Tartan hose book

[DWFII]

Well I probably cheated and didn't mantain perfect diamonds.

I knit them flat and simply added a stitch at each end as I went along for the increases.

Then when they get stitched together, the seam at the back will not have a perfect pattern in it although it will still be symmetrical.

Yeah, that's part of the problem. I've also seen what appears, to my inexperienced eye, to be a fudging of the shape of the diamonds--where the bottom corner is three or four stitches wide rather than a true corner one stitch wide.

Also, you can block the hose and the knitting will stretch but then you risk seeing skin through the hose if the patterns aren't right or the knitting dense enough.

[DWFII]

BTW, my wife says that using a merino blend fingering yarn only takes about two skeins per major colour (rakers take an insignificant amount). She gets her yarn from KnitPicks and it costs roughly $2.00 per skein.

So, unless they are having the marled yarn custom-made (hard to find in suitable colours)...ie. red and black marling or green and black marling...there isn't that much advantage to the "bonus yarn" offer. Not that it's not a good deal but rather that it probably shouldn't make the difference in whether you see the book as worth having or not.

[M. A. C. Newsome]

DW, please don't get me wrong. I was not saying the knowledge contained in the book is not worth the money. I was just agreeing with my fellow poster who was interested until he saw the price tag. My wife felt the same way. It was just more than she was willing to pay at this juncture.

Now, if I said to her, "Honey, I really want a pair of Argyle hose knit by your hands for my brithday," I'm sure she would be more interested in having this book. (Especially if I bought it for her).

Likewise, if we decided we were going to offer hand knit Argyle hose as part of our business, we would look upon such a resource as a good investment.

As it is, however, she has so many other knitting projects lined up that she wants or needs to do that she's not really interested in taking on another "thing," and her knitting libary is already fairly extensive so she's not really keen on purchasing another book unless it is one she knows she will really use.

There is a difference between "that's not worth the money" and "that's more than I'm willing to pay right now." I apologize for not making that distinction in my rather hasty first post.

[Elf]

Well I probably cheated and didn't mantain perfect diamonds.

I knit them flat and simply added a stitch at each end as I went along for the increases.

Then when they get stitched together, the seam at the back will not have a perfect pattern in it although it will still be symmetrical.

According to the proprieter of my local yarn shop, knitting round was a continental method while the british knit flat and made a seam. So from that your method is nothing to apologize about, rather it would be the more historical. I should seach the forum for any other opinions on this

[DWFII]

Matt,

No worries...you or anyone else. Like I said, my wife thought it was pretty expensive as well.

All I know is that it has been a big puzzle to me and, to a lesser extent, to my wife, as to how large calf individuals are fitted without the asymmetry at the backseam or the distortion in the diamonds. Heck, maybe the commercial hose are chopped up in the back. I don't know. But I'm a 3D kind of guy and I would feel a bit perplexed if the hose looked perfect from the front and side and weird in the back.

Anyway, like I said...I've no connection to the author or publisher...just seems to me this has been a tough and frustrating quest for a lot of folks here. With no easy answers.

[Barb T]

It's hard to tell from the web site why the book costs so much, because you can't see how many pages it has or what the nature of the illustrations are. If the authors chose to do a full-color book inside from cover to cover, it would have been a very expensive book just for the printing.

Book pages are normally printed in "signatures" - a set of pages ganged together and printed on big sheets and basically cut apart and bound - rather than as individual pages. If you want to have color illustrations scattered throughout a book, you have no choice but to print every page on a color press. You can cut the cost of printing down dramatically if you cluster all the color illustrations into one signature (depending on the printer, that would typically be multiples of 8 or 16 consecutive pages) and print the entire rest of the book in black and white.

Anyway, that might explain it. On the other hand, maybe they just want to make money selling the book.

And remember that anyone selling a book wholesale will be expected to give a retailer up to a 40-50% discount on the list cost of the book, so someone factors that into the retail selling price when setting the cost of a book. If their book is color inside cover to cover, and they did a small print run, and they need to make even a couple of dollars on the wholesale price of the book.....that could be a pretty expensive book.

[piperdbh]

According to the proprieter of my local yarn shop, knitting round was a continental method while the british knit flat and made a seam. So from that your method is nothing to apologize about, rather it would be the more historical. I should seach the forum for any other opinions on this

It's might' nigh impossible to make tartan/Argyll hose in the round. Trust me.
The increases up the seam will not make perfect diamonds, and in fact they're usually kind of funny-looking, but they should be symmetrical.

[rab _]

I think I am correct in saying that the author also produces knitting kits for dancers hose, and I presume that this book is based on the same instructions that come in those kits. As an owner of one of those kits I am not sure I would recommend this book for someone trying to make hose for adult men; as a few posts have hinted shaping for an adult male's calf is not easy – this is less of an issue for children/women who the book is probably aimed at.

The real difficulty with knitting argyll hose is yarn; this has to be dyed to suit the tartan and marled yarn must be spun. Double thread can be attempted but again the colour match will be difficult, and very light weight yarn will have to be used to give the required stitch count, which will limit options.

It is certainly not unknown for commercial hose to have visible seams at the rear, and not just budget offerings. To maintain a perfect pattern the tension and needle size have to be altered, although this of course has limits and certain leg shapes probably can't be catered for without visible decreases.

As to the price of argyll hose, well these can be obtained fully bespoke for around 150 dollars. The amount of work that goes into these means that's a pretty fair price in my opinion. It really depends if you consider the value of you own time in comparison – the book, plus yarn, plus 10 or 20 or 100 hours to knit...

[Barb T]

Don't know if this helps, but all of my daughter's Highland hose have been what's called "fully fashioned", i.e., with a seam up the back. They've all been custom knit in the UK (by Henderson) and, in fact, the fully fashioned hose were actually more expensive than those that weren't.

The pic below shows how they dealt with the diamonds, and her calf definitely required shaping. The diamonds basically merge where the hose tapers. I think they look fine done that way.

[sydnie7]

That's a great and very helpful picture, Barb, thanks!

[must not start new project. . . must not start new project. . . LOL]