Household Economy

I can spin 2,500 ypp woolen singles and make 2-ply sport weight yarn in 3 passes (each ply + plying) through the wheel, meaning that it takes me ~ 2 days to spin the yarn for a jumper. Or, I can spin 5,500 ypp worsted singles and make sport weight yarn in 6 passes through the wheel, so 5-ply worsted yarn for a jumper takes me about 4 days to spin.

Then, it takes me about 10 days to knit a good sport weight sweater (on US #1 needles.).

The 5-ply worsted is warmer, and much more durable, and if I am working with long wool, it has more luster.  On the other hand, by saving 2 days of spinning I get a softer sweater that is not as warm and not as durable.

The knitting wins. It is thriftier for me to spin better yarn and spend less time knitting.  This analysis makes spinning 5-ply worsted well worth the effort.  A similar analysis applies to hose and sock yarns, plied up from even finer singles.

 Or, it is better for me to buy the best available yarn and save the effort of knitting more frequently.

Of course, I could spin (or buy) worsted weight yarn and knit it on big (US 7) circular needles in couple of days. That would give me a decorative garment in only 4 days  that gives the appearance of warmth, but which is cool enough that it can be worn in a centrally heated environment - and if I need to go OUTSIDE, I can always put on my cold weather gear from Marmot, NorthFace, LL Bean, Patagonia, or Needless Markup.

I am not a snob.  The last time I was sailing on the Bay, I wore a sweater from LL Bean.  As backup, I had one of mine in my bag, but the LL Bean was enough for the day.  That works on sunny warm days, but when it is murky overhead,  and the wind begins to blow, I like hand knit. And, hand spun because that is how one gets the long wool that endures.

More twist and grist 2

So, I have this modified Ashford spinning wheel, and it has a fair amount of "play" in its various parts. There seems to be a relatively large amount of vibration in the drive train compared to the high end modern spinning wheels.  The naive observer would look at it and assume that no part of it was particularly precise.  On the other hand, it does insert twist very fast.  It is very much the fastest spinning wheel that I know about.

However, the #1 bobbin whorl is 50.0 mm in diameter, and the various flier whorls range from 51.5 mm to 50.6 mm in diameter.  That is a difference of just over a mm or just over 1/25" of an inch that will change the grist of the produced yarn from 5,600 ypp to 44,500 ypp.  It is not something the casual observer is going to see, and even if they do see it, they will presume that it is simply lack of precision on the part of whoever made the flier/bobbin assembly.

In particular, if the observer, is assuming that the wheel was made to run Scotch Tension or Irish Tension, the observer will will assume an error on the part of the maker.  Even a wheel maker accustomed to working with  double drive wheels designed to spin (soft) first run woolens (1,800 ypp) will assume that a 55 mm flyer whorl would be better.  And indeed, a 55 mm flyer whorl with a 50 mm bobbin whorl working on a effective bobbin circumference of 3 inches will produce a first run woolen yarn.     However, such yarns will rapidly fill the bobbin, changing the effective bobbin diameter, so the DRS system is not very useful with thick woolen yarns.

In short, DD works better with fine singles.  And it does work.  With all of its shaking, my Traddy will spin worsted 5,600 ypp singles about 3 or 4 times faster than any modern out of the box wheel.  And, when I do the measurements and math, it is also about 2.5 to 5 times faster than the best Canadian production wheel (depending on grist).  I simple do not know of anybody else that can sit down and spin worsted 5,600 ypp singles at a good honest hank per hour, all wound off and blocked.

Some might say those hanks are not real pretty, but they are not folks that can come close to spinning a hank per hour themselves.  They are not folks that weave with that grist of hand spun.  The do not produce or use such yarns and do not have a rational quality standard for such yarns.

Those who can, do.  Those who cannot, criticize.

A sweater from hand spun, 5-ply  sport weight for me, in process.  It was started on soft stainless steel needles with a knitting pouch, but I got tired of the slow progress, and switched to real steel knitting pins with a knitting sheath. Progress in the picture is ~45,000 stitches (About as many as in a finished  Elizabeth Zimmerman ski sweater.)  Most gansey knitters would complain that the yarn is over spun and underplied. However, sampling tells me that it yields a warm, durable fabric that I like for outdoor activities. I have spun gansey yarn that is just like mill spun gansey yarn, and this is not it. This is the right yarn to make the right fabric for this garment.

