Connecting the Dots

The Yorkshire textile industry went from local for local consumption to industrial scale for export in the period circa 1350 to 1370.  This is the period and region when and where the term "hank" (skein of 560 yards) came into English.  We can assume that the industrialization of the (wool sorting, combing, spinning, and weaving) industries included the count system.  The count system specified wool fineness in hanks per pound that could be spun from the wool by a competent spinner. The yarns from those wools were specified in hanks per pound.  With a common technical language the weavers, spinners, combers, wool sorters, wool growers, and all of the associated middle men and factors could specify needs, and products.  Thus, 16 count refers to a coarse wool, and 16s refers to a single spun so that a hank weighs one once.  Then, "20s" refers to singles spun to 20 hanks per pound.


Prior to 1350, it is hard to know what Yorkshire spinners were spinning.  However, by 1375, a lot of Yorkshire spinners were spinning worsted 16s,  20s, 40s, and etc.  These were standard yarns used by weavers to make cloth that was being produced by the ship load.  There were pack trains of such singles being carried across Yorkshire.  We know that some of these singles were dyed and plied, i.e., were not going to weavers.


The period of 1350 to 1375 is also the period during which the English navy was established, and had its first winter engagements with the (new) French navy.  It was also the beginning of British fishing in Icelandic waters. Thus, there was an increased demand for warmer clothing for sailors and fishermen.


The implication is that fine worsted singles were plied up to knitting yarns.  This makes sense.  In those days wool was valuable.  They wanted as much warmth as possible from the least weight of wool.  The way to do that is to work with yarns that have very fine plies.  If the sailor-boys were cold, it was easy to produce warmer garments by plying up thicker yarns from the fine plies that were being produced for the very large weaving industry, and then knitting the thicker yarns.


Hand spin worsted 16s (8,960 ypp) and ply them up into 3-ply (2,700 ypp), knit it on fine needles, and it will be warmer than modern mill spun sport weight (1,000 ypp) knit on # 4 needles.  Weird but true! The fabric knit from the modern mill spun will look thicker and warmer, but the eye is deceived. On the other hand, that hand spun, worsted spun, 3-ply is going to be very thin.  It will as thin as what we call "lace-weight".  My point is that those old hand spun Shetland shawls knit from "lace-weight" on "knitting pins" were warmer than a shawl that a modern knitter would knit from modern mill spun sport weight on the recommended needles. Modern mill spun gansey yarn (5-ply worsted sport weight) knit on #1 needles is warmer than hand spun 3-ply (worsted, 2,700 ypp).  The other side of this is that when I ply my hand spun worsted 20s up into a 16 wpi yarn, it is much denser, stronger, and warmer than any modern mill spun 16 wpi knitting yarn.  When that hand spun, fine ply, 16 wpi is knit on fine needles, it is much warmer than any modern mill spun knitting yarn knit on any needles.


Yes, the pre-mill-spun knit fabrics did tend to be made from thin yarns made from fine plies - because that was what worked.  If I need a warm sweater, I will spin fine singles and ply up to what ever yarn thickness I need, because a few extra hours of spinning will bring greater warmth and years of durability.  I can do this because  I can easily spin 16s. or 20s or even 24s.  So could the old spinners.  It is what they did, all day, day after day.


When mill spun made yarn cheap, we lost our professional hand spinners in the period of a generation. Yes, there were still hand spinners around the world, supplying family and local markets. However, hand spinning on a large scale was gone, and with it went a variety of skills and tools.


Some of these tools and skills are still known by a few, but are ignored by most hand spinners.  Consider differential rotation speed (DRS).  DRS is well documented in Amos's "Big Book of Handspinning", and yet DRS is ignored and even denied by a great many spinners.  Peter Teal was an engineer, who wrote an important book on Wool Combing and Worsted Spinning.  However, he never understood DRS.  Abby Franquemont wrote a well respected book on spinning, but judging from her posts on Ravelry, she does not understand DRS.


How do I know DRS works?  Because I use it to spin worsted  20s and 30s quickly and easily. Certainly, 20s,  30s and even 235s can be spun using a spindle or ST wheel or an Irish Tension/German Tension wheel, but not as quickly and easily.  The only tool that comes close to DRS is Great Wheel with a Miner's Head, and there quality problems tend to intrude at speed. The DD system with a precise DRS solution is likely to be 30% faster.  The other tool required for such spinning is a distaff. 

Fifth grade physics

Let us consider the world of Peter Teal - Hand Woolcombing and Spinning.  PT puts a lot of effort into combing, planking, and drawing off a uniform sliver of parallel wool fibers, then he put a lot more effort into drafting them "inch worm".  If he had just thought about his fifth grade physics, he would have realized that there is an easier way.  A way that was long utilized and memorialized in art.  It is the art of the distaff.

Wool is long, flexible fibers with little scales on them which tend to catch on other wool fibers.  If you have a short, neat sliver of  parallel fibers of wool, and pull fibers out of one end, then the scales on those fibers will catch other fibers, and pull the other fibers out of parallel, and into "disarray".  With the fibers at the drafting tip of the sliver in disarray, then the spinner must resort to inch worm drafting to pull them straight and parallel again.

The fifth grade physics approach is to avoid the disarray by anchoring the upstream end of the fibers by attaching the far end of the sliver to a distaff.  Then the entire sliver is under tension, and the tension holds all fibers straight and parallel.  Near the drafting triangle, the drafting hand maintains a taper from the main sliver to the drafting triangle so that the upper end of all of the draftable fibers are in contact with more fibers than the drafting end of those fibers.  Thus, there is more friction at the sliver end of those fibers and the process of drafting tends to hold those fibers straight and parallel.  The reason that the distaff was call "the rock" is because the spinner was always pulling against the distaff.

When the drafting process inherently aligns the fibers, then the drafting can be a continuous process.  As a continuous process, it can be very fast.  With a distaff, one can draft worsted style singles as fast or faster as long draw woolen spinning.  Further more, if all the fibers in the drafting triangle are aligned, then the spinner can allow twist to run up into the drafting triangle and still have worsted yarn.

I started spinning about 3 years ago.  Prior to that I was reading about spinning, and watching spinners.  I read the modern literature on hand spinning, and I go to spinning guild meetings and fiber shows.  And I spin.

Merino, spun "worsted" as 20s, and made up into 2-ply.  The grist of the above 2-ply yarn is ~5,000 ypp or just over 10 meters per gram. The yarn is very soft, very stretchy, and silky smooth.  It is not something Peter Teal could have spun because he did use a distaff.  With a distaff, it is easy.

