Scoggers (click on the pictures above for larger pictures)

Documentation submitted for Guild of St. Severus apprentice level paneling at Birka 2007

Scoggers created 8/06 

Scoggers are arm warmers and/or sleeve protectors that were knit as early as the mid 1500’s in England. A scogger was found on the Mary Rose, a ship that sank in 1545. 

My process: 

I spun the red wool roving to approximate the yarn used to create the extant scoggers. 

First I knit up a test square (swatch) to determine how many stitches per inch and with what needles to use to have a nice looking fabric.  Due to the fact that the scoggers were made for warmth a slightly dense fabric was called for.  I determined that size 2 needles worked best with the yarn that I spun.  

I next took three measurements.  

1. Around my arm just below my elbow to determine how many stitches to cast on.
2. Around my wrist to determine how many stitches I should have at the end of the scogger.
3. The length of my forearm from 1 to 2 from above. 

I multiplied the number of rows per inch from the swatch by the result of step 3 which gave me the number of rows that would be needed to complete the scogger.  Then I divided my result from step 2 from the result from step 1 which gave me the number of stitches that I needed to decrease. I took that result, divided it by three because I would decrease three stitches on a decrease round then divided that result by my total number of rows which told me how many rows to knit before a decrease row.

 The following picture shows how the cast on stitches were divided on three needles.

I alternated knitting one row with purling one row to approximate the beginning and end of the extant scoggers.  By alternating a knit row and purl row this gives the beginning and end of the work a more stable edge that does not roll. 

The picture below shows the completed scoggers with a leftover skein of handspun yarn that the scoggers were knit from.