By the by, the knitting is a bit "Irish"; very functional, but no jealous gods are going to come after me. (I was knitting during a movie, and the movie turned out to be better than I thought it would be.)  The good thing about knitting in the dark is that you cannot see your mistakes.

A finished hank of such 5-ply is a good day's spinning.

More 5-ply

One of the things that Alden Amos and I disagree about is "5-ply".  He feels that 5-ply is overrated and 3-ply is adequate for all practical use.

I know by calculation that 5-ply requires about twice the twist and hence twice the spinning effort as 3-ply.  On the other hand, by test, I know that 5-ply is much more durable and much warmer than 3-ply. And, both spun to sport weight grist take the same amount of time to knit.

I started making 5-ply because it was traditional -- it was the right yarn for fisherman's sweaters, and I could not see a great benefit in the mill spun gansey yarn over other yarns.  My  first skeins and cakes of 5-ply were a significant effort and trial.  At that level of effort 5-ply was not really worth while, except as a test material.

However, now my wheel is optimized to spin 5,600 ypp worsted singles, and I am way up the experience curve.  I have 12 or 15 pounds (45 miles) of such singles in  the house right now, and that is after much knitting and playing on the loom.  They are what is fast and easy for me to spin.  I spin such singles at 8 to 10 yards per minute/ or just under 400 yards per hour allowing time to wind off, drink coffee, and piss.

I have worked out a Lazy Kate (http://gansey.blogspot.com/2014/04/more-plies.html , now with the dowels glued to a preferred configuration.) that is optimized to supply 5 parallel and evenly tensioned singles so I can ply 5-ply at about 1,000 yards per hour. (People who do not make such yarns tell me that my 5-ply is under plied, but I like it that way because it works without being steam blocked prior to knitting.)

Thus, over all, I can (hand) spin 5-ply as fast as Alden Amos (hand) spun 3-ply.   I have not asked him, but I think that if he could have 5-ply for same hours of labor that he put into 3-ply, then sometimes he would prefer the 5-ply, particularly for outer wear sweaters and sock yarns.

These days I spin 5-ply because it is convenient. I spin 10s  (10 hanks of 560 yards per pound) for the loom.  It is what my wheel is setup to spin.  I have bins of 10s around.  For knitting, 5-ply from 10s produces a nice, warm, durable, sport weight yarn.  With a good  Lazy Kate and a bin of 10s, 5-ply is the easy yarn to makeup for knitting on 2 mm needles.  And, 5-ply knit on 2 mm needles is much warmer than any 2-ply (or 3-ply) yarn knit on any needles.  If I need a cooler fabric, I knit it on larger needles to make a looser fabric, or I use a lace stitch. If I expected to be in really cold conditions, I would make a Lazy Kate for 8 (or 10 or 12) ply yarn,

If  I need hosiery yarn, I spin shirting warp (40s, 22,000 ypp) and make a ~3,500 ypp 5-ply.  This makes a fine, smooth,  durable yarn.  This gets swaved on finer needles. (Swaving is a knit fabric made by rotating curved needles held in special knitting sheaths.)  It allow the fast production of fine knit objects (gloves, socks), but does not work well on large objects. such as sweaters.

Making 10-ply Aran weight yarn is not that hard.  It tuns out to just be a matter of taking the singles spun for the loom, and making up a Lazy Kate that delivers 10 parallel and evenly tensioned singles and plying onto a large bobbin.  Designing such a  Lazy Kate is just a matter of under standing the concept of heck array. Last fall, I had such a  Lazy Kate for making 10-ply, but it got repurposed.  Now, I understand the design principles better, and it would take me 15 minutes to make another (better) Lazy Kate for 10-ply.

Now, if you are running Scotch Tension, you can not set up your wheel to produce a particular grist.  And, your wheel is not going to spin any faster than Alden's.  Differential Rotation Speed (DRS) is the fast path to high ply yarns.

I know that no matter how fast my spinning goes, spinning 3- 3,000 ypp singles is faster than spinning 5-5,600 ypp singles, but the extra spinning time is trivial compared to the extra durability and more importantly, the extra warmth of the 5-ply. I like a very warm sweater that is "magically" light weight.  Thus, I keep on spinning 5-ply.

I am sure the "rubberneckers" will laugh at much of the above, and by that, show themselves ignorant of the craft of spinning.

Under Spun ?

Naw!!

It is soft, fluffy, carded Rambouillet woolen spun at 5,600 ypp @ 12 tpi. It is soft and lofty.