I trashed the first few video clips I shot of this process because I was intending to spin 9,000 ypp and I was spinning 11,000 ypp and the camera could not pick up the fine thread.  Over the last few weeks, I have had to relearn how to spin thicker singles, i.e., the 5,600 ypp and 9,000 that were the base of all my yarns.  Now, I am redesigning my yarns because with finer plies, I can make nicer yarns, and finer is nicer.  It is softer, smoother, stronger, and more durable.  Nicer!

Here is the setup (with the new distaff.)  I am putting a lot of time in on distaff design, not because it is hard, but because distaffs are so important.

And here is the spinning.  As you can see, the single is worsted and the process is long draw.  The pinch from my left hand (on camera) prevents twist from running into the draft triangle which goes off to the right of the frame.

Double Flier Spinning Wheels

The Han Chinese  (2,000 years ago) had treadle powered, double spindle spinning wheels so that a cotton spinner could spin with both hands.  In 1598, the British Parliament passed a law requiring spinning schools to teach their students how to spin with both hands and to have double flier spinning wheels so the students could practice the art.  It was one way to spin faster in a world without spinning mills.


Now, I have one!  Well, I do,  if a pile of  worm eaten oak counts?

She is broke, and has had major repairs at least twice in her life - done at a level of craftsmanship that is much lower than the original wheel.  The poor quality of the rather extensive repair distracts from the fact that the wheel was originally rather fine. At one time, she did a good bit of spinning because both of the flier/bobbin assemblies are worn, and the axle of the replaced bobbin is very worn.

The wheel diameter is ~15".  Wheel to bobbin ratio is ~ 1:10.  DRS is ~ 1.2, however, in the original bobbin, the whorl is very deep and narrow, so that actual DRS would depend on the width of the cord.  The drive wheel has two grooves, and the flier/bobbin assemblies were offset, so that each could have their own DD drive band and each flier/bobbin assembly has its own tension adjustment screw.  The hecks were set only 1/8th inch apart.  The bobbins are captive in the fliers, and the orifices are ~3/16th inch.

ETA 10/28 (not captive, just lots and lots of gunk in the way.)
ETA 10/30 Made in Germany circa 1900.

Handspun 10-ply Aran yarn

It can be done.

10-ply,. 700 yards per pound. 16 wpi.    That right!

If you take the singles that were hand spun worsted for weaving at 16 hanks per pound from Shetland wool, and ply them up as 5 X 2-ply you get a yarn that the same thickness as the Yorkshire gansey yarn, but is 30% denser and thus much warmer.  The first small skein is being blocked now,

and will go to the Guild meeting  for show and tell.

I figure ~100 hours to spin the yarn for a Aran fisherman's sweater and a 100 hours to knit.  A wife could do an Aran in 3 months just working on it 2 or 3 hours per day.  It would be much much warmer than a gansey made of Yorkshire 5-ply @ 1000 ypp ( 50 hours to spin and  80 hours to knit) .  Well worth the extra effort if your man is fishing the North Sea.

The little square wooden thing is a "plying comb".  It helps to organize the singles and makes producing 5-ply yarn much easier, and the yarn more consistent.  I like historians - even long dead ones  : ).  They tell me about the the tools I need to do the job right.

The first skein off  the wheel this morning was 5-ply @ 1,800 ypp.  Interesting, but not much practical value that I can see.

The process that I now like  is to spin 16 or 18 hank/ lb singles and make 2-ply.  (Come on, you spin for fun.  Spinning fine means more fun per pound.  And, it means fabrics that are lighter, more durable, and warmer.) The 2-ply is stronger more stable, and easier to handle. Then, 2 X 2-ply is light fingering, 3 X 2-ply is  sport and 4 X 2-ply is worsted weight.  Of these the 3X 2-ply is the winner for most knitting.   The more plies make it  more consistent, warmer, and more durable than the 2 or 3-ply worsted weight that is more common.  More plies allow the fabric to be softer and more flexible than the 5-ply of similar grist and twist.

Anything that can be done, can be done better

The spindle with removable whorl got shown to a Portuguese historian. She will be starting extensive travels in the near future. We played with the spindle for a while (we were at the LYS) and decided it (with a distaff) was as fast as any of the traveling wheels in the store. So, I gave it to her. I believe in giving nice gifts to the people that write history.  

Thus,   I needed a new spindle.  Mark II:

It is 15 grams lighter than the Mark I.

It did not work!  The weight or dynamics were wrong and it wobbled too much.  Put that puppy on a diet.

Thinned, with a deeper groove and a heavier nut, it works.  It wants a distaff.  And, it wants to spin much finer than I was trying to spin the blue Romney above.  Details matter.

The Sum of All

It is possible to hand spin worsted yarn using a "long-draw" technique.  ( Not what you have been told before, now is it? )

It requires special tools.  One must have a DD wheel with the appropriate differential rotation speed (DRS) and bobbin core size to insert the correct twist and to take-up at the correct rate.  It requires well combed top on a well designed distaff.

It only works at fairly high grist (9,000 ypp and up depending on fiber), and it only works for spinning at a brisk pace.

The process involves the drafting hand teasing fiber out of the sliver attached to the distaff.  The fibers are kept under some tension as they stream into the drafting hand where they are spread to form the base of the drafting triangle. The tip of the drafting triagle is a narrow ribbon of fibers feeding between the forefinger and thumb of the pinching hand. The drafting hand and pinching hand are moved together and apart for precise control of the grist,  The pinching hand keeps enough pressure on the tip of the drafting triangle to keep the twist from traveling up into the drafting triangle, but not so much pressure as to stop the continuous stream of fibers through the "pinch".  The thumb and forefinger of the pinching hand move back and forth to facilitate movement of the fibers through the pinch.

With lower grist singles, it is not possible to stop the twist from moving up into the drafting zone. Without a distaff, it is not possible to get the fibers aligned as they enter the drafting zone.

I had though the technique possible shortly after I started working with controlled DRS systems, however, I had not been able to make it work.  The addition of a distaff was required to actually make the concept work.

The process is very fast.

Pictures and details to come.

Spindles and spindle whorls

A while back, I thought about spindles.  I went around and played with a bunch of  them.  I went into the shop and made a few.  My conclusion was that they were toys. I concluded that modern spindle designs were not really tools for serious worsted thread production. 

I was missing two technologies that are essential to the system.  One is the distaff.  The other is a removable whorl.  We find whorls made of fired clay, metal and stone around the world, and we tend to assume that that entire spindle was lost, all at once, and then the wooden shaft rotted away, leaving the whorl for us to find.

However, looking at accounts of spinners in the Highlands, they put a whorl on the spindle, start spinning, and as the copp builds, they take the whorl off, put it in their pocket, and let the copp act as the whorl. This allows them to produce longer continuous threads.  This is a tool for serious worsted thread production.

