Best Spinners

See http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alfie-kohn/practice-doesnt-make-perfect_b_5621590.html?utm_hp_ref=science&ir=Science

It seems that some have natural talent and some do not.

___

By Alfie Kohn 

Perfect, It Turns Out, Is What Practice Doesn't Make

We've long been eager to believe that mastery of a skill is primarily the result of how much effort one has put in. Extensive practice "is probably the most reasonable explanation we have today not only for success in any line, but even for genius," said the ur-behaviorist John B. Watson almost a century ago.

In the 1990s K. Anders Ericsson and a colleague at Florida State University reported datathat seemed to confirm this view: What separates the expert from the amateur, a first-rate musician or chess player from a wannabe, isn't talent; it's thousands of hours of work. (Malcolm Gladwell, drawing from but misrepresenting Ericsson's research -- much to the latter's dismay -- announced the magic number was ten thousand hours.)

It's daunting to imagine putting in that kind of commitment, but we're comforted nonetheless by the idea that practice is the primary contributor to excellence. That's true, I think, for three reasons:

1. Common sense: It seems obvious that the more time you spend trying to get better at something, the more proficient you'll become. That's why so many educators continue to invoke the old phrase "time on task," which, in turn, drives demands for longer school days or years. Common sense, however, isn't always correct. Researchers have found that only when "achievement" is defined as rote recall do we discover a strong, linear relationship with time. When the focus is on depth of understanding and sophisticated problem solving,time on task doesn't predict outcome very well at all - either in reading or math.

2. Protestant work ethic: Many people simply don't like the idea that someone could succeed without having paid his or her dues -- or, conversely, that lots of deliberate practice might prove fruitless. Either of these possibilities threatens people's belief in what social psychologists call a "just world." This sensibility helps to explain why copious homework continues to be assigned despite dubious evidence that it provides any benefit (and zeroevidence that it's beneficial in elementary school): We just don't want those kids goofing off, darn it -- not in the evening and not even during the summer! Hence the recent enthusiasm for "grit," which is basically a repackaging of age-old exhortations to stick with whatever you've been told to do. (Indeed, Andersson collaborated with grit maven Angela Duckworth on a study of spelling bee champions.)

3. Nurture over nature: "Innate? Necessarily so!" is what we've heard for centuries. Given the tawdry history of biological reductionism, which usually manages to rationalize current arrangements of power as being due to the natural superiority of privileged groups, is it any wonder we remain leery of attributing success to inherited talent? It's more egalitarian to declare that geniuses are made, not born. Indeed, that skepticism is bolstered by evidence (from Carol Dweck and others) indicating that students are more likely to embrace learning if they believe their performance results from effort, something under their control, rather than from a fixed level of intelligence that they either possess or lack.

* For many of us, then, Andersson's conclusion has been deeply reassuring: Practice hard and you'll do well. But along comes a brand-new meta-analysis, a statistical summary of 157 separate comparisons in 88 recent studies, that finds practice actually doesn't play nearly as significant a role as we'd like to think. "The evidence is quite clear that some people do reach an elite level of performance without copious practice, while other people fail to do sodespite copious practice," wrote Brooke Macnamara, David Hambrick, and Frederick Oswald in Psychological Science. In fact, they calculated that, overall, the amount of deliberate practice in which someone engages explains only 12 percent of the variance in the quality of performance. Which means 88 percent is explained by other factors.

But what other factors? It's common to assume that if practice matters less than we thought, then inborn ability matters more -- as if there are only two contributors to excellence and they're reciprocally related. The New York Times headline for an article describing the new meta-analysis captured this assumption by reversing an old joke: "How Do You Get to Carnegie Hall? Talent."

That's not necessarily true, however. The question posed by Macnamara and her colleagues was appropriately open-ended: "We have empirical evidence that deliberate practice, while important, ...does not largely account for individual differences in performance. The question now is what else matters." And there are many possible answers. One is how early in life you were introduced to the activity -- which, as the researchers explain, appears to have effects that go beyond how many years of practice you booked. Others include how open you are to collaborating and learning from others, and how much you enjoy the activity.

