"That Stuff Is Nasty!"

See:  "Here Come the Judge!"  below.
These days I go back to the bins of stuff that I set aside for felting, but did not use, and I am spinning it, because it turns out that it can be easily spun into fine threads  --   if one knows what one is doing  --  and today, I know more than I knew then.  And, I have better tools.  On the other hand,  without DRS no amount of modern fiber preparation tricks will make spinning wool super fine easy.  DRS is differential rotation speed per Alden Amos's, Big Book of Handspinning.  If you want to spin wool  very fine, DRS makes it ever so much easier.

As I was first getting into spinning fine, I read Northernlace's book, and the section on fiber preparation made a strong impression on me. I put in the effort, and learned to properly prepare wool fiber.  If you are spinning high grist singles and not using DRS, then fiber preparation is critical. 

However, if you are spinning with DRS at grists above 5,000 ypp (11 m/gm), then most of the veggy matter will just drop out, and if you are spinning at grists higher than 20,000 ypp (45 meters/gram), then essentially all of the VM will drop out at the point of drafting.  With DRS, fiber prep is less critical. These days, when I have fiber with some residual VM in it, I simply spin it fine enough that the last of the VM drops out or I can flick it out with my thumb nail.  Spinning very fine is the fast and essay way to get rid of VM.

These days,  I worry less about the carding and combing.  When my finest singles were 5.600 ypp, I was sure that I needed finer combs and a drum carder with a finer cloth. I even bought flea combs and cotton cards.  Now, I know that my standard 5-pitch English combs will produce top that spins well at 45,000 ypp (90 m/gr).  The top from Peter Teal's preparation is better than is needed to spin worsted at the wool's spin count (e.g. 90 m/g for fine wools), just use a smaller diz. If you have DRS, you do not need to go all the way to Northernlace's procedures to produce perfect Shetland lace singles.  If you do the Peter Teal wool prep  thing, and you have DRS, then you can very quickly spin miles and miles of fine worsted singles (e.g., 30,000 ypp, 66 m/gm) very well suited to high ply sock yarns.  

Now, I know that my standard Clemes and Clemes drum carder will produce fiber that can be easily spun at any grist. 

Watch Henry Clemes make rolags, from his drum carders or blending boards and then you can use the same technique with chop sticks or DPN, and you will have rolags for perfect, super-fine woolen singles.  (26 tpi produces a very soft, lofty woolen yarn from Rambouillet or similar.) 

I drum card Rambouillet (or similar) into rather thin batts, and diz off through a diz with an 1/8" hole to make roving that spins into semi-worsted at 45,000 ypp or  90 m/g.  Still at 26 tpi, this is a much firmer yarn than the woolen. 

Or, the batts from the drum carder can be loaded into standard English 5-pitch combs, combed, and dized off through the same 1/8" diz, to make top that can be spun full worsted at 26 tpi to make a strong, firm dense thread with 20 staples in the cross section and a grist of ~45,000 ypp (90 meters/gram).  Today, I use the same combs I bought from the Woolery years ago when I was first spinning worsted. 5 rows of tines on 10 mm centers is fine enough to comb fine wool so that it can be spun at its spin count (e.g., singles with 20 staples in the cross section).

Long ago, hand spinners were spinning at their wool's spin count. They did have DRS, but they did not have most of our other modern fiber preparation technologies.  DRS allowed them to produce fine, high-quality yarns, with a lower level of  fiber preparation technologies.

Northernlace works mostly with Shetland fleece, which is low lanolin and easy to prepare.  It is so low lanolin that some are tempted to just spin in the grease.  However, even tiny amounts of grease in a fleece will hold significant amounts of grit.  Grit makes uniform spinning impossible!!  Grit  reduces the durability of the yarn.  Fiber for spinning does need to be clean!  Not, "Almost Clean", but really clean.