And, it is easy to lose a whorl out of  their pocket.

I have come up with a spindle design that I like much better than any other that I have tried.

I start with a spindle shaft about 12 inches long.  It has a spiral groove for the thread (because hooks catch on everything and a half-hitch causes the thread to lose 40% of the thread's tensile strength.  If you design the spindle assuming the use of a half-hitch, then you reduce the length of the thread that can be spun on that spindle by 40%.)  The groove is made with a small knife and a rasp.

I go to the hardware store and I buy 2 threaded nuts, one big, and one small.  I thin the spindle down, leaving a bulge at the bottom.  The bulge is large enough that the threads of the large nut will catch on it and tapered enough that I can thread the small nut on it.  Threaded nuts for bolts are very cheap.  You can afford to buy a few  in the event that your "spindle whorl" falls out of your pocket.

I "screw" the large nut on the bottom of the spindle and start spinning. 

 As my copp grows, I take the heavy nut off and put the small nut on.

When the copp gets large enough to stabilize the spindle, I take the nut off and put it in my pocket where it can fall out.

The metal nuts have enough weight to spin well.  Their concentrated weight means that the spindle tends to spin fast - much faster than with modern disk-whorl designs.  So fast, that you can not draft fast enough to keep up with it -- unless you are spinning fairly fine and have a distaff to help you draft faster.  This is not a spindle for beginners.

Here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mp78jcvJizA) and here (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4lzA_aBHCI),  even after their copp has grown, the fixed whorl tends to slow the RPM of the spindle, limiting how fast they can spin, and the weight of the whorl limits how fine and long a thread they can spin. However,  it is not hard to find pictures of  Peruvian spinners using removable whorls and distaves.  See for example http://users.stlcc.edu/mfuller/SpindleWhorls.html

ETA:  Last night, Will Taylor told me that many South American spinners use machine nuts as spindle whorl weights.

ETA: The idea 

Distaff

 I did not learn to use a distaff when spinning wool. Then, I read a post in the blog, A stitch in time, and she pointed out that all the old pictures of spinners have distaves. So, I tried it. 

It works. OK, that is part of my Niddy poked into a hole in my Traddy, but it works!

For worsted spinning, it is like having 3 hands. The drafting hand can keep some tension between the distaff and the drafting zone to keep the fibers aligned. This is sort of like continuous pre-drafting. While a wrist distaff or wrapping the roving around the drafting arm can store fiber and help keep it orderly and out of the way, these methods do not aid in the drafting process like a real distaff.  A good distaff aids in the drafting process.  

Those old timers had a lot spinning to do, and a short time to do it.  They knew how to spin a high-quality thread as fast as possible.  They used a distaff

I swear that I have not seen modern spinners using real distaves, but then a few days ago I would have sworn it was not in the books either.  However, there it is, in the first paragraph of Chapter 7 in Amos.  He did not write “Use a distaff when spinning linen.”  No, he wrote, “Use a distaff.”

The problem that I had with the distaff was that my grist rose from my intended 9,000 ypp to 14,000 ypp. I have to retrain my drafting hand -- or change my yarn design. 

What works best? Actually a wooden yard stick stuck in my waist band worked fairly well, and is fairly typical of what we see  in Classic Greek art.  However, it is a bit awkward for sitting at a spinning wheel.  For a spinning wheel, Amos suggests a free standing distaff.  However, I like to spin in my window corner beside the breakfast table - not much floor space there.  Thus, my solution is a distaff attached to my wheel.

How good is it?  Well I am spending all day making a better one.  It is a technology with huge promise.

Russian Distaves

It is like knitting sheaths.  They made them because they work very well.

PS. It is not pretty but the Mark II distaff is very, very functional:

Spinning in Public

I like the idea, but I cannot do it.

When I spin in public, I slow down and my grist goes all over the place. At Lambtown, I spun for HOURS and produced a grand total of 350 yards of single, some of which was thin and some of which was fat, and all of which was poor quality. Intended grist for the day was ~9,000 ypp, actual average grist was less than 5,400.  OK, there was poor light where I was sitting and other factors, but a week later in a spinning group, with the same intended grist, my actual grist was less than 8,000 ypp.

My hat is off to the folks that can spin their intended grist in public.  I have given up trying to spin project quality singles in public.  In the future, I will take some of that Blue Romney that I have, and not worry about what I am actually spinning.

quick kniddy noddy

Not a love token 

but it works, it fits in the spinning bag,

and it was not much effort.

Note that the ends are different.  If I ever need to make another, I will know which shapes work better.

DRS, fineness, and vibration

Vibration in a DD system raises the effective DRS, making it more difficult to spin at the fineness expected from the calculated DRS.

Surprise!  If you want to spin fine, you need a smooth-running spinning wheel.

After a year of use, my Traddy had some wear, and hence more vibration.  And, I swear, I oiled it every 4 hours using good oil.  On the other hand, I ran it long and fast.  Nice thing about a Traddy is that new bearings are inexpensive.  A few new bearings and everything is back to fast and smooth.

Plying from a center-pull cake

With improvised cake holders, the singles twist.  Better is:

Lambtown

I will be at Lambtown in Dixon, Ca this year.  I will be helping around the Merdian Jacob booth.

I am in the wood shop this week, so the Traddy will be tricked out. The "F-word" may be heard as in, "That is f^&*hair!!"

DRS Revisited

I have been plying yarn for my Shetland gansey.  Some of the singles were spun last winter before I built the Hot Rod and some after. 


Running the singles through my fingers, I am impressed by the consistent fineness of the singles spun using the Ashford high speed whorl and bobbins with whorls that provide the proper DRS (differential rotation speed) for the grist of yarn being spun.  While the Hot Rod certainly allows me to spin faster, singles spun on it tend to drift in thickness.  For example, singles that I intend to be ~9,000 ypp end up with portions being closer to 7,000 ypp or 11,000 ypp.  I think this is because with the small whorls, a small change in anything changes the DRS.  While the standard Ashford high speed whorl is twice as large, so the same change in that system makes only half as much change in its DRS. 


Anyway, I am going to move toward larger whorls so that I have better control of my  DRS.  I have not decided if I am going to do that by putting an accelerator wheel on the Traddy or if I will buy a 30 inch wheel.  


Most of last week, I had the Ashford Lace Flier (ST) on the wheel.  First and foremost, I do not think that there is any question that a good bumpless driveband (per Amos) delivers more power than the Ashford Turbo driveband (clear stretchy plastic).  2)  Fluorocarbon leader material (fishing line) makes very good brake band material for spinning very fine yarns. 