That last one -- intrinsic motivation -- has a huge empirical base of support in workplaces, schools, and elsewhere. We've long known that the pleasure one takes from an activity is a powerful predictor of success. For example, one group of researchers tried to sort out the factors that helped third and fourth graders remember what they had been reading. They found that how interested the students were in the passage was thirty times more important than how "readable" the passage was.

All of these factors overlap and serve as catalysts for one another, which means that even if practice does predict success to some degree, that doesn't mean it caused the success. Maybe the right question to ask is: Why do some people decide to practice a lot in the first place? Could it be because their first efforts proved mostly successful? (That's a useful reminder to avoid romanticizing the benefits of failure.) Or, again, do they keep at it because they get a kick out of what they're doing? If that's true, then practice, at least to some extent, may be just a marker for motivation. Of course, natural ability probably plays a role in fostering both interest and success, and those two variables also affect each other.

But once we've introduced the possibility that interest plays an important role, we'd have to ask "Interest at what?" It doesn't make much sense to talk about the contribution of practice in the abstract. A lot depends on the task, among other things. Sure enough, Macnamara and her colleagues found, as is often the case with meta-analyses, that you can slice up the results by looking at an assortment of "moderator" variables -- factors that affect the strength of the correlation between this and that.

For starters, the importance of practice depends on how investigators arrived at their figures for how much time people spent on their activities. Practice seemed to matter more in studies where the estimates were self-reported, as in Ericsson's original research with musicians. By contrast, when the hours were logged, and the estimates presumably more reliable, the impact of practice was much diminished. How much? It accounted for a scant 5 percent of the variance in performance. The better the study, in other words, the less of a difference practice made.[1]

Mostly, though, it depends on the domain. Practice explained 26 percent of the variance in achievement for games, 21 percent in musical accomplishment, 18 percent in sports, 4 percent in college grades, and less than 1 percent in professional success. What's true of time on task, then, is true of practice -- which isn't surprising given how closely the two concepts are related. It depends on what you're doing. When the task is more complicated and open-ended, a lot of factors come into play that collectively swamp the effect of how much work you put in.

One last point. Even if Ericsson's conclusion, that expert-level performance can be explained primarily by thousands of hours of practice, had been supported rather than up-ended by this new review of research, it never had the relevance to education that some people have claimed. It never supported the value of giving students lots of practice problems. Why? First, because we can't simply assume that whatever promotes success in activities like music or chess also applies to, say, math or language arts.

Second, and more important, Ericsson was assessing the relative contribution of practice and talent. He didn't look at whether the teacher's goal was to reinforce an automatic response (borrow from the tens place, restate your conclusion in the last paragraph) as opposed to helping students make sense of ideas. In education -- as opposed to, say, chess -- everything depends on the kind of learning we want. Practice has much less of a role to play in promoting deep understanding than it does in expediting the memorization of algorithms or the reinforcement of behaviors. The Andersson finding never really proved relevant to more meaningful learning, then -- even back when that finding appeared to be true.

We may have to face the fact that our common-sense beliefs about excellence, or what we think ought to be the case about the importance of hard work, aren't necessarily true. But we can take comfort from knowing that less of a role for practice doesn't just mean that our destinies are fixed at birth.

NOTE:

1. Something similar has been found with respect to claims about grade inflation, which usually turn out to be based on students' reports of their own grades. When we look at actual transcripts, it becomes much harder to defend the assertion that grades are higher now than they used to be, as Clifford Adelman discovered in extensive research he conducted for the U.S. Department of Education.

Follow Alfie Kohn on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@alfiekohn

The yarn is nothing

I have said that, "yarn is important".   I was wrong.  The fabric is everything.

Wool shirting is wonderful stuff.  The yarn for shirting is delicate, difficult to handle, fragile, tends to tangle, and is a pain to spin. As spinners, we put up with all that because wool shirting is wonderful stuff.