And, I encourage folk to use Alden Amos' formula for spinning oil.  the only thing is that I find much of the imported olive oil is adulterated with soybean oil that gets sticky over time, so I use California olive oil.

The bottom line is that I take fleece that others would discard for various reasons and spin it fine, and produce a quality yarn.

Holin and I can spin the same grist and type of yarn,  then we can tie them together, pull on the ends and see whose single breaks!  All my warp yarn gets run through a tension box to make sure the yarn is competent.  It is better than having the yarn fail on the loom.  Having run 30 miles of warp through the tension box, I have confidence in my warp.  In making knitting yarns, every inch of  my  plies goes through a tension box and is tested for competence.   I have confidence in the competence of  all my yarn.  (Except the stuff that is spun with the intention of cutting it in to short little pieces to check its grist.)

Mostly this blog has been about trials and prototypes as I searched for a better way. It has been about learning things nobody wanted to teach.  Mostly, I did not post about the products resulting from proficiency in what I had learned.  Rather, I kept posting about the ongoing learning. Now,  you can see that I did actually develop some skill in the craft of spinning.  Look at the skills of who is talking.  Can they spin fine and fast, or do they make excuses for failing to develop the skills?  Musicians learn scales and learn notes that they do not need to preform every day.  Spinners should do the same.  Even if a spinner does not need to spin singles at 90 m/g every day, they should know how to do it.  Then, once you know how to do it, it is ridiculously easy. It is like riding a bicycle - it is not something you forget.  Ask Holin to sit in the light of day and show you how she spins 90 meter/gram singles.  Ask Holin if she has the basic skill of spinning wool at its spin count.

One final note on clean: First fleece that I scoured were Shetland and American Jacob.  These are low grease breeds, and I suggest using one of the modern high tech wool washes for them.  It is cost effective. However, as I have moved into finer, higher grease fleece, I have moved to scouring them with very cheap hand soap granules with borax.  I dissolve the soap in water.  I rinse/soak the fleece in several changes of cold water.  Then, I add a carefully add a measured amount of the soap/borax  solution depending on the grease in the wool, and SLOWLY heat to 135F.  I drain and rinse. A small amount of lanolin will be left in the fleece. Then, I use some  modern high tech wool wash.  It is better and safer than trying to get the wool really clean with just soap and heat as was done in the old days.

PS  At this point, "Holin" is a my name for all of the high status spinners that have been very rude to me, and have never apologized.  I know high status spinners that are among the politest and most diplomatic people in the world. I know high status spinners that have been rude to me and have expressed appropriate apologies. I know high status spinners that are never rude, but always tell the honest truth.  Holin is my name for the class of spinners that are rude, ignorant, and dishonest.

How Fast Can Someone Comb Wool?

These days, I comb Jacob at around a half a pound per hour. It is slower than Cotswold, but is similar to Shetland that many people comb these days.  Even a pound per hour is much slower than professional wool combers prior to 1850, but it is about as fast as I can go at this time. I could make myself bigger combs and work faster, but for the small amount of wool that I handle, it is not worth it.

My method is to start with clean oiled fleece, and give it a pass through the drum carder to make sure everything has been opened up and the oil distributed.

Then, I lash 3 or 4 ounces onto a large, single-pitch comb mounted on my combing bench, and use a 6” wide 2-pitch to comb off. Then, I mount the 2-pitch (with the wool on it) on the pad, and comb off onto a pair of 4” wide 5-pitch combs. Then, each 5-pitch gets combed off onto another 5-pitch, which, when full, is mounted on the comb pad, and combed onto another 5-pitch. Then, those combs are mounted on the comb pad, and their beards drawn off into short planks. If I work quickly, it only takes 6 or 7 minutes to get from carded fiber to 2 planks of an ounce (sometimes closer to 2 oz) each. (~3 hours hours to plank a sweater's worth of wool). The planks are arranged in a large bin.

