British Gansey

Designing Ganseys: A Three to Five Day Intensive Workshop, 30 hours

Level:  Intermediate, must be experienced and comfortable working with double pointed needles.

Students will learn how to construct a Gansey, a sweater form prevalent in the last century and early part of this century among the fishermen of the British Isles. A small scale sweater will be knitted using traditional construction techniques including the classic Channel Island Cast-on, split welts, seam stitches, traditional knit/purl patterns, the underarm gusset, shoulder straps with perpendicular joining, picked-up sleeves, and triangular neck gussets. Once the sweater is completed, students will then explore alternative construction methods and apply all the techniques by planning and designing their own garment. This is an intermediate level knitting class. Students must be experienced and comfortable working with double pointed needles.

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Supply List:

•     One set  of 7" long (or shorter) four dp needles each, sizes 5 and 7 (3.75 mm and 4.5 mm).

•     One 16" circular needle size 7 (4.5 mm).

•     4-6 oz. plain-textured, solid light-colored worsted weight yarn.

•     Notions:  stitch markers, scissors, cable needle, ruler, magnetic board or sticky notes to aid in reading graphs, tapestry needle, scraps of contrast color yarn, tape measure.

•     Eraser and sharp pencil, preferably a very fine mechanical pencil for charting.

•     1 1/2 to 2 1/2 pounds of yarn for full sized garment along with a variety of needle sizes.  (Bring at least 3 skeins of this yarn to class for swatching and starting your gansey.) 

•     Optional: pattern books for inspiration for the motifs you will choose.  I will also bring a lot of books and large format graph paper. 

Homework:

Knit a swatch at least 4" by 4" in at least 3 different needle sizes.  (I make one long continuous swatch.)  Work a border of  2-3 rows of garter st at the beg and end and 2 sts of garter st at each side.  You can block the swatches at home, or you can do that in class.