Work-in-Progress: Status of the Ty Cobb Sweater, July 2018

As I warned you in my last status update, the changes to the Ty Cobb Sweater from here on out will seem less dramatic. Not that I haven't been working hard on it, but now it's mostly fiddly bits and hidden details.

Ty Cobb Sweater reproduction with pockets and updated cuffs

Finished pocket

I should start by making a confession: the cuffs of which I was so proud in the previous status update turned out to be wrong. That meant ripping them out, reexamining my pictures closely, knitting multiple swatches until I got the gauge I needed, and finally redoing them. (I'll go into the gory details in a future post.) The good news is that the cuffs are now correct. They look great, they match the HOF sweater perfectly, and redoing them actually taught me a lot about historical factory knitting.

Knitting at the ballpark. Why not? ;)

Placket in progress

The pockets are also finished--again, fascinating construction that we don't see anymore--and I've started work on the button placket. Since it's the only part of the sweater that's sewn on afterwards, all I really have to show so far is a long strip of knitting that will get even longer. While that's pretty boring compared to the rest of the sweater, it's also a lot more portable, which meant I was able to work on it during the Rockies-Dbacks game last weekend. (There's nothing quite like watching people react when they realize you're knitting while watching the game. ;)

Since the Saber Seminar is next weekend (August 4-5) and I'm giving a talk on my baseball laces research, I'm planning to take a week off from blogging. Hopefully I'll get a lot of knitting done though. Anyone who has seen me at a conference can attest to the fact that I knit during talks. (It helps me pay attention. Weird, I know, but true.)

It's All in the Details: A Tale of Two Design Elements

"It was the best of design elements. It was the worst of design elements..."

In this case, I'm talking about the neckline and the shoulders of the Ty Cobb Sweater.

Neckline decreases. (left: HOF; right: reproduction.)

Example of "smooth" decreases

The neckline is one of those construction details that left me scratching my head. It's the first time we run into "shaping"--that's just a fancy way of saying stitches are being increased or decreased--and considering the clean, simple lines everywhere else on the sweater, the method used here was a little jarring. (Well, okay, for a knitter it was a little jarring).

As you can see, the neckline tapers from the button placket to the shoulder. Generally when I've seen stitches decreased, the idea is to create a smooth line, so that one part of the knitting looks like it's going underneath. You see that kind of "smooth" decrease most often on socks, as I've shown in a close-up from one of my own designs. However, for the Ty Cobb Sweater, the neckline decreases go the opposite way (note the red circles), which makes them stand out. When I first saw that shaping, the lack of aesthetics almost made me cringe. (Sorry. That's my inner knitting designer talking.)

Example of mattress stitch join (inside).

What really confuses me is WHY? It's not as if "smooth" decreases are harder to knit than the ones used here. I don't have much basis for comparison, but since this type of shaping appears on all of the other baseball sweaters I've seen, I can only assume it was standard at the time.

Fortunately (at least for my inner designer), the lines everywhere else on the sweater are GORGEOUS--so nice, in fact, that the question becomes, "Why aren't we still making them this way?"  I don't mean mass-produced sweaters either; even hand-knit ones no longer have such elegant construction.


The nicest example appears at the shoulders. Nowadays, shoulders are either attached together using a sewing machine (this is generally seen with store-bought sweaters) or something called a "mattress stitch." While a mattress stitch join can be pretty on the outside, it leaves a thick seam on the inside.

Original HOF Sweater shoulder join, outside and inside

However, if you look at the original HOF sweater, you'll notice that the shoulders are, quite literally, seamless. Now, if you remember my pictures of the finished body, that might not make sense at first. After all, the body is knit flat. How can you attach the front and back together without seams?

Grafting the shoulder using a Kitchener Stitch

Well, obviously there have to be seams; they're just invisible. It turns out that if you use a form of grafting called a "Kitchener Stitch," you can use a sewing needle to create the look of knitted stitches. (Note: For you history buffs, yes, the technique was named for Lord Kitchener, although clearly it predates World War I. Heaven knows what it was called before that.) It's a standard technique for closing the toes of hand-knit socks, but it's not often found in shoulders. As you can see, my Kitchener-Stitched reproduction ends up with shoulders just as pretty as those on the original.

Reproduction with finished shoulder join

From here on out, the design elements continue to be both graceful and logical--except for those damn decreases. (Yes, there are more of them.) Obviously, if I were the one designing the sweater, I'd do them differently. However, since the point is an accurate reproduction, I've just sucked it up and moved on. Whatever.

It's All in the Details: Ty Cobb, that Snappy Modern Dresser!

The body of the Ty Cobb Sweater reproduction

In some ways, the body of sweater is the simplest part to knit and understand. (For you beginning knitters out there, this will be the most straightforward part of the pattern.) In others, its construction leaves me flummoxed.

Ironically, what's least comprehensible is its very simplicity. Being a cardigan, the body is essentially flat, but its lack of side seams makes it wide to the point of being ungainly. In a factory setting--such as that in which the Ty Cobb Sweater was made--one would think a hand-cranked knitting machine makes a lot more sense.

But then you get to the details. It turns out the body is not a flat rectangle, and the hem, pockets, sleeve openings, and neckline (the last three of which I promise to talk about in upcoming posts) are worked in a way that could only have been done by hand. In theory, whoever made the sweater could have switched between a knitting machine and hand needles for certain parts, but frankly that seems like a waste of time and energy. (Why use a knitting machine to knit 5 inches, take the piece off to work the hem by hand, put it back on the machine to knit another six inches, take it off to manually insert the pocket openings, put in back on...? You see my point.) This leads me to believe that, onerous as it was, the body was hand-knit.

