Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Center pull balls

I love center pull balls. One of my favorite knitting yarns comes in skeins, so I bought a jumbo cake winder. I love it for knitting yarn, right down to lace weight.

However, last year I was thinking about thinner yarn, and a very experienced textile person said," Try winding it into CPB."  Wrong!! Very fine yarn does not like center pull balls. Wind fine yarn on cones, bobbins, prins, or Styrofoam balls.

I had some luck winding blocked worsted warp singles into center pull balls.

However, unblocked woolen singles are another story.  Trying to store unblocked woolen singles in center pull balls is a path to heartbreak.  Wind woolen singles on cones, bobbins, reels, as hanks, or on prins.

 Anything but center pull cakes.


The truth of the matter is that a spinner producing hand spun warp to go on a sectional beam needs more bobbins.  I do not care how many bobbins you have, you are going to need more.

ETA

I started making bobbin blanks, and then I though about historic spinning and weaving sites.  Did I see bobbins?  No!  Why not??!!

What does one see?

Pirns!!

What is a prin? A recyclable cone core? A cone core that fits in a shuttle?

It takes me 1/6 the time to make a pirn as to make a bobbin.  The pirn will not hold as much as a bobbin of the same size, but there is not THAT much difference.

The logical thing is to spin weft, and wind it off onto the pirn that goes into the shuttle. When I spin warp, I wind off onto a pirn used as a cone core.  Will it work?

The clever readers are already saying, "That fool, pirns supply no drag for plying! And, any yarn that slips off the end can produce a tangle more heart wrenching than watching a shed full of bobbins go up in flames."

Yes, and yes.

There are many good reasons to wash and block yarn right after spinning.  Perhaps there is no alternative.  It maybe that I must wash and block the yarn immediately after spinning.

Those center pull cakes are a mess.

Oh, and by the way, the AVL pirns for their  flyshuttles just hold one of AA' s # 1 bobbin's full of yarn.  What a coincidence!  No, they are both traditional sized.  Spinners have been spinning for weavers for a long time.


4 comments:

Gough Whitlam said...

Your balls bring all the knitters to the yard.

Aaron said...

Yes, but mostly they stand behind the out-field fence, and watch.

And, I might have rather different notions of what a knitter should do with their balls.

Some people like to play hard-ball, some people like to play soft-ball, and some people like cheat when they play "soft-ball".

Susan Stewart said...

Centre pull balls for fine yarns are a way to madness... The only way to use a ball winder and fine active yarns is to wind them onto a core placed onto the winder (good old toilet paper tunbe can be used for storage, as it stops thecentre or the ballgoing snarly but it isn't very good for plying off as it doesn't wind smoothly)

Aaron said...

I like center pull balls and cakes for knitting. Wound on a tube, they are cones, or something, but not "center pull". TP tubes do not fit on my jumbo cake winder.

After a couple of years of spinning for knitting, I need a new paradigm for the ideal yarn package.

It is a good time to go back to first principles and re-think everything,