As long as we are talking about spinning fine, see the Bothwell Spining results at http://www.bothwellspinin.com/spinin/files/LongestThreadResults_2011l.pdf   The winners are spinning singles up in the range of 100,000 ypp or 176 hanks/ lb. The winner, Jan Zandbelt, currently uses a Louet Julia, but in 2007, he used a Majacraft Suzie with 1 gram of brake tension and custom made ultra-light weight spinning bobbins.  Of course, that contradicts my thoughts about DD being better for spinning fine.  Or, does it?


I do not spin that fine.  I do not try to spin that fine.  I do not need singles finer than about 27,000 ypp.  I aim to spin my finest singles at ~90% of  their spinning count.  Thus, Polwarth has a spinning count of ~ 62, so I would aim to spin it at ~ 31,000 ypp.  Zandbelt spins it at 88,400 ypp.


Does that invalidate everything that I say?  I want yarns that knit up into fabrics that I like, and I want to produce those yarns with a minimum of effort. Zandbelt wants thin yarn for contests. He says that "Patience"  is important.  We have different goals.   


However, I am arrogant enough to think that if I wanted to spin Polwarth  into a yarn that was too fragile for any practical use, I could.   I would approach the problem by making up a DD spinning bobbin with a DRS of 1.01 and a bobbin core diameter of 0.625".  I think that for that low a DRS, I would use the regular Ashford DD flier whorl, which gives me a bobbin whorl diameter of 1.73". We are talking a bobbin speed of 1,200 RPM.  My bobbin has not gone that slow in ages.  It would take all weekend to spin 10 grams. "Patience" is right. 

The hot rod spinning wheel revisited

In May, I wrote about how I had upgraded my Ashford Traditional spinning wheel.
Since then I have spun a lot of singles in the 5,600 to 9,000 ypp range on it and I have some thoughts.

The DRS (differential rotation speed) between the flier and the bobbin controls the twist.  The accumulated twist changes as the diameter of the copp wound onto the  bobbin changes.  Thus, when I have accumulated a layer of yarn that is ~ 3/8"  thick on the bobbin, I wind off.  This is a pain in the neck.  I use my wood lathe as a bobbin winder to wind off the bobbin. (It is very fast, and is always handy there in the middle of the workshop.)   Without a good wind off approach (or using very long bobbins) using DRS to control twist is not practical.

There has been more wear on the bearings and axles than I expected.  I oil frequently, but I use a high belt tension, and there is a lot of wear. Thus, the machine is getting noisy.

Over the last few days, I swapped it back to standard Ashford double drive and spun a while.  Currently the Ashford Lace Flier is on the wheel. The Ashford Lace Flier is 30:1 ST, but compared to the 40:1 DD, the ST lace flier is much slower.   Spinning on the Ashford Lace Flier is a very pleasant pastime, but it is SLOW!    

With a larger drive wheel (30"), I could use a lower belt tension and with less noise and wear.  : )

Carding and Spinning Oil

I just posted that fleece needs to be clean before it can be processed.  That is true, it needs to be clean so that it drops all of the grit that was on it.

It also needs oil for carding and spinning.  I use olive oil at a rate of between 1% and 2% by weight. That is, if I have 4 ounces (112 gram) of clean wool to card/ spin, I add a couple of grams (~  less than 1/2teaspoon) of olive oil.

I have it in one of those oil misters that are sold in gourmet shops, and clean samples of wool going into the carder for the first time gets a squirt on each side. Everything goes through the carder several times.  Bats that feel dry either get carded together with bats that seem to have extra oil them, or dry bats get an extra squirt.

Big bins of wool get weighted amounts of oil, so that amount is more precise. Then they get mixed, sit in a warm place for a day, and get mixed again.  As the bats get blended the oil is evenly distributed through the wool.

"Vegetable oil" will oxidize, get sticky, and turn your fiber into a spinner's torment. Do not go there. Mineral oil is hard to clean off the yarn.  Either use the right oil, or do not oil.

Clean wool with a tiny amount of olive oil on it is the easy way to card, comb, and spin.

Spinning and knitting in the Grease

One of the great romantic fables of spinning and knitting is that fisherman's sweaters spun and knit in the "grease" are warmer and more weatherproof.

The best fisherman's sweaters were scoured, spun, and knit.  Many were also dyed, which provided several advantages, but for a good dye job, the wool had to be scoured.

Unscoured wool has a film of waxy material on it, that holds grit. The variable amounts of grit held in that waxy material makes consistent spinning difficult.  The grit on the fiber causes wear on the spinning equipment.  Inconsistent spinning, produces a variable yarn, which is impossible to knit into a consistently tight fabric. Clean wool is easier to card.  Grease wool is impossible to comb, and combing is a part of producing the worsted style yarns for high quality fisherman/seaman sweaters.   And, lets put it this way, "The scouring process kills lots of germs."  Besides, "Clean wool smells better when you do get rained on!"

Then, the grit trapped in the yarn as it is spun, is a constant source of wear, reducing the durability of the garment.  Grease wool/yarn/fabrics also attracts moths. Clean wool lasts longer.

Some low lanolin wools such as Shetland and Jacob, can be rinsed, and spun with success but the quality of the yarn, and hence the quality of the knitting is not as high as when clean wool is used. Some talk about spinning the long wools in the grease.  It is possible, but you still have the grit. While it is possible to spin beautiful yarns from grease wool, it is easier to spin better yarn from clean wool.  See Alden Amos Big Book of Hand spinning pg 44 - 45.  Judith MacKenzie  McCuin in the Intentional spinner ( pg 28) first says ". . . wool must be washed or scoured before it can be processed efficiently." Then, she waffles to talk about washing wool without removing its natural oils.  I do not waffle.  As long as that waxy layer is on the fibers, grit will stick to it, and will get trapped in the yarn as it is spun. Thus, if you leave the natural oils on the fibers, grit will be there to spoil your spinning.

Scoured wool can be "reoiled", to be weatherproof.  Jan at Frangipani recommends using a drop of baby oil in the rinse water. This is fast, inexpensive, and effective.  I put one drop of lavender oil into my bottles of baby oil for a little extra moth protection.  Dyed wool can be reoiled to be even more weatherproof.  Perhaps the best way to "oil" a sweater for serious outdoor wear is to fry bacon over a camp fire.  The combination of wood smoke and bacon fat does a very good job of oiling a sweater.

Wool can be scoured by letting it sit in cold water for a few days (fermented suint method), rinsing, and then treating with lye soap (followed by a careful rinse).   Or, the Romans cleaned their wool in aged urine (followed by a careful rinse!)   If you can get to a modern market, then modern soaps and detergents make cleaning wool easy.  (Umm, if you use Simple Green, make sure it is diluted and mixed before the wool goes in.)