The current batts were scoured with a potassium-lanolin soap, and have a particularly soft texture, but something of a sheepy smell.

It will be woven as weft, fulled, teased to a nap, and clipped to make nice wool flannel. (I hope!)  If it has more twist, it will not tease up properly.  It takes a while to work out just how all this is best done.

As a sport weight, the woolen spun 5-ply is is very knitable (after fulling), but that is a by-product, a diversion, and not the goal. In dry cold, it is perhaps the warmest, softest, most elastic yarn that I have ever produced.   And, it can be brushed to a soft nap.  In the rain, well! Weatherproofing a pile of swatches produced the discussions on baby oil.  In the beginning is Spinning.  

If you are interested in knitting such yarns, spin some up yourself. In the past, I have given the required details. It is easy. I even showed you the best lazy Kate for making 5-ply. Did you think I would cover the topic again?  No!  We did knitting!  We did plying. Why should I waste time putting such stuff in the Blog again and again?   I took 3 swings at lanolin because some are bigoted against baby oil.

Knitting, and even weaving are sideshows.  The base of great textiles is great spinning.  On the path to great spinning, details matter.  A small comparative advantage in spinning is better than a large comparative advantage in weaving, or even a huge comparative advantage in knitting.  With the TV off, production of 5,600 ypp woolen singles is something over 9 yards per minute.  With a better wind-off procedure, total production is over 500 yards per hour.

These days, knitting is something that goes on in the background. I do not expect to have anything interesting to say about it in the foreseeable future.

To a certain extent, spinning is very much like a video game.  Spinning finer, or spinning faster, or spinning more consistantly is just as addictive as seeking higher scores in a video game.

5-ply revisited

I came to spinning as a knitter seeking better "gansey" yarn.  Everyone said that gansey yarn was worsted spun, so I spun worsted.  I liked the yarn better than mill spun. Thus, I started spinning 5-ply worsted.

I spun a lot of worsted 5-ply, then I started spinning worsted warp for spinning, and the 5-ply knitting yarn became a by-product of what I was spinning for the loom.

Then, I started spinning woolen weft of about the same grist.  There was a basket of it by the lazy kate.  Plying up a ball of woolen 5-ply was easier than going up stairs to get some worsted.  I liked the 5-ply woolen.

As I spin more woolen weft, it becomes a source for singles to be plied into knitting yarns.  After all, I have a big basket of weft singles sitting there, so when I want some knitting yarn, I just ply some up.

I like knitting yarns plied up from lace weight (6,000 ypp) woolen singles.  They are more elastic that any mill spun.  They are more elastic that any 2-ply.  They are more elastic than my 5-ply gansey yarns.  I like elastic knitting yarns.

They are durable.  More durable than any mill spun or any 2-ply.  They are almost as durable as my 5-ply gansey yarns.

They are warm.  Perhaps too warm for modern centrally heated environments.

The yarn is less splitty and more elastic than 5-ply worsted, so it knits faster. And, I tend to knit it on bigger needles than I use for worsted. I am still using blunt needles for all woolen knitting.

The yarn is much rounder than 2 or even 3-ply, so it shows stitch patterns almost as well as 5-ply worsted, Since the fiber is not combed, I can add something to give a halo and hide the stitch pattern.

Carding and fine spinning drops out the veggy matter. If one spins 1,800 ypp woolen singles, most of the VM stays in the single, thus, getting the VM out become a large effort in fiber prep.  Spinning fine, drops the VM. Dropping VM remains a worth while reason to spin fine.

Combing for worsted spinning rejects much fiber.  Spinning woolen conserves fiber.

Woolen is easy to spin from short fibers.  Some days I get tired of spinning Merino worsted.

It is soft.  I can spin it from fine wool and it is always skin soft.

Why did I not do this before?  I had the idea that the right way to make 5-ply was to spin worsted.  Nobody was making 5-ply/sport weight woolen yarns. I was a captive of the conventional wisdom.

Net time to spin 5-ply woolen yarn is about 100 yards/ hour for me. A sweater is ~2,000 yd, so it takes me about 20 hours to spin the yarn for a sweater.  Having DRS lets me afford better yarns.

the evolution of a yarn

I started spinning because I wanted better gansey yarn.  Worsted spun 5-ply sport weight was my very first goal and my first spinning project.  I cannot tell a lie, handspun gansey yarn is better than mill spun.

However, more recently I have been spinning woolen weft, so I have those singles around and -- they get plied up into various knitting yarns, including 5-ply.

