Scarf Construction

[GWilson]

With winter already here, I was thinking of some ways to keep warm. What I really need is a scarf. I was wondering if anybody knew the correct stich and what the length would be. Also, does anybody suggest any vendors with good scarfs? Thanks

[Kate Vogel]

Natalie Baur makes excellent knitted goods and has wonderful customer service. I live in the stockings she knit me during cold Michigan winters. Contact me off forum and I'll put you in touch with her if you would like. Karin Timour and Terre Lawson are two other highly reputable knitters that jump to mind and they both frequent the forums.

[Spinster]

Grant,

We've got 2 scarves on the needles right now. All wool.

The first is handspun, and the yarn was dyed with black walnut to a medium chocolate brown (at Shiloh no less, back last spring), and knitted in the brioche stitch, a popular period stitch.

The second is a double crochet, made from yarn done on an electric spinner, out of a nice natural grey wool, and is dyed with indigo in an ombre manner--this means the yarn shades from blue to grey and back again, in the manner described in "Mothers of Invention" . A certain amount of lanolin remains in this yarn, aiding in the water repellancy.

Other colors from period dyes are available, as well as sleeping hats and socks. We are currently organizing our winter knitting projects. You can contact me at thlawson@bellsouth.net for both ready made and custom orders.

All forum members are required to sign their full names to all posts. Please create an auto-signature in your profile. 1st Warning. Failure to do so by 12/10/03 will lead to your post being deleted.
Dusty

[Jefferson Guards]

Here is a photo of a Confederate wearing a scarf. The detail is pretty decent and you can get a good idea of the length of the item.

[Kate Vogel]

Maybe it's just my computer screen, but does anyone else think it looks like it is entirely worked in garter stitch?

[Spinster]

Maybe it's just my computer screen, but does anyone else think it looks like it is entirely worked in garter stitch?

Could be Garter stitch, could be English Brioche. German Brioche can give the diagonal look visible up higher on the scarf. My period patterns call the item a gentleman's comforter, and makes a much shorter garment, one that lays across the chest under the closed coat and extends down to about the navel.

Any of these stitches can give a similar appearance, and a similarly lofty warm scarf. The garter stitch is especially endearing though, as it was often the indicator of a very young or very inexperienced knitter, struggling with the first stitches to make a warm and practical item for some best-loved person. For a totally off-period reference to garter as a beginner's effort, look to the book "Mary Poppins" for a description of the beloved nanny's knitted scarf

[Kate Vogel]

The garter stitch is especially endearing though, as it was often the indicator of a very young or very inexperienced knitter, struggling with the first stitches to make a warm and practical item for some best-loved person.

Hey now, I'm rather fond of my first few items I ever knitted. ;) Terre, please email me if you get the chance. I'm starting to think AOL has a personal vendetta against your email account.

[Spinster]

Hey now, I'm rather fond of my first few items I ever knitted. ;) Terre, please email me if you get the chance. I'm starting to think AOL has a personal vendetta against your email account.

Would you believe I have an "unfinished knitting project" in garter stitch, begun when I was 8 years old! :o

Kate, I can't email you directly because your AC board preferences are set that you don't wish to receive email from the board--give it another look and send me a private message through the board. Miche' Todd and I can't communicate directly either, and have to speak through a list serve.

[KarinTimour]

Katie you might want to try checking this picture out with a more finely detailed monitor. Mine is not very sharp -- when I bought it I wasn't planning to be looking at pictures -- the salesman kept saying "but you won't be able to play computer games" and I kept saying "I'm not buying this to play computer games"..... Then he'd say "but you won't be able to play computer games...." growing ever more pained and wistful. Little did I know that six months after buying it I'd be obsessed by trying to observe textiles!

Anyway, up by his second or third button it looks as though there are three or four parrallel cables. I could be wrong, but it looks like some strong veritical work through there.

With regard to width and length of scarves, or "gentlemen's comforts" I believe it was Carol Ann Schmidt who posted a reference of 60 inches long and 7-8 inches wide from one of her period knitting books.

Hope that's helpful,
Karin Timour
Domestic Arts and Honorable Trades Society
Atlantic Guard Soldiers' Aid Society
Email: Ktimour@aol.com

[58th C]

Grant,

We've got 2 scarves on the needles right now. All wool.