The investment of time and effort in scouring wool pays off in faster and better spinning.

The first three rules of fast and easy spinning are:
Fiber preparation!
Fiber preparation!
Fiber preparation!

A day of fiber preparation can save 3 days of spinning (if you are spinning fine.)

If you can heat a cauldron of wool to over 120 F, you can skim the "wool fat" off to reoil the wool, after it is all knit. Then, it will smell all "sheepy" and everybody will think that you spun it in the grease, when in fact you spun it the easy way. (Or, you can just buy a little bit of "wool fat" from iriss http://www.iriss.co.uk/product.php?xProd=309&xSec=27.)

How it was done

I look at  old knitting sheaths, and I ask, why did they do it like that?

For example look at this photo of  various knitting sheaths (http://knittingsexandgod.blogspot.com/2010/01/more-on-spinning.html) and note that a number of the knitting sheaths on the right hand side were made of two pieces of wood.  One carved, the other one turned and inserted into the carved piece with tenon joint.

Certainly many of the older "love toke" knitting sheaths were carved from single piece of wood.  Many of my early sheaths were carved from a single piece of wood and I went to a lot of effort to turn the needle adapter.

However,  last week, my wife had a new red wood fence put around the back yard and the work men left me a lot of little pieces of red wood.  It is a nice light weight, attractive wood, that is very easy to work. So I made some knitting sheaths.

They are both designed to tuck into the elastic waist band of sweat pants or shorts. They work very well with 7.5 inch #1 DPN.  The soft wood is strong enough when the tenon joint is glued.  If you use a friction joint so that that needle adapters are interchangeable, then the softer wood tends to crack at the joint.

Mostly, I have been using 9" needles with spring action for sock knitting for the year or so,  but these little knitting sheaths do not provide enough resistance to support the spring action, so these little knitting sheaths need a different motion. That is OK, the motion is driven by the shoulder muscles, and there is still no stress on the hand. It is almost as fast as the spring action. Made from red wood, the knitting sheaths are light and handy, and the shorter needles are better for knitting bags and travel. I find it worth while to keep this technique in practice.

When you are making knitting sheaths, this is a concept that you may want to consider as the soft wood makes fabrication fast and easy, and they seem to last.  The needle adapter in the top photo was turned from a bit of ash limb that I had to prune off to make way for the fence.   Turning green wood, can be a very fast and easy process.

The bobbins that I make are not as robust as the plywood bobbins that I get from Ashford.  Mine show a disconcerting attraction to concrete floors. Thus, I have had  several opportunities to think about making bobbins. 

These are DD spinning bobbins, that provide a 40:1 ratio on my Ashford Traditional, with a DRS of ~1.01, and a core diameter of 0.625" they are optimized for spinning 16 hanks per pound. The singles on those bobbins is a Shetland - Jacob blend spun to ~9,000 ypp.

I have moved to making the cores and whorls from one piece of black walnut stock. As you can see, there have been trials along the way.

I make the end disks from cherry. And, I like bronze bearing insets better than the Ashford Delrin bearing insets.  The Delrin is far and away the better bearing material and they are lighter.  However, the Ashford bearing inserts have little spacing collars, and with my small core diameter and small whorls, I just do not have enough clearance for the spacing collars on the Delrin bearings.  

My current process for making a spinning bobbin is to bore a straight hole through the core blank.  I use the ends of that hole center the blank as I turn the core/whorl.  The bobbin core blank needs to be straight and smooth to fit the holes that will be bored in bobbin-end blanks.

I scribe a ~3" circle on some 3/4" cherry stock, drill a 1/16" hole through the center of the circle and cut the blank on the band saw.  I use a spur drive on the wood lathe to turn the blank round and part it into 2 pieces.  Each bobbin end piece goes into the lath chuck and I bore the center of the blank to fit the bobbin core blank.  I glue the bobbin ends on to the core.  I turn the final shape of the bobbin ends and the whorl on the wood lathe. The bronze bearings are held in place with a dab of  E 6000 industrial adhesive.

Re: anonymice

Scientists ask questions, and then seek the answers.  Time and budget are always a constraint.  One cannot ask all possible questions, and one cannot seek all possible answers.  Some questions require data that provides a high level confidence, while lower quality data is acceptable for other questions. Technology is even more focused.  Good technology must meet the criteria of: faster, better, & cheaper.

In 1999, I asked the question, "How did the fishermen on the banks stay warm"  The bulk of the answer is that they (or their knitter) used DPN and knitting sheaths to knit substantially weatherproof woolen fabrics.  These fabrics were used in single and multiple layers with woven wool and other woven fabrics.  However, the real magic was in hand knit fabrics with stitch patterns that increased the warmth of the fabric.  The question is as much technology as science.  I understood this by early 2007, see http://gansey.blogspot.com/2007/03/real-ganseys-are-real-warm.html  Work since then is just refining the technology,   as in:

An inexpensive, but very functional knitting sheath

 designed to be tucked into an elastic pant waist

And it is not like we are starting from scratch.  We have a lot of information about ships, climate, fishing, physiology, textile performance, textile industry economics and so forth.  It is more like we have a "blue print" of an industrial machine and the blue print has some holes in it.  We need to go back and reverse engineer the missing parts so everything works together.

I have documented that such fabrics are weatherproof (i.e., will support a pool of water on them for an extended period of time.)  I have worn these garments skiing, sailing, climbing, mountaineering, and working in freezing rain.  Such garments are exceptionally warm even when compared with the best from modern sporting goods companies such as Columbia, Patagonia, Marmot, and LL Bean.  If the skeptic does not believe, then the proper thing to do is say, " I want to test those garments."  Yes, we can make arrangements for that.  We can even set up a little workshop where we knit while sailing. (An advanced skill, as most people get sea sick.  A good part of the skill is to watch the horizon, rather than your knitting.)

I knit such fabrics with DPN and knitting sheaths.  There is no question that the process is technically and ergonomically feasible. This is well documented in the literature.  There is no need to post data on a topic that is well documented. (I had to get up an experience curve to understand the technology, and I collected data as I climbed that curve.  Having data does not make that data new or useful.)

The process is slower than knitting looser fabrics, and thus the fabrics are more expensive.  However, even today, warmer garments tend to be more expensive, and thus tight knitting economically feasible.

I have documented on this blog, fabrics can be easily produced with a knitting sheath and DPN. For example I knit a good gansey in 10 days, and I am a fat old man with palsy.  If the skeptic does not believe that I knit that fast, then we can arrange to sit down together for a knitting session.  The skeptic can touch and feel the produced fabric at the same time.  I will even let the skeptic stare at a pool of water sitting on a swatch of fabric.   The skeptic can put on a gansey, lie on the floor, and I will pour water on the gansey, and she can note that she stays dry.  We can do the knitting workshop in a campground near some very cold river and the skeptic can spend the day in the cold river while wearing the gansey (15 minutes with gansey on/ 15 minutes with gansey off).  (If we pick a good cold river or a bathtub full of ice cubes, that activity will last about 17 minutes.)

