Turkmeni Goat's Head Socks

Ha! Another post for 2010! :P

I am currently knitting a toe-up sock with Turkmeni motifs. The motifs are from a pair of Turkmeni slippers that I now own, and they are of great interest to me as a knitter who enjoys stranded knitting. I am reliably informed that the motif on these socks is known in Turkmenistan as "the goat's head" - kind of reminds me of the Turkish "ram's head" motif. But the thing that excites me is that the pair of slippers I own were knit with the yarn tensioned around the neck in the old eastern way, and utilize a 3 colour carry. The great beauty of knitting with the yarn tensioned around the neck is that multiple colour carries are easy, and instead of it being annoying to look at the floats rather than the pattern, it is fascinating to see how carrying the colours in a particular way affects colour dominance.

Anyway, as the slippers do not fit me, I have charted the motifs and I'm now in the process of creating a pair of socks (not slippers) which use the motif on the slippers.

Bosnian crochet in Colour

This maybe the only post that I make this year because of my infrequent blogging habits, but I have been inspired by a couple of posts on Ravelry, the most recent being this one.

By shear coincidence, over the last couple of weeks I've been experimenting with Bosnian/slip stitch and other forms of crochet. My chief interest though is in Bosnian or slip stitch crochet which I blogged about a couple of years ago (in another rare post). Over the last year or so I have been collecting images of crocheted socks from Central Asia which utilize this simple but much ignored crochet stitch. Much as I would like to post images here, I am going to refrain because it would probably be a violation of some form of copyright.

Instead, here are some images of my own. These are test swatches that I crocheted using colourwork slip stitch crochet and motifs I have seen in eastern socks:
The above is slip stitch (aka Bosnian) crochet through the back loop carrying three colours.

In the following image the black and white section is slip stitch crochet through the front loop in two colours.
I am hoping to one day crochet a pair of Tajik-style socks in this manner, so just doing a bit of experimentation for the time being.

I have also made myself a couple of crochet hooks for the purpose. Here is a picture of one of the hooks:

It doesn't have the thick handle like on pjoning hooks, but the head of the hook is relatively flat so it slides nicely into the slip stitches which tend to lie rather flat. I am thinking of putting a nice fimo handle on it, but it seems ok to use as is. I made this hook from a "twig" from our privet (or maybe even box) hedge that my husband pruned earlier this year.

Finished my socks

I finally finished these socks a couple of weeks ago, and they were an interesting knit. I put the videos in my last post on youtube, but have since taken them down for hopefully a clearer video of how to "trap" or "catch" with stranded knitting around the neck.

My youtube channel is gradually building up as I make interesting discoveries in the world of stranded knitting around the neck.

But for now, I am working on a pattern for a new pair of Central Asian style socks, and also spinning for them, so it will probably be a while before I get around to adding more discoveries.

Sock progress

Just a quick update today re my sock with Bosnian motifs. Before I started the colour stranded sections, I dug up a Dutch handcrafting magazine that my mother-in-law had lent me. At the end of the magazine was an article about Bosnian socks, in which it says that the coloured sections of the socks are knit with just a single stand of coloured yarn. So the socks don't use intarsia-in-the-round! This is actually making the knitting a little easier, and the motifs still look ok.

Turkish socks: Central Asian/Mediterranean (aka "Portuguese knitting") stranded techniques

I am not a prolific blogger unfortunately, but I decided to post today in order to record some knitting information as much for myself as for anyone else that may happen upon it and find it useful.

Ever since I bought myself a copy of PGR's Ethnic Socks and Stockings, I have been obsessed by something she wrote in there about colour stranding techniques used in old Central asian socks. She says:

The use of many colours is common throughout this region of the world. Tensioning the yarn around the neck and working on the purl side in the traditional manner greatly simplified the use of multiple colors. This old technique has been largely abandoned in favor of 'modern' Western technique.

There are now three video sources for information about this form of knitting, which makes it easier to learn. My favourite videos are the series by chuanavit on youtube. They are free, and are a really great way to learn from scratch. There are also some other videos which are commercial and are produced by Andrea Wong. I have bought her sock video but was severly disappointed that the "Fair Isle" sock she detailed was basically just a sock with a band of 2-colour knitting at the cuff - no details about weaving or intasia or the use of more than 2 colours, but still useful for showing the possibilities for how to hold the yarn when knitting. Of more value to stranded knitters who want to see stranded techniques in the old way, is a video by Janet Willoughby called "Peruvian Knitted Hats". This isn't hugely useful unless you have patience and a good dvd player where you are able to hit slo-mo repeatedly to see what the hell is going on, but it is a droolworthy and breathtaking dvd just to see the stranded knitting using this old style of knitting.

It seems to have become the norm to refer to this style of knitting as "Portuguese knitting" (I suspect because of Chuanavit and Andrea's videos), but since this form of knitting in used in Central Asia, parts of Eastern Europe, the Mediterranean and Peru, I am going to avoid calling it "Portuguese" because I'm an Asperger that way. ;-)

Because I love eastern socks, I have finally gotten around to trying my hand at knitting a pair of stranded eastern-style socks using this old method of "knitting around the neck".



All the yarns used in these socks are handspun. The black is spindle-spun from Ouessant wool, and the remaining colours spindle-spun from Clun Forest wool.




After a bit of experimentation, I worked out how to trap/weave the colours. The videos below (and maybe more in the coming days as I get to the intarsia) document what I work out.

Been learning to spin!

For just under a month now, I have been teaching myself to process and spin my own yarn. Yesterday I finished a skein of yarn, and it's the first one of which I am not too embarrassed to post:

This is 300m of a 2 ply laceweight yarn (100g odd), which is approx. 22-23 wpi and knits up at about 10 stitches/inch. The singles were about 35 wpi, and z-spun.

The wool is from a Drents Heideschaap fleece, which I am slowly working my way through. It is surprisingly soft, but the trick to getting nice yarn from this fleece is to remove the longer (harsher) hairs from each lock. If you leave them in, you will end up with a very scratchy wool.

This yarn is spun worsted because I want to make a pair of socks out of it. Here's a close-up of the 2-ply still on the spindle (the Aussie 5c coin is the smallest coinage I had in my wallet).

Socks with Turkish Motifs

I have been lucky enough to snag myself a copy of Knitted Stockings from Turkish villages by Professor Kenan Özbel.
This has a terrific number of black and white charts of Turkish socks and charts of smaller motifs, as well as black and white photos for Turkish socks, but doesn't give any instructions for knitting them. There are also some droolworthy colour photos of colourwork socks in there, and you can see the vast majority of these colour photos at the Turkish Culture Portal.

I made these toe-up socks with Turkish motifs for my Mum because it's winter in Aus right now. I got lazy at the heel and used a PGR short-row heel though instead of a peasant heel like in proper Turkish socks.