The first is handspun, and the yarn was dyed with black walnut to a medium chocolate brown (at Shiloh no less, back last spring), and knitted in the brioche stitch, a popular period stitch.

The second is a double crochet, made from yarn done on an electric spinner, out of a nice natural grey wool, and is dyed with indigo in an ombre manner--this means the yarn shades from blue to grey and back again, in the manner described in "Mothers of Invention" . A certain amount of lanolin remains in this yarn, aiding in the water repellancy.

Other colors from period dyes are available, as well as sleeping hats and socks. We are currently organizing our winter knitting projects. You can contact me at thlawson@bellsouth.net for both ready made and custom orders.

All forum members are required to sign their full names to all posts. Please create an auto-signature in your profile. 1st Warning. Failure to do so by 12/10/03 will lead to your post being deleted.
Dusty

Would plain double crochet have been a commonly used scarf stitch? I'd like to make a few scarves and I crochet much faster than I knit. Any suggestions as to which stitches to use would be appreciated.

Lauren Kaye

[Clark Badgett]

Speaking of knitted goods, who makes some nice mittens or wrister types.

[DougCooper]

Brian - what a fantastic photo! Is it identified? Date? Scarf is great but I am all over the uniform and overcoat as well...

PEC violation - has a musket sling, overcoat and probably even has a hat cord :-) (tongue firmly planted in cheek).

[Kate Vogel]

Karin,

After using a friend's monitor to view that picture (now I'm officially nuts in his book) it does look like it has a set of parallel cables. I think it's a combination of bad eyes and a bad computer screen. Sigh.

[Jefferson Guards]

Doug,

The photograph is unidentified. It was scanned from page 191 of William C. Davis's Touched by Fire Volume One. You are right about it being great for things more than just the scarf. I especially like his belt buckle. Looks to be a two piece? Another PEC violation?:D

[cwbelle]

Hello,
I handspun (from a fine natural brown wool--Corriedale/Merino mixture) and knit a scarf for another reenactor (military) last spring, but didn't make it nearly as long as the one pictured (more similar to the length you've described from your period patterns), I was wondering about it at the time and am glad to hear about the pattern. I have a spinning wheel which I love to use and though I'm not proficient at knitting (the scarf would probably fall into the "loving thought" category more than the "professional") I was wondering if you could give me some guidance as to where I could find other period patterns for knitting? I'd also like to try some natural dyeing techniques (walnuts etc) for my spun yarn, but am quite new to that aspect. Any help you could/would be willing to offer would be greatly appreciated. If you'd prefer to email me off the forum that's fine.
Respectfully,
Lisa-Marie Clark
Civilian, 10th IL

[cwbelle]

Excuse me, I meant to direct that last post more specifically to Mrs. Terre Lawson.
Thanks!

[GWilson]

I noticed in the photo that Brian had posted the man had fringes on his scarf. I looked at another photograph of a scarf that someone was wearing and it didn't have any fringes. ( I couldn't find the photo ). Were fringes very common on scarves?

[Carolann Schmitt]

I loved Mrs. Lawson's comment about items in garter stitch by beginning knitters, but I wanted to point out that an item done in garter stitch does not necessarily indicate a beginning knitter. I imagine that Terre's comment may have been true on many occasions, but garter stitch-based patterns are quite common in the mid-19th century, and are typical of early- and mid-Victorian knitted items. Period knitting and needlework manuals list instructions for many items done in garter stitch patterns, and many of the earliest Shetland lace patterns are garter-stitched based.

The measurements I posted and that Karin referenced are from a supplement to Miss Lambert's Guide to Needlework. They are not the only size that a scarf was made in - just a recommendation from one source. And the use of fringe seems to be a knitter's option. I would have to go back and re-check all my primary sources to see if there is a trend one way or the other for using fringe; and even then knitter's preference and the amount of wool available for the project would be additional factors in determining the use of fringe on scarves.

[KarinTimour]

Folks:

This past week in New York I've been very grateful for my scarves and all my outerwear!

As Carolann has noted, there is more than one length to knit a scarf -- on the "Military Authenticity Discussion" Miss Vicki Betts has posted some long quotes from a dissertation that mention scarves found on the Bertram -- 70 inches long, 10 inches wide.

If you want to read more about it, the thread is entitled "Sweaters?"