Such weatherproof fabrics are difficult to produce in large quantity with SPN or circular needles because these do not provide the required leverage for packing the yarns together. Certainly a gansey or two can be done on circs, but if you have 8 brothers and need to produce 9 ganseys (dad) per year, your wrists will get sore. Again the ergonomics were established in the 1930s, so there is really no need for me to dwell on that.

What is left is technical issues of what kind of needles are best and what shapes of knitting sheaths work for different kinds of knitting. There is less of this in the literature. I mean, we have lots of shapes of knitting sheaths, but we do not know if they were different shapes with the same use or different shapes with different uses.   The truth is different shapes for different uses.   There were at least 11 different knitting techniques that used a knitting sheath.  This is a part of what I talk about in class, and if you want to know more - take the class. I have shared photographs of the knitting sheaths and needles that worked, and have written of ones that did not work.  I have provided enough data that anybody with even a passing interest can try the process without a large investment in time or effort.  Anybody with any interest can knit their own swatches and in 4 hours, be pouring water on their own swatches and timing how long it takes for the water to drain through.  The way to test another knitting technique is to try it!  You do not go looking for peer review articles on Russian Knitting, you sit down and try it, to see if it works for you!

I certainly have notebooks of data that I have not shared.  Every good researcher does. (The only exception that I can think of in an EPA directed Human Health Risk Assessment.) However, I am not going to transcribe the data just because somebody wants to look at it.  If they have a specific question, they can ask the question.  If they just want to fish, I have given enough information that they can knit their own outfit(s) and go fish.  I have a great pile of Shetland to spin.

People come to me saying that they are a researcher, and thus that I should give them my data, but they are not bringing me any data. They are what Al Dring calls, "Sponges".  A researcher can find all of the above references.  If they do not have the library skills to find the references, then they are lying about being a researcher. On the other hand, there are many people out there with good information, and they share it.  I am so grateful to those people.  If the helpful people need help finding a particular source, I will help.

I am perfectly willing to answer honest questions.  However, I do not tolerate dishonest questions.  And, when someone asks a question, I am as likely to show them how to find the answer themselves, as I am to just tell them the answer.  

Venting again

The other thing that cannot be worked out from swatches is venting.

The very tightly knit fabrics produce a garment that is very warm.  If you knit a fabric that is suitable for 30F then as a snug sweater, then it will be too warm at 60F .  However, by providing some ease at the neck, shoulders, cuffs, and hem/welt, there will be a flow of air under the garment and out the neck.  When the body/skin is cooler, the flow is less and the skin warms.   When the skin is warmer, the flow increases  so that the wearer stays comfortable. When the ease is right, the flow of air under the garment is self-regulating, and the wearer stays comfortable over a range of temperatures.  Knit to fit.

We have heard layer, layer, layer for cold weather and have forgotten that there might be other ways of staying comfortable.  For example, layering does not really work in the upper rigging of a sail boat, because where do you stow the clothes you are putting on and taking off? Self -venting sweaters inform us as to how the sailors stayed comfortable without making extra trips down to the deck to change their layers of clothing.

Thus, one can have a ski sweater that is comfortable for skiing the steep chutes at the top of the mountain, and yet, it starts ventilating as one steps into the beer line while everyone else is still taking their layers off.

Likewise, it can be worn below decks, and there is no delay while looking for additional clothing when going on deck. (As in, "All hands on deck to shorten sail")

Looking at Knitting in the Old Way by Gibson-Roberst and Robson, this kind of venting works best with "Boat necklines" but also works with others, particularly including Button-neck closures.  (You will need a much tighter fabric than G-R & R contemplate.)  Turtle necks can actually be made vent by knitting the neck in a thinner yarn or on larger needles to produce a looser fabric that allows more air to pass through it.

With this extra ease, a jersey can be worn under these self venting sweaters.  This stops the venting. Such a layering requires exceptional cold to be comfortable. This combination can make shorts and bare feet comfortable even on rather cool days.   Other sailors stare at me, but what do I care?

The "anonymice" want to chew on the notebooks.

None of this was about science.  It was about technology.  This is the kind of technical development that most companies do, and which they keep private as trade secrets.  Go to your cell phone company, and ask to see the data on how they developed their last model.  Then, see what kind of a reception you get.  I am a nice guy. :  )

Just as the proof of the pudding is in the eating, the proof of the knitting is in the wearing. No pile of numbers can inform you as to just how warm a hand knit garment can be. The only thing that can give you the gut feeling of how warm a hand knit garment can be is to wear an ordinary knit garment in the rain until you are cold, (and I mean the kind of cold that hurts,) then while still in that cold rain, then put on a good tightly knit gansey. In a few minutes, you will understand just how warm hand knit wool can be. Numbers cannot tell you this. However, it is easy to make your own samples to touch and feel.

You can prove the effects with some cheapo metal #1 DPN and some tightly spun gansey yarn or MacAuslands. You whittle/drill a knitting sheath or stick - crude works - directions are in this blog. Total investment less than $10. Videos of the knitting process are in this blog.

Then, you knit some swatches. Do you like the firmer fabric? - that is all that counts.

Early swatches

I started by knitting tiny swatches, from 800 - 1,000 ypp yarns, very tightly on # 1 circs, and blowing air through them.  Yes, they blocked air flow and thus should be warm, but I did not see any practical way to knit such fabrics. Knitting them with circs was too hard on my wrists. The early data was crap because the fabrics were crap. It only told me that tighter was warmer, and that the relationship was not linear.  As I knit tighter and tighter, suddenly the fabric was much warmer.  The curve relating fabric density to warmth has a sharp bend in it.

 I spent months trying various combinations of long DPN to knit tighter fabrics, and mostly just poked holes in my wife's living room furniture. It was months before I figured out how to use a knitting sheath. Then, the fabrics were much better.

Second Generation Swatches

Blowing air through and pouring water on the Second Generation Swatches gave me the courage to knit some sweaters at those gauges and in those patterns.  The interesting thing to come out the second generation was that some stitch patterns were much warmer than other stitch patterns. This caused me to think incorrectly that the cable patterns were somehow connected with additional warmth.  This was clearly one point where I got things wrong.