When the bin is full, it is turned out on a table and the planks arranged for uniformity of fiber. The planks can be stored for a while

The planks get lashed onto 5-pitch combs, combed off, and then combed back (two complete transfers). This takes 3 or 4 minutes for between 1 and 2 oz. (22.5 oz /hr).

Then the beard is drafted off using a diz, and wound on the distaff. Total time to comb a sweater's worth, right on the close order of 6 hours. 

However, I suggest that the final combed and drafted fiber be used within a couple of weeks. That is, every few days, I take a few planks out of their bin, and final comb/draft them into slivers for the next few days of spinning.

For long wool, I skip the carding. The Romeny that I did last spring went faster, while the Rambouillet, Jacob and Shetland goes slower.

To achieve a reasonable rate, I had to make myself larger combs. On cold days, I warm the combs. I also use a spray bottle of water. See Peter Teal’s book for instructions. 

To get here, I had to time myself, and look for ways to speed up the process.

So, this lady said,"I've been wool combing for 5 years, I have five sets of combs, but I do not know if I have ever combed enough wool for a sweater."  My reply was, "If you have been wool combing for 5 years, then you should have combed about 5 tons of wool.  Me? I spent more than a hundred hours learning to card, and maybe 20 hours of making better tools and less than 20  hours of real wool combing.   I have big bins of wool to show for that effort.  In my book, just having combs in the closet does not count as time spent wool combing.  Nor, does having a spinning wheel sit in the living room count as spinning time.  

Sampling Cable plied yarn

This post is so important to me that I am going to Shout!


If you are spinning fine singles, it is worth doing a  series of exercises in plying/cabling.  If you have the singles on hand, it is easy to run up samples of  6, 8, 9, and 12-ply cabled yarns, and knit them into fabric to find the fabrics that you like.


I like my 2.38 mm needles.  These days, I make the yarns that I like to knit on that size needles. Knit on them, 6-ply cabled from 10,000 ypp singles makes a nice, skin-soft fabric.  It is warm, and elastic.  8-ply (1,200 ypp) makes a nice outer wear sweater. It is a thin yarn, it knits into a thin fabric - that is remarkably warm, and has wonderful drape.  This is not for sweaters that hang like bags.  It is for sweater designs that are worth all the work.


You are going to say, "Nothing is worth that much work to knit".  Look at your favorite knit wear (tee shirts, underwear, polo shirts, rugby shirts, and even sweat shirts), they are all knit from yarns with very fine plies.  If people wanted  fabrics from yarns with coarser plies, then  textile makers would use coarser yarns, (it would be much cheaper for them!) But no!, as a rule, for actually wearing, people like fabrics made from yarns with fine plies.  


I like quick and easy as much as the next fellow.  However, I find fine plies for the clothes I wear, worth the effort.


It is not very impressive, but here is  a photo of the first swatch that I did from 6-ply fingering Rambouillet (1,300 ypp):

 #1 needles on a swatch from hand spun 6-ply, 1,500 ypp yarn.

That bit of "nothing" was the confirmation of year's work. It was a proof of concept; fine plies work.  On the other hand it was the beginning of more work.  Fine plies ARE more work. Fine plies make good worsted worthwhile - that means I do enough worsted combing to get good (and fast) at the combing process.  However, the fabrics are wonderful.


When I started all this it took forever to comb a pound of wool.  However, I made some combs that help me  comb faster, and now, it takes me an hour to comb a pound of wool.  Anybody that cannot comb a pound of wool in an hour, is not trying.


I have said that it is not worth while for me to have fancy socks because I wear them out, and it is not worth while for me to have nice mittens because I lose them.  Well, it is worth while for me to have socks and mittens knit from yarns with fine plies because such fabrics are worth the extra effort.

Such fine ply yarns have become my standard yarn construction.  Here you see 2-ply Cotswold, Rambouillet, and Jacob waiting their turn to be cabled up into 6 and 8-ply knitting yarns. The needle is 2.38 mm.