Sincerely,
Karin Timour
Atlantic Guard Soldiers' Aid Society
Email: Ktimour@aol.com

[Kate Vogel]

I recently happened upon a box of women's dresses from the 1920s at work that was stashed underneath the stairs. While I went through them, I found a few fragments of brown and red yarn and when I got to the bottom of it I found an entire scarf. The accession files date it as being mid 19th century (the woman who opened the museum penciled in "1855?" on the accession sheet she was using at the time). It's entirely done in garter stitch, was done with what is obviously hand spun and dyed wool, and unfortunately has some truly wretched damage caused by mice. I'm in the middle of studying for my exams at the moment, but I'll do a write up of specifics on it once I get back to work and can examine it in earnest. It was knit for a resident of Hartland by his wife, who from her sewing and weaving seems to have been a very accomplished woman as far as fiber arts are concerned. It is brown with several fine stripes of red and white and has brown fringe if I recall correctly.

[KarinTimour]

Dear Katie:

That scarf sounds wonderful -- mice damage and all. I don't know where you are working -- would Hartland have been in the Confederacy? If so, a brown scarf with red and white stripes sounds like it was made to show the wearer's allegiance, and I'd strongly suspect that it was made after the war started, though we'll probably never know.

Looking very much forward to the specifics when you get done with exams,
Karin Timour
Atlantic Guard Soldiers' Aid Society
Email: Ktimour@aol.com

[Kate Vogel]

Karin,

Actually, Hartland is in SE Michigan-it's about as North as you can get. ;)

[Skeet]

Greetings, I am having a lady at my work knitting me a scarf. In my unit we have 2 members who where them. They are 5 feet long and 7 inches wide. One of them is black and the other is blue. The one I am having done is dark blue and a cross thread of wool/cotton. In the picture it looks like it is black. I really need one at our camp of instruction in March! Your most obiedent servant, Pvt. Daniel D. Morgan, 10th Va

[Kate Vogel]

Here are the specifics on that scarf that I found rotting away in the bottom of a box. It was also playing host to moth larvae, so it is in bad shape in a few places, but it is thankfully in good enough shape to actually study it, but will need to be deaccessioned soon due to moth and mouse damage, a lack of storage space and the previously mentioned infestation.

Mae Dexter's Father's scarf (donated to the Florence B. Dearing Museum in the late 1950s, AN 1060) was knit around 1859, but the record keeping during the 1950s was abysmal at best, so to be on the safe side, I would say plus or minus five years. The other pieces in the collection that belonged to her father all date from 1850-1869.

The primary color used is brown, with red and blue stripes at the ends of the scarf.

Width: nine inches
Length: 74 inches
17 knots of fringe (brown) on each end of the scarf with twelve strands of yarn (three inches long) to each knot

This scarf is entirely knit in a very tight, even garter stitch


cast on nine inches of brown wool
knit seven and a half inches with 13 rows to the inch

*three rows red
five rows blue
three rows red
10 rows brown
(wrong side) five rows red
10 rows brown
repeat three times from * (right side again)
end the striped section with (wrong side) five rows of red

38 inches of brown (13 rows to the inch)

Repeat striped pattern backwards so that you start with
*(wrong side) five rows red
10 rows brown
three rows red (right side again)
five rows blue
thre rows red
10 rows brown
repeat from * three times (wrong side)
end the striped section with (right side) three rows red
five rows blue
three rows red

knit seven and a half inches brown wool

cast off and tie fringe

I'm waiting for my boss to send me the digital pictures she took of this and I will post them when I get the chance to.

[Spinster]

Too cute Miss V.---I'm gong out to give the brown vat a stir since its shaping up to be a nice sunny day, and drop a hank of wool in about noon. I've got a surplus of red and blue right now, but the last of my brown is on the needles.

I believe I'd be raising my hand and screaming "pick me, pick me" when it come times for the museum to dispose of this item. Put it in the freezer for a few days (inside a bag) to kill any lingering critters.

While you do say "cast on nine inches", please count the stitches for us, so we can guesstimate the wool size and needle size.

[Kate Vogel]

Terre,

I've got first dibs on the scarf once it's officially not property of the museum, sorry. ;) We froze it and it has been picked clean of visible larvae, cocoons, so we'll see how that turns out. I'll count stitches for you when I get home. I'm reproducing it as well and I have been very happy with the results so far.


Katie