I knit the first real gansey from the old Lion Brand Fisherman's Wool.  (The production of this yarn has been moved to China, and it is now very different!)  In those days it was 5 finely spun plies, loosely plied to together.  I knit the sweater on gansey needles with a knitting sheath in about 30 days while I was taking time off to rest my wrists from too much computer work.  This is the warmest garment that I have ever knit.  It is good for skiing on cold days and taking naps in the snow.  It was knit in white, worn and tested, then dyed blue to see if blue sweaters were warmer.  They are.  Note that this is an odd yarn.  You are not going to be able to replicate anything like this gansey because this kind of yarn is simply not available.  On the other hand, this is a very important data point for the hand spinner because it tells us that yarn structure is very important in the warmth of the fabric, and that yarn plies can rearrange themselves within the fabric structure to fill in gaps.  Such rearrangement is not possible with more tightly plied yarns.  Thus, there is more than one way to make a very warm fabric.

The second gansey was knit from MacAusland's three ply (Aran weight). It was knit on #3 steel DPN.  This I call my "gardening gansey" and has been worn until it is going thread bare and no longer has as much warmth as it had that first year.  Then it was worn while I pruned my mother's apple orchard in a week of freezing rain and wind.  The only other guys out that week we the power company's emergency linemen repairing the power lines that kept icing up and blowing down.  I still did not understand how special a tightly knit sweater could be.

One cold rainy day, I put a couple of ordinary fisherman's sweaters that we hand purchased in Canada and the two sweaters that I had knit tightly in my backpack and I went went for a long walk.  I would put on one of the commercial sweaters, and in 15 minutes, I was cold, wet, and freezing.  I would put one of my sweaters on, and in 15 minutes, I was warm, dry and comfortable.  This was an Epiphany! Numbers based on swatches did not hint at the warmth of the entire garment.  These inter-garment comparisons have been done over and over, as they are the only way to get a measure of the truth about how warm a particular garment construction is.

Moreover air flow through the fabric is a minor part of the effect.  The critical point is getting the fabric tight enough to block drops of liquid water.  Fabrics that block the movement of liquid water through the fabric are much warmer than fabrics that do not.  This is true even when it is not raining because the body produces a lot of water vapor that tends to condense on the outer surface of  clothing in cold weather.  Convention knit fabrics are so loose that these droplets tend to be redistributed back toward the skin with any motion of the fabric.  Then the droplets wet the skin or under garments (often linen or cotton, which wicks the water against the skin), the water absorbs its heat of vaporization from the skin (cooling the skin), and the water vapor moves outward through the fabric, condenses on the outer surface of the clothing, and is transported back to the skin again.  Thus, the liters of water released by the body each day can transport huge amounts of heat away from the skin because the water recirculates through the clothing system.

Laying a gansey on a table,  pouring a bottle of water on it, and having no water leak through to the table is more dramatic that any notebook full of numbers.  It says, this sweater is different from any sweater you have ever worn.  There are photographs in this blog of sweaters on the patio, with water on them.  Yes, those sweaters are different from anything that you know.  They are weatherproof.  However, seeing that a sweater is weatherproof  still does not convey how warm the garment is.  One problem is that we do not have words for the "warmth of garments" in common English, and most people do not have experience with the technical units (i.e., R value, suits).

It turns out to be very easy to knit stuff that is way too warm for ordinary use. The only people that need gear that warm are professionals - crab fishermen on the Bering Sea, electrical linemen working during an ice storm, guys installing tire chains, and so forth. Most recreational sailors, hikers, skiers, & bikers do not venture out in really bad weather.

This is hand knitting. A dab of hand lotion changes the tension and hence the warmth of the fabric. Different batches of yarn are blended from different kinds of wool and thus generate different insulation values. Nothing is standard. On the other hand the skill of the knitter allows the production of consistently warm objects.

The vagaries of hand knitting are not big deal if you just want to knit a fabric that is warm enough to keep a sailor warm. You simply test your own materials and knitting technique.  If you knit a garment that fits rather snugly, and you knit it tight enough that you can lay the swatch (or the garment) on the floor, pour a bottle of water on it, and 20 minutes later the floor is still dry, then that (swatch) garment is weatherproof and will keep a sailor warm. Another test is to hold a single layer of the fabric right in front of your eyes as you face a bright window. If you cannot see the outline of the window, then that garment is weatherproof and will keep a sailor warm. Two different tests and they both work.

Is undyed wooI warmer than dyed wool?

Short answer: Most of the time:  No.

On a cloudy day in Ireland, the difference is detectable, with dyed being warmer.  Here in California, the difference is huge. On a cloudy night, there is little difference. On a clear cold night, then white wool is warmer.

I put a lot of effort into looking at the research on the topic a couple of years ago, and I have written about it before e.g., http://gansey.blogspot.com/2008/07/knitting-warm-woolens.html

I knit hundreds of swatches and tested their thermal properties. I started by making a little blower and blowing air through the samples and measuring air flow. I tested the samples for radiation absorption, transmission, and emission. And, I tested for conduction. I made holders (bras) for the fabric samples and compared "skin feeling". I knit entire garments in natural yarn, measured their warmth, then dyed them and remeasured their warmth. I knit similar garments from dyed yarn and undyed yarn. Then, I went walking in the rain changing sweaters every 15 minutes. I went downhill skiing, and changed my sweater after every run.

My results were similar to those developed years earlier by the US 10th Army, US Army Cold Weather Research Lab (at Aberdeen Proving Ground,HTTP://www.army.mil/info/organization/apg/), Gerry Cunningham, and Holubar Mountain Sport.

The primary path of heat loss through fabric is heat advection via air flow and water vapor. Air molecules and water vapor molecules are tiny compared to the distance between wool fibers in an ordinary knit fabric. Thus, most of the air and water vapor molecules moving through the fabric do not directly interact with the wool fibers in any way. Small changes in the surface of the fiber as a result of dying *do not* affect heat advection through the fabric. Larger changes in surface texture as a result of "super-wash" treatments have a small effect (allow increased flow/ reduced warmth of the fabric).

Small changes in the surface of the fibers *do* affect the ability of  liquid water to move from the outside surface of the fabric to the inside surface of the fabric. This is because there are hydrophilic sites on the wool fibers, and many dyes bind to these hydrophilic sites, and then the dye molecule presents a hydrophobic tail to any liquid water that contacts it. The presence of these hydrophobic tails tends to prevent water from wetting the wool fibers. Then, the water under its own surface tension forms a droplet. Motion in the fabric then tends to push these droplets outward, where they are able to drop off the fabric. The practical effect is to make fabric more weatherproof and warmer.