Likewise, knitting can transform a yarn, particularly when the knitting is done on fine needles.

Spinning a yarn, and not letting it reach fulfillment as a fabric is like a chef preparing his vegetables, cooking them carefully, then letting them sit till they rot without ever serving them to the hungry.  

Just as vegetables deserve to be served and eaten, yarns deserve to be made into fabric and worn.

Not Mill Spun

Members of the spinning police are here, telling me what I am doing wrong.

I have spun pounds of 5-ply gansey yarn that looked just like the mill spun.

If I want to spin something that looks like mill spun, I do.  If I want to spin something different, that solves a problem, I do.  Mill spun 5-ply has its virtues-- and it's vices.  Sometimes I want something better, and I am not afraid to break every rule in the book to make something better!  Or, Cheaper!  Or Faster!

  

Competition Spinning

If one wants to spin very fast,  one needs fiber that has been oiled, combed, and drawn through a very fine diz.  You are not going to get that in a spinning competition because competitions are organized for woolen spinners. As such the fiber will be roving or batts.

Yes, DRS will allow one to spin as fast as is possible with supplied fiber, but one is not able to take full advantage of the DRS technology without the appropriately prepared fiber.  Contrary to popular belief, spinning worsted with DRS is the fastest spinning possible.

DRS

Sometimes I speak of DRS as a device on the spinning wheel, but it is much more that that.  It is also a way of thinking.

It is clear from reader's comments that they are not very good with numbers for grist and twist.  They do not understand how fast their wheels insert twist (even with super fast whorls), compared to how fast my wheel goes.

Consider the 2009 spin contest at SOAR. I look at the results, and automatically do grist and twist  calculations.  Spinners with wheels tended to spin woolen, at grists on the order of 1,600 ypp.  And they spun just under 100 yards in 15 minutes for an average bobbin speed of just under 800 rpm.  The spindle spinners tended to spin woolen at a grist of 3,600 ypp and spun just under 50 yards in 15 minutes for an average spindle speed of just  under 1,200 rpm.  In comparison, I tend to spin much finer.  My finer yarns require more twist and I run my wheel at over 3,000 rpm, and on very good days, over 3,500 rpm.  That is four times as fast as the competitive wheels at SOAR, and  three times as fast as the competition spindles.

And at those speeds, it can be used to help maintain consistency.

A well known, "intuitive spinner" used a flyer, about the same size as my AA#0 flyer to spin 58 count carded wool at 19,000 ypp. This was reported as a good use of a single drive, bobbin lead wheel.  And,  it is.  That is about as fine as I can easily spin a 60 count wool on that flyer running it single drive, bobbin lead.  With care, I can spin, 34,000 ypp using that flyer in ST mode.  However, when I switch to DRS, I can spin 34,000 ypp on that flyer very easily, and more than twice as fast.

Thus, DRS is for spinning finer and faster.   Not by a little bit, but by a huge amount.  It gives me the extra twist to spin much finer.

To want such a device, or to make such a device, or to understand such a device, one must have a quantitative, mathematical model of  yarn. Such a model allows accurate prediction of yarn properties. Only with an ability to predict a particular yarn's properties can one plan and construct the right yarn for the job.

I came to DRS purely on a quest for speed.  I stay because it produces better yarn, and more importantly, it produces more predictable yarn. I spin because I want better fabrics.  To get those fabrics, I need better, and more predictable yarn.

DRS makes me pay for the speed and predictability by forcing me to have a suite of skills. It is suite of skills not taught in modern classes on spinning. DRS tools are not sold by modern spinning wheel manufacturers.  Today, DRS is not easy.  However, DRS provides productivity and predictability not available to the "intuitive" spinner.

Commerical Rates

The theme of the last year has been, "How fast could a professional spinner in the 17th century spin?"

My answer at this time is about 30 hanks (of 560 yd) per week of 10s (5,600 ypp), or 10 hanks per week of fines (finer than 30,000 ypp).  This assumes steel against bronze or steel against wood bearings (either with lard oil) .  And, it assumes small flyer/bobbin assemblies with accelerators.

