Sunday, July 14, 2013

Swatching cotton

The gauge is a bit off, but it is the right stitch and the variations in tension in the fabric are about correct.

This was knit as we were out and about on Saturday shopping chores.

This tells me that this stitch, at about this gauge, can be easily knit with sock needles and a knitting sheath.

Note the similarity in the "row out" on the back side of the fabric.

2 comments:

Gordon said...

Nalbinding Deniers. The Flat Earthers of the knitting world.

What's the point of this? Knitting something yesterday at a similar gauge proves precisely nothing about how a museum artifact was made.

Aaron said...

It is the same analysis that DK Burnham did. She did some nalbinding that looked like the Coptic Socks, and then said, the Coptic socks must be nalbinding!

That was the kind of analysis that you do not like. I agree. Her analysis is flawed. It may not be wrong, but it is not complete.

She neglected the social context of an industrial scale weaving industry resulting in the availability of large amount of short lengths of loom warp. She neglected the fact that the socks were worn and needed darning - thus the needles found in context were likely daring needles for repair of various textiles.

I do not say that she was right or wrong, only that there a set of issues with her technical analysis.

One can sit down and nalbind replicas of most knit objects, but you want me to believe that because someone produced a replica of some particular object by nalbinding, that the original was also made by nalbinding.

People tell me that the fabric in the original Coptic sock cannot be knit with two needle, looped knitting. Well, it can be so knit. If they are wrong about that, then they can be wrong about other things also.