The woolen spun 5-ply is softer, but not as smooth as the gansey yarn.  It is stronger and much more elastic than 2-ply (woolen or semi-worsted) sport weight.  The additional elasticity gives fabrics/objects a wonderful drape.

Is it worth the additional effort?  The objects are nicer.  Are we doing this for fast objects?  Or, for nicer objects? And, I have the singles around.  Lazy Kate is beside the wheel, and can make me a ball of  knitting yarn faster than I can bike into town and back.

(Perhaps this is just a reaction to doing 10-ply cable yarns.  They had virtues, but were less elastic, and took a lot of attention to knit to fit.)

Average Yarn

Mostly, I spin average yarn.

The knit fabrics that I like are warm, durable, and elastic. My path to such fabrics is mostly via hand spun yarns with 5 or 6 plies or strands.  Yarn grist runs from fingering weight to sport weight. I knit these yarns firm enough  that they drape rather than hang,   These days,  I am pretty much spinning the yarns that I wanted when I bought my wheel and started spinning. And, I am spinning them at what I consider a reasonable rate.

Worsted spun, sport weight,  5-ply requires in the neighborhood of 54 twists per inch of finished yarn (9 tpi in 5 singles + 9 ply tpi).  In contrast, woolen spun, worsted weight,  2-ply requires perhaps 15 or 20 tpi of finished yarn.  Thus, my average sweater weight yarn requires more than 3 times the twist of the average sweater weight yarn of many hand spinners.

To make such high twist yarns practical, I have to spin faster. On average, I can spin a hank of 5-ply gansey yarn in an easy day.  That is; on average, I can spin 5 hanks of 10s, and ply them into 500 yards of  knitting yarn in a day.  Anybody that can do two hanks of 5-ply in a day is a "terrible" spinner.

My process is to use the AA #1 flier with an accelerator to spin worsted singles.  I wind off onto plying bobbins about  every 100 yards /15 minutes.  If I am plying at 9 tpi, then I also use the #1 flier for plying and make small (1.5 oz) skeins of yarn. If  I using a lower ply twist, then I use the jumbo flyer so I can make knot free hanks of 500 yards.   Perhaps the nicest complement that I ever got was from a local spinning teacher. She saw the hand spun gansey yarn I was knitting, and said, "That looks just like the mill spun gansey yarn I get from England."  And, there can be nothing more average than mill spun.

(When making yarn from singles finer than 10s, I block the singles prior to plying.)

These days for gansey fabric, I am knitting these (5-ply) yarns on needles in the size range of  1.6 mm.  I find  the smaller needles less effort than using the 2.38 mm steel needles that I used in the past. Gauge runs only about 7 spi by 11 rpi.  This fabric is weatherproof.  Knit more gently on 2 or 2.25 mm needles, the fabric is softer and more elastic,.  However,  the stitch count per inch is similar.  The softer, more elastic fabric,  is not really weatherproof.   Spi does not tell everything about the density of the fabric,  Two fabrics can be made of the same yarn and have similar of stitches per inch , but on one fabric the stitches are tighter and flatter, while in the other fabric the stitches are looser and arrayed orthogonal to the surface of the fabric resulting in a thicker, but looser fabric. The 3-dimensional structure of knit fabric matters - a lot. These two fabrics will have very differing amounts of elasticity, warmth, and weatherproofness.

Again, those traditional knitters of old knew what they were doing when they knit 5-ply on fine pins.  

Hand spun is (or can be) more responsive to small variations in needle diameter, and thus in the context of hand-spun, the tiny differences in needle size in the old UK needle or old US steel needle or the even more intricate Chinese knitting needle sizing systems make sense .

Mill spun 5-ply allowed me to knit more elastic fabrics with better drape than I could knit from yarns with fewer plies. And, hand spun 5-ply allows me to knit more elastic fabrics with better drape than I could knit from any mill spun that I have tried - including some  mill spun 10-ply, 10-strand, and dozens of 6-strand cabled yarns.  The most elastic fabrics that I have knit have been from hand spun, worsted spun, 10-ply with a grist of 500 ypp.

The most available needle size gauges in this range are those by Lacis.  However, they do not provide discrimination for the Chinese needle sizes.  (And, you know how those Chinese DPN all look a like.  : )  Thus, when I am working with a Shetland knitting belt, I use an electronic size gauge made for wood shop use and sold by Harbor Freight for less than $10.  When using a knitting sheath, I use the needle adapters to indicate the size of the needle.