Here are my tools for spinning good yarn at a commercial rate under the apricot tree.

And, a closeup of the ~2 pounds of  sport weight 5-ply produced in ~4 days of spinning:

Note that I use an arm chair for spinning. With DRS, I do not have to wave my arms around.  And, if you are waving your arms around, you cannot spin fines.   I know that Northern Lace does sometimes spin 30,000 ypp singles using long draw, but it is done as a tour de force rather than as a routine.

The new 50 mm whorl for 17 to 20 tpi has been dialed in, and it allows me to spin 5 or 6 yards per minute   of yarns in the range 22,000 to 33,000 ypp.  It is a "kick"!  A hank of  40s only weighs ~10 grams, so I can put the whole hank on a small spinning bobbin.  This saves 10 minutes per hank.  In theory, it will allow more than 2 hanks of 60s per day, but I have not achieved that.

 It is something I was told could not be done.  My practical speed is much greater than the theoretical speed of mass produced lace kits, and I never even come close to the theoretical speed of the Ashford lace kit.  DRS provides productivity that is simply not possible with a single driveband, or double driveband with slippage.

I have been told that I spin thick and thin. Of course, when I am spinning 30,000 ypp and it does not drift apart or break off, the difference in between the thick and thin sections is not very great. I challange my critics to spin 560 yards of worsted single that only weighs 7.5 grams.  When they can do that, then they can talk about my thick and thin.  It is not a big deal, at a relaxed pace, it is less than 3 hours of spinning.
  

The competition flier with the accelerator

The #0 flier that Alden made for me is back on-line with 50 mm whorls and the accelerator.

Reasonable bobbin speed is 3,800 rpm.  This allows easily spinning  spinning  560 yards of worsted 11,200 ypp single in an hour. The test was done with 60 count fiber, but I would bet that I can also do it with 30  count Cotswold.

To get these speeds, I have to control whorl diameters to about1/32".  That is ok, wood turners have been working to that kind of precision since the dark ages.  Any wook turner that could turn a spigot (that does not leak)  for a wine barrel can also turn spinning whorls with the necessary precision.  Yes, there are some jigs and tools that have to be made, but woodturners know how to do such things.

It is starting to look like a hank (560 yards) of 10s or 20s was about an hour's  (or AA's golden 48 minutes) work for a competent professional spinner.  Shirting and hosiery singles are closer to 2 hours work. Hanks of  fines  (more than 30,000 ypp) would be closer to 3 or 3.5  hours work.

It is clear that properly setup and maintained DT/DD spinning wheel can sustain spinning speeds many times higher than anybody admitted when I bought my wheel some 5 years ago.

When I was at Bechtel, productivity was something we had to get correct.  In modern hand spinning, it is a taboo subject.  Spinners talk about the size of their stash, and how many wheels or spindles they own, but nobody talks about how fast they actually spin.

Five years ago, none of the experienced spinners correctly stated the productivity that I could expect.  AA and HC limited the potential speed of their wheels by installing only one treadle.  Ashford sells DT wheels, but slows them down with big heavy flyers that vibrate at speed. Others limited drive ratios or whorl swept area to limit speed.  Nobody seemed to have a wheel that would insert twist faster than 1,600 rpm.  I was told, over and over, that if I want to spin at higher speed, I should buy a commercial mini-mill (the ones suggested cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.)  Instead, I bought an Ashford Traddy, and later a couple of fliers from AA and modified them to run at 3,800 rpm.  A minor change to the accelerator will allow even higher speeds.

In particular, nobody was selling differential rotation speed (DRS) wheels, and very few spinners seemed to be using a wheels converted after market to DRS, despite the fact that the conversion is only a matter of a couple of millimeters.

DRS opens up different styles of drafting to produce styles of yarn that cannot be produced by other spinning techniques.  On the other hand, HC and AA stopped selling DRS wheels for very good reasons. There is a lot that can go wrong with a DRS wheel.  It takes skill to get a DRS wheel running, and more skill to keep it running.  My feeling is that the skills were common among textile workers  from the 14th through the 18th century.  However, these skills were not brought forward to spinning activities of Queen Victoria's Court.