Water vapor passing from the inside to the outside of the knit fabric tends to condense on the outer surface of the garment. A blue fabric will absorb more light energy, which slightly warms the surface of the fabric, thereby reducing condensation. At the latitude of Ireland on a cloudy day, the difference between a natural white wool sweater and a navy blue sweater amounts to 0.3 watt per meter^2 per hour. This does not sound like much but it is enough to keep the outer surface noticeably dryer and warmer. However, on a cold, clear night, the white sweater will emit less radiation, and its surface will be warmer and dryer. If worn under an oil skin, the oil skin controls radiation, and different colored sweaters have the same warmth.

If you can hold a sweater up to the light and see points of light through the sweater, then heat (IR radiation) from your body can travel through those same holes.

Conduction is mostly an issue in socks and the inside of mittens. Even tightly felted wool holds plenty of air to retard heat loss by conduction.

Bottom line: Sailor's "ganseys" were blue, because blue sweaters were a good bit warmer. Arans were not dyed because that was cheaper, and in the rainy areas where they fished, they wore an oil skin, therefore, the color of their sweater did not matter.

Shetlands and other primitives produced colored wools, that reduced the need for dying these wools. The fine fibers with a high scale count of these breeds allowed spinning yarns that trapped air. For example Shetland lace yarn was 3-ply at about the same grist as English 2-ply. Thus, even their lace yarns were warmer. In addition, the stranded knitting produced very warm fabrics.

It is worth noting that the fine wools are better at trapping air, but in modern useage the wool fibers are too far apart to be effective at trapping air. If you want to effectively trap air, the wool fibers should be about 40 microns apart. That is a much tighter fabric than anything modern knitters are accustomed to knitting. On the other hand, such a tightly knit fabric is too warm for modern heated environments.

I was Senior Scientist at the world's largest engineering firm. My physics and chemistry are excellent. I have served on ASTM technical committees developing standard testing procedures. I understand testing procedures.

How do I account for all of the anecdotes that undyed wool is warmer? Skin feel is a very tricky thing. It can be very accurate if one is doing many inter-comparisons over a short period of time (and logging them carefully). However, over periods of a few days, the quality of the comparisons falls off dramatically. And, it there is not diligent contemporaneous logging of results, then the memory is going top play tricks on the results. It would take an extraordinary body of work for me to disbelieve the physics and chemistry of the situation. It would take an extraordinary body of work for me to disbelieve the US Army on this topic. No, my work, the Army's research, Gerry Cunningham's work, and Mrs. Holubar's work all confirm the physics and chemistry of the situation.

I suggest that many samples of undyed wool contain traces of potassium salts of lanolin fatty acids that tend to bond with the hydrophilic sites on the wool fibers and which then present hydrophobic tails to liquid water. This would temporarily give these wools the same water transport properties as dyed wools.  However, lanolin is not a stable molecule.  It will oxidize, and the wool will lose this virtue. see for example http://journal.scconline.org/pdf/cc1966/cc017n03/p00157-p00169.pdf  

Moreover, it does not give them the same radiation absorption characteristics

Knitting sheath with clew

A very functional knitting sheath with a clew to hold the yarn.

The wide hook of the clew was made to hold the big center pull cakes of yarn from my jumbo winder. Clews to hold other shapes of yarn balls have other shapes.  Clews to hold yarn balls being unwound from the outside need swivels.   

The Spinning News

With my fixed DRS, I have to spin a little (couple hundred yards) and then wind off or my twist changes too much.  Thus, speed of winding off affects my rate of production.  I tend to wind off onto a storage bobbin set into my wood lathe. I use a little wooden jam chuck so the storage bobbin can be easily stopped, while the lathe continues to spin.  Yesterday, I seem to have had the bobbin set a bit tight and it grabbed 2 spinning bobbins off of the holding rack and smashed them to pieces (in different wind off operations).  This is why I do not buy $30 spinning bobbins. Until I turn new bobbins, I am stuck spinning frog hair, and I hope the frog hair is not strong enough to pull that last bobbin off of the wind off rack.  On the other hand, I did not expect the 9,000 ypp to be strong enough to pull a bobbin off the rack either.

Mostly I spin coarse long wool such as Cotswold, Romney, Jacob, and Shetland.  By modern hobby standards (NOT http://www.bothwellspinin.com/spinin/files/LongestThreadResults_2011l.pdf ) I spin fairly fine.  Recently, a LYS owner applied the correct reverse psychology to get me to buy a couple of bags of Cormo. That kind of changes the rules.  Makes me think about an ultra fine bobbin and spinning finer.

Last fall, I made some of Amos's drive band dressing.  It helped at lot. It gave me more speed and my DD drive band has spun at least 30,000 yards of singles and is still going strong.  Anyway, I gave the last of that batch of belt dressing away not too long ago.  Thus, I had to make some more.  I buy blocks of bees wax from bee keepers at the local farmer's market.  I buy the little pouches of powdered rosin that are sold in sporting goods stores for baseball players.  Then, I melt  2 oz of bees wax in a double boiler ( I use an old can  set in a skillet of simmering water.  Paste a 1/4 cup of the rosin with a tablespoon of turpentine, and mix into the melted wax.  I pour the mix into little plastic portion containers, and let cool.  It really works.  I had been spinning at ~2,200 rpm, and with fresh belt dressing, I was back over 3,000 rpm - with less noise and vibration.  And, it had only been a couple of weeks since I had put dressing on that drive belt.  With a cotton belt and no dressing, I am lucky to get up to 1500 rpm.  This is the process from Amos' Big Book of Hand spinning.  He has more detail and some extra cautions.  Basically, the process will make a mess.  Wax that gets above ~212F will start to degrade and become very flammable.  And, making drive band dressing is a good time to recycle (and discard) old cans.

Warmer Yarn

Last night I was in Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft store and a 100 gram skein of  Kashmira by Sensations jumped  in my basket.  Sensations is a house brand for Jo-Anns, so I was not too thrilled.  How could something like that appeal to a yarn snob like myself?

It is about gansey weight - 260 meters for 100 grams - nothing special there.

Is is 10-ply!, constructed as 5 x 2-ply.  Ya, it is special.

The fibers are about as fine as those in Frangipanni and Wingham's, but are longer.  Long fibers are good. The wool has some luster - that is good.

The density is high enough that it is a very warm yarn, but not so dense that the fabric is heavy.  This yarn produces the warmest fabric for its weight of any yarn that I have tested. On my #1 needles it produced about 7 spi, and that is how I would knit it.

If you want to knit a garment that is very light weight, but very warm, this is the yarn.  I do not know how fabrics from this yarn will stand up to life, but it is an amazing yarn.

______

Edited to add on 8/29/2011: I have not been observant.  I have been spending too much time spinning and not enough time shopping for yarn.  There are a number of (new??) highly structured yarns (lots of fine plies) that should fun to knit and provide outstanding fabrics.