Itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny sock

Here's my latest adventure in nalbinding. 

I decided to try and replicate this red and yellow sock in pierced looping from the V&A (item # 1287-1904). The idea here was to give myself another "reality check" on gauge. I am happy to say that I have finally gone overboard on doing tiny gauge work! I got some cones of weaving yarn (this one for the curious). When I measured, I got 22 wraps/in, which is what it's advertised as. 

I chose this sock because the museum has very good photos from multiple angles, making it possible to attempt to count stiches and rows.  Based on the V&A's photos, I counted rows and stitches as best I could. This stitch is pretty easy to count, though, in part because it is one of only 2 nalbinding stitches I know that lines up into vertical columns (the other being the typical Coptic stitch). Then, I tried to make a sock with the same number of rows and stitches. 

The V&A's sock is listed as being 12.5cm long, 6.7cm wide, and 4.5cm high. I'm not sure what 'height' means here, so I'm sticking with the other two. Based on counting rows and stitches in the museum's photos, I estimated this sock should be 4.77 st/cm or 12 st/in. I pretty much hit that mark with the weaving yarn. 

My sock, top view - I have stuffed it with a bit of brown paper to mimic the stuffing in the pictures of the V&A sock.

Top view of the V&A's sock

However, my sock is only 12.0cm long (from tip of toe to tip of heel) and 5.3cm wide (flattened out completely, across the instep). As you can see in the photos, it's narrower in relaton to its length than the V&A sock.  So, I may have undercounted the number of stitches around. But, I don't think I've made any error on the number of rows visible on the sole. Which means that I've probably found yarn that's (probably) too thin compared to the archaeological samples. This is useful.  

The sole of my sock

The sole of the V&A's sock

As you can see in the photo below, without something inside the sock, it curls up very tightly in an S-twisted direction. The stitches themselves are Z-twisted (F2 -/O in Hansen notation). I did counteract the twist in the yarn as I was working, but I doubt I balanced perfectly.  Those of you with sharp eyes may notice that the V&A's sock has S-twisted stitches, but I find it easier to work this way.  Regardless, the nature of the stitch leads to twisting, as with all nalbinding.  Since the museum has not posted a photo of their sock unstuffed, I can't compare.  This is unfortunate, since seeing the degree of twisting might have given me some idea about relative tension.  

The other really interesting thing here is that the waffle-like texture is MUCH less noticable at this gauge than in my sample with worsted weight wool. This has a pretty smooth texture in the finished product, though not as smooth as standard Coptic stitch. I would totally consider making a pair of socks in this stitch instead of regular Coptic when I get around to making another full size pair.

So, what did I learn from this little experiment?  I already knew that the gauge on surviving socks in Coptic stitch ranges approximately from 8-12 stitches per inch.  My previous efforts, using fingering/sock weight yarn (which was 16 wraps/inch) got me about 8.5 stitches/inch.  With this yarn (22 wraps/inch) my end result is about 12 stitches/inch.  So, this suggests that the yarns in the surviving socks are generally in the range of 16-22 wraps/inch (maybe as thick as 14, since the 16 wpi yarn gave me something slightly finer than the coarsest of the museum socks).  This is useful information, since yarn thickness is not generally a piece of information that museums report (many don't even report gauge and my figures are based in large part on estimating from reported measurements and photos).  It would be interesting to compare this to information on yarn size in contemporary woven textiles - but that will have to be someone else's project.