As far as I am concerned, DRS is half the craft of spinning. It is a very powerful tool for wool, cotton, silk, and linen.

Board like? !

The classic mill spun gansey yarn has several virtues.  It can be knit fairly loosely, (not too warm) and still have the stitch work that  Pops! Or, it can be knit firmly to produce firm padding to protect the wearer in a hazardous environment (e.g.,  booms and spars being swung into sailors as the sail boat rolls).  

The disadvantages of  mill spun gansey yarn is that when it is knit tight enough to be be weatherproof, it lacks drape and becomes stiff like a board .   If you need warm suit of armor, it is a good fabric, if you do not need armor, then other fabrics may be better.

I was very proud when, I first thought I could spin a good approximation of the mill spun gansey yarn.   As I knit fabrics for different purposes, I understand that the mill spun gansey yarn is NOT likely not the best yarn for many for many purposes. And I found that I could spin a world of yarns, that mills could not spin, and some of those yarns have real virtues.

One thing  I found, is that some of the yarns that do not look so nice in the skein, produce wonderful fabrics. The proof is always in the final fabric. (And the proof of the fabric is in the wearing!) Firm multi-plies with soft ply twist can produce weatherproof fabrics with a nice hand and great elasticity. Wearing such fabrics is like having a second skin. 

I discovered thick an thin singles by mistake. I had a big bump of commercial fiber with a lanolin based spinning oil that started getting oxidized and sticky on one side of the bump, but I spun it, as it was, anyway. The single looked like crap, but the 5-ply knit up into a rather wonderful fabric.  It is not in the books,  It is the kind of thing that is only discovered by trying a lot of stuff that does not work, but keeping one's eyes open for stuff that does work.  It was something that snuck up on me - the early singles from that bump were properly uniform, then I left the bump sitting for a few months, and when I came back, it spun as thick and thin. As 5-ply, the yarn still looked like crap, but it knit up into a fabric that I like a lot. Now, I have found other ways to produce a thick and single without trying to age a bump of  commercial fiber. 

The thins give the fabric hand, and the thicks tend to full and bond the yarn together. However, the net effect is different from simply plying singles of different grist and twist together.  Over all, the yarn is much softer than the mill spun gansey yarn, so stitches do not pop, and it is more difficult to knit into firm padding (e.g., boards).  On the other hand,  it is much easier to knit into a very warm, very elastic fabric that is as comfortable as a second skin.  The thins give it luster and durability, the thicks give softness.  The fabric has almost the feel of a fabric knit from woolen spun.

I have a kilo of 5-ply sport weight from such thick and thin singles, in a bin, ready to be knit on #0 needles. Also in the bin are a pile of swatches of various fabrics knit from the yarn,   Twist in the singles varies from about 7 to 9 tpi, but it is 5-ply and it averages out into very competent singles. All singles are continuously tested for competence (tensile strength)  as they are plied.  Ply twist is much less than standard, so the yarn is soft and stitches do not pop as much as with mill spun, but on the other hand, the plies spread to fill gaps and needle holes resulting in a fabric that is warmer any you can get from mill spun gansey yarn, and the fabric has a reasonable drape. The yarn is aggressively washed and steam blocked prior to going into the knitting bin.

All in all, it is a reminder to respect the materials and the process, and not to get caught up in imitating mill spun.  Handspun can have intrinsic virtues that are not in mill spun.  We CAN make yarns that mills cannot.  And, some of those yarns are very, very nice, not because they are different, but because they have virtues. We have forgotten some of these virtues because mills cannot produce such yarns.   Wassit was hand spun 5-ply.  This last bin of hand spun 5-ply gives me new respect for what 5-ply hand spun can be.  

