholarship that traces the history of English knitting as far as we can.

One of the reasons I'm going to gloss over the history, other than the fact that better pens than mine have been put to that task, is that there is limited documentary evidence. Knitted goods are mentioned in wills and account books, from which we can derive evidence of items that did not survive in large quantities, such as stockings. But most of what we have for knitting in our period is extrapolated from extent artifacts.

Which is my favorite kind of extrapolating.

Why aren't there reams of literature from the period related to knitting? Because there was never a uniform guild of knitters. From the very beginning, knitting arose as a cottage industry, a poor man's method of weaving cloth with minimal equipment. Even as late as the 16th century, knitting wasn't an organized industry like coopering, though it was awarded crown protection in 1589 when Elizabeth I denied a patent to the inventor of the stocking frame because of the impact she feared mechanization would have on the homespun industry.

Yet, the homespun knitters never aligned themselves under a common banner as other crafts did.

The Museum of London holds a large number of examples of knitted items dating from the 16th century, including this child's vest and this flat cap. From these items people with more expertise than I can figure out the type of stitches, the size of the needles, and the all-important method of casting on (the first row of stitches, which we'll get to in a minute).

Those wonderful experts I mentioned have their own social network called Ravelry where yarn-neophytes like me can go and learn at their feet. It's called, Ravelry (free membership required) where they've accumulated databases of extent knitted items and projects that are worked from their observations.

For this project, I am leaning heavily on their scholarship and wish to publicly acknowledge and thank them for being so open with their historical experiments. That kind of openness is part of what I love about working with craftspeople. The ethos of protectionism that gave rise to the "Mysterious esoterica of the craft and magic..." approach is long gone into the dustbin of history and given rise to the community of makers.

Casting On: The "Long Tail" Method

It begins with the cast-on. This crucial first row of stitches will determine how stretchy the edges of your knitted item will be and how well they will hold their shape. Bearing always in mind that I am a rank amateur who is learning this almost as I'm photographing it, here's one of the extrapolated period methods of casting on.

I get by with a little help from my Engineer.

Everything begins with a slip knot. Take a long length of your yarn and tie a slip knot in the middle. The knot is on the tail, and the active end -- that is the end you pull on to tighten the loop -- leading to the ball.

Take the two ends and hold them with your off-hand, below the needle. Push your index finger and thumb between them in a "Y" shape to separate the two tails.

Use the needle to catch the yarn going over your thumb and draw it up as shown below...

Pull the thumb tail up over the other tail...

And then pass it underneath...

Under the tail and up...

Tying your knot as the loop come off your thumb.

This is the result.

Repeat these steps as many times as you need to (your pattern will tell you how many stitches to cast on).

Can't follow my photos? Don't want to learn from someone who just learned himself?

That's okay.

From Ravelry to YouTube, the knitters community is vast and helpful. Eventually, I plan to actually start putting up videos on my YouTube channel, but no one wants to see the sniffly, snuffly, flu-ridden artisan. So in the meantime, here's Youtube knitter Elsteffo giving a nice video tutorial on the long tail cast-on.

Making Light: The meditations of a powerless artisan...

As I noted on Facebook, sunset yesterday for the Puget Sound area was at 4:32 pm. Which meant I was standing over a boiling pot of bones in the freezing rain and dark of night. I told my wife that if it started snowing or sleeting, the US Post Office would be sending me a paycheck. Needless to say, I was thanking my stars I had a warm home to retreat to when I was finished.

I managed to make that observation via Facebook minutes before the power went out.

I burn the candle at both ends, I'd light the middle if I could...

The Engineer and I had headlamps, warm blankets, and lots of books to read. It wasn't that big a deal; these things happen when you live on an island. Contemplate, though, a world in which that situation isn't just a vexing part of life in the country, but a daily aspect of your life. An obstacle to every effort you make to get food on the table. For the sake of comparison, sunset in London yesterday (a few points north of here) was 4:07 pm. Thirty minutes earlier (relative to their GPS coordinates, of course).

It certainly illustrates a knotty problem for working class schmoes in a time before Edison and his light bulb made lighting well nigh a civil right rather than a luxury.

I wasn't going to really get into this until we got to the Chandlers' companies, but I see that fickle fate had other plans.

Fine work like pinmaking, embroidery, and sewing was heavily dependent upon the available light. If you imagine a work space lit by lanterns or torches or anything you might see come out of Hollywood, you'd be wrong. Tallow candles and rush lights give off a dim, flickering and smokey light at the best of times.  A rush light is a piece of straw dipped in animal fat and held in a metal clip as it burned.  Fitful light at best. Beeswax candles were beyond the reach of humble pinners. If you picture children and small-fingered adults clambering onto windowsills and jockeying for the best of the available light, you'd be closer to the mark.

Yes, most pinners were children. As Tony Robinson noted in that TV show I mentioned the other day ("Worst Jobs in History: Tudors") this pin making thing is an incredibly fiddly business and small, dextrous fingers are necessary to do it well. I spoke with one of the researchers he used and she made it clear that it was work that was often done by children, but mostly by the poor and desperate, quite often by crippled soldiers.

Rachel Jardine, who worked with Robinson on this episode of his television series (you can see her name in the credits as "special thanks"), contacted me via Facebook and kindly provided some of her research into pin making in the early modern period. I am still poring over most of it, but what I have digested thus far is amazing.

"In the constant protestations of the Pinners in the early seventeenth century that many 'poore and impotent people' gain employment through pinmaking, that lame soldiers, children and cripples find this their only means of employment it is similarly made clear that the majority of pinners are extremely poor.[1] It is therefore unclear what extent the technological developments which occurred during the sixteenth century were adopted for widespread use. It seems likely that most pinmaking continued to operated using the simplest of tools."

"Pinning down production: Pin manufacture, technology and the market c.1500-1610"  by Rachel Jardine

[1] See, for instance, BL Cotton MS Titus BIV f. 304/314, Lansdowne MS 84, no. 21.

I think I've expired the length of blog post that my waning laptop battery will allow, so that's all for tonight. More from Rachel's amazing research and on the process of pinning this weekend.

The bones are de-fleshed, boiled, and scraped. Now they are sitting in an antiseptic solution that will also bleach them white (health & safety). They should be ready to start making pins soon.

- Scott