Saturday, September 26, 2015

Here Come The Judge!

Here is how I think the judge interview would go:

Enter Judge
Judge sees yarn.

Judge:  What is the purpose of this yarn!
Aaron:  To test the new flyer whorl for  that #1 flier.
Judge: Why is it all in little 1 foot pieces?
Aaron; I had to cut it to count staples to check consistency of grist.
Judge:  What is the grist?
Aaron:  Just under 45,000 ypp.
Judge:   Ok, OK, pretty fine.  What fiber did use?
Aaron - Points to waste bin full of combing waste.
Judge - Pokes through bin:  This stuff is nasty, you could not possibly spun good yarn from this stuff!
Aaron: I was not spinning "good yarn",  I was spinning fine yarn that I intended to cut into little pieces to check the consistency of the grist.  Its destiny was always to be cut into little pieces.
Judge:  Just so! OK, it is the finest yarn I have ever seen.  We will take a clue from the Oscars and give you a special prize for finest "shorts".

2 comments:

Holin Kennen said...

You just proved my point, Aaron. You cheat. Heck, I can grab a drop spindle right now and spin up a yard or two of anything you like using perhaps only five fibers, or even three, then cut it up into little one foot sections, wrap it sloppily around a ruler, and call it 180,000 ypp (or more) because the grist of the tiny little one foot section would yield that much if I used a calculator to extrapolate the number of yards per pound based on that little one foot section. We call that lying.

In practice, those of us who actually do this for a living know that we have to spin entire SKEINS of yarn, not just little one foot or one yard bits. I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and had momentarily believed that your yarn samples were taken from an actual skein rather than just a "made for show," one foot sample. Clearly, I was wrong. You fooled me briefly, but you have now informed your readers of just the kind of snake oil salesman you are. Woe to those who believe otherwise.

Aaron said...

If you remember from the course on quality control and quality assurance, you take 3 hundred yards from the production line, then cut it in 30 random places, fray the ends and count the staples. That is what I did. It does not take long. Take an arm's length of yarn, clip it, check it with the linen tester, put the number in the spread sheet, and take another arm's length of yarn, clip and count. . . . . . When you are the end of the yarn the spread sheet has your average and standard deviation. The grist is calculated from the average number of staples in the cross section. The average of 30 data points is statistically significant. Do you remember that?

Since I did 40s, 60s and 80s and 26 tpi woolen, I spun and chopped up about 1,200 yards of yarn in validating the new flyer whorls. Hence I do not mind using crap fiber out of the waste bin. It is a good test, if I can get grist with combing waste, I can get it with top.

Please show an image 2 yards of of 40,000 ypp single spun from Romney on a drop spindle that you claim to be able to produce. Please clip and fray so we can see the number of staples in the single. It can be done on a supported spindle, but not on a drop spindle.

I do not spin "skeins". I spin hanks of 560 yards for all my singles. All plied yarns are in "hanks" of 500 yards (e.g., 560 yd less take-up by ply twist.) I know it is not correct for woolen, but is is what I do. It makes all the math easy. I have said this many times, so you must have just forgotten. Do you have Lyme Disease? Or, are you just getting old? Or, maybe you are just angry?




:)