Circular needle (upper left) and DPNs (lower right)

19th century example of knitting using DPNs

Since we're in the 21st century, I used "circular needles" to make the reproduction. For those of you unfamiliar with knitting, circular needles consist of two needles joined by a stiff cord (see pic); they are, in effect, one very long flexible needle with two ends. If you're knitting something as wide as a 42-inch sweater body, circular needles are really the only way to go.

Interestingly, the very nature of the Ty Cobb Sweater may be linked to the invention of circular needles. As far as I can tell, there seems to be a transition just after 1900 between pullover baseball sweaters and cardigans. These pictures of Cy Young and the Washington Senators (shamelessly lifted from BSmile's Twitter account) are from 1898 and 1895, respectively. Note that, in both cases, the sweaters are pullovers.

Cy Young - 1898 Cleveland Spiders (pic via @BSmile)

1895 Washington Senators (pic via @BSmile)

Unlike cardigans, pullovers can be made using "double-pointed needles" or DPNs (see pic). In fact, until the introduction of circular needles, sweaters were generally knit on DPNs. The advantage of DPNs is that you can knit something "in the round" using as many needles as you want (hence the two girls in the picture knitting a single sweater on a half-dozen very battered knitting needles). Unfortunately, if you want to knit something flat--especially something heavy and flat--you run the risk of dropping stitches between needles when you get to one of the ends. In short, there's a good reason that fisherman's sweaters or ganseys are pullovers; cardigans were simply impractical.

However, the first circular needles were patented in the US in 1918, and were likely in use for some years before that. I would guess that the introduction of circular needles and the sudden widespread appearance of factory-made cardigans was not a coincidence. In the 1900s, working with circular needles would have been considered the height of modernity and knit cardigans the height of fashion.

Unlike pullovers, cardigans could be used as a "substitute coat," making them far more convenient. (Think of it as the difference between a regular hoodie and one with a zipper.) Since sweaters don't generally crease or wrinkle, they also had the advantage of being more forgiving with regards to packing and storage. Sounds perfect for someone on the road half the time, don't you think?

It's All in the Details: Getting Hemmed in

Carding room at the Mishawaka Woolen Co, c.1902

Anybody reading this blog (with apologies to all of my octogenarian fans :) has grown up in an age where clothing is largely machine-made. Not just made in factories, but literally machine-made. Occasionally you'll run into details--beaded trim, say--that have clearly been stitched by hand, but those are usually manufactured overseas to take advantage of low-wage labor. Many of us aren't even aware that, until about the 1970's, it was often easier and more economical to make your own clothing than buy it off the rack.  (See? Those seemingly-obsolete Home Ec classes we took in high school once existed for a reason!) Since fabric was woven (i.e. no stretch) rather than knit, knowing how to sew meant that, at the very least, you didn't have to pay for the alterations needed to make your clothes fit.

MLB baseball lacers at Rawlings' factory in Costa Rica, 2017

Nowadays, people associate handmade clothing either with haute couture fashion designers or hobbyists. We forget that, up through the first half of the 20th century, an entire industry existed in this country where people made knitted garments, and many of those garments were made by hand. I'll admit that I haven't had much success tracking down manufacturing details, but as far as I can tell, things like the Ty Cobb Sweater were done entirely "by hand." As in by one person (or group of people), on knitting needles. Some parts may have been done by machine--not an electric machine, but something hand-cranked--but, by and large, these sweaters were handmade. Factory-manufactured, but handmade. (An interesting aside: one thing that is still "factory-manufactured but handmade" is a baseball. To this day, no one has figured out how to lace a baseball by machine, so every baseball used in every game--even in Little League--is hand-laced.)

Hem on the original Ty Cobb Sweater (outside)

So I guess the question is: Why do I think that? What's the giveaway that suggests people, not machines, made Ty Cobb's sweater?

It turns out you can tell right from the beginning--as in, starting at the hem. (For those of you unfamiliar with knitting, sweaters are generally made from the bottom up.)

Hem on the original Ty Cobb Sweater (inside)

Hem on the reproduction (outside)

Hem on the reproduction (inside)

Take a look at the hem on the original HOF sweater. You'll see immediately that it's very different from the ribbed bottom cuffs we associate with knitted sweaters today. This is much more like the hem on a sewn piece of clothing. However, unlike sewn clothing, this hem is not stitched in place using a machine. Instead, it is knit-in. The bottom is folded over, and the stitches from the original edge are literally knit together with a later row. (Note: I apologize for the extremely poor photograph of the inside of the hem on the original. Apparently, I thought the technique was so self-evident that I didn't bother to take a decent picture at the time. Granted, when I took those pics, I also didn't think I'd be writing a blog.)

To my knowledge, knitting stitches together is not something that lends itself to machine-knitting, even hand-cranked machine-knitting. While this is not a technique that's used often in hand-knitting today, it's not unheard of, and I was able to reproduce it without too much trouble.

It's also the first example of a construction detail that appears to have been standard at the time but has since been lost to history. (So far, all of the historical baseball sweaters I've encountered have similar hems.) As we move up the sweater, we'll see more of those. Some make sense, some are counter-intuitive--if not downright head-scratching--and some only seem counter-intuitive until you remember that these were made in a factory, not in somebody's home.

More surprises to come!