I like the hand.  I like the fill.  I like the warmth.  I like the stretch and elasticity. I like the durability. I have been spinning it from 60 count long wool with good luster. Soon, I will be back to spinning Rambouillet from Ann Harvey up in Calpine.  Then, fabric from fine wool has less durability and luster and is much softer. And, of course the  Rambouillet is white, not ecru.  Still the drape, fill, warmth, stretch and elasticity are all there.

All in all, I figure about 6 hours for a hank of worsted sport weight, 5-ply.  Worsted 2-ply at that grist has a poor drape, so a 2-ply would have to be woolen spun. It takes me about 3 hours to spin 560 yards of 2-ply sport weight, woolen spun yarn.  So the worsted 5-ply takes about twice as long as woolen 2-ply.  That is, I can spin the 5-ply worsted  for a sweater in 24 hours and the 2-ply woolen in only 12 hours.  However, I am going to spend some 90 hours knitting a fine sweater.  That 90 hours makes it worthwhile to invest the extra 12 hours for the extra drape, fill, warmth, stretch, and elasticity of 5-ply.  If I do not want the warmth, then I go up a couple of needle sizes and I have a faster knit sweater that still has drape, stretch, and elasticity.

Wassit was popular and inexpensive. It was popular because it was good stuff.  It was inexpensive because a lot of it was produced.  I stared looking at 5-ply because it was warm and durable for fisherman's sweaters. I keep looking at it because I like the "hand" of the fabric.

Ott Lamps

Ott lamps have a strobe effect that can be used to detect nuances in flyer speed in real time.

DRS and History

Alden Amos and I are not on Henry Clem most favored list.  We write about DRS, so people want to buy differential rotation speed (DRS) spinning wheels from Henry.  However the spinners do not have to skills to make the wheel work well so they are not happy and want to return the wheel.  This is real problem for Henry because he wants to sell what people want, and he wants people to love his products.

The problem is that the modern spinning community does not have the skills to operate a DRS wheel.  DRS is a taboo subject.  Alden Amos talks about the math, but does not go into the care and feeding of such a machine.  And, if you try to treat such a machine like your ST wheel, the result will be nothing but tears.

What could Henry do?  Demand that every customer take a long workshop on how to use a DRS wheel?  He would have to charge a couple of thousand dollars for that, and "experienced", spinners think that they they know how to spin on any wheel, and are not going to go to a long workshop on the basics of using a wheel.  In short, extended customer training is not a way to sell spinning wheels.

Even Alden had this problem as some of the DRS controlled wheels that he sold were returned.

Thus, we have a chicken and egg situation.  There are few DRS controlled wheels around for spinners to learn on, and therefor few spinners know how to use DRS.  There are few spinners that know how to use a DRS wheel, so few wheels are sold.  Even hand spinners doing restoration work do not understand DRS.

I strongly believe that flyer/bobbin assembly technology developed in the very profitable and secret Italian silk industry starting as early as the 12th century. In the beginning, it was the miniaturization of  room sized silk throwing equipment.   It was valuable industrial equipment used by operators that were extensively trained. It likely followed the same cycle as modern industrial equipment. An operator is trained, gains experience on equipment, makes some improvements on his equipment, and trains the next generation of operators. I think the silk throwers had DD/DRS controlled industrial winding equipment in the 14th century and  the technology was transferred to the aslo secretive and very profitable wool industry not much later.  In short, flyer//bobbin assemblies were likely common in the wool industry long before they show up in drawings.

Don't believe me?  Learn the difference between yarn spun on  DRS wheel equipment and  that spun on an ST wheels and various spindles.  Then, go look at old textiles.  1500 is a good place to start.  Compare threads spun in Italy, Flanders, France, and England.  They are different.  They were produced by different technologies. Ask yourself, how were the threads from Flanders spun?  Ask yourself, " How would I replicate that thread?"  If you understand DRS, you know.

Understanding DRS is part of the craft of spinning.  When you understand the craft of spinning, and you look at old textiles then you realize the entire timeline of  spinning technology as presented by modern historians is wrong, because they are not considering DRS. A Ph.D in history from a major university does not ensure that one is a master spinner.  The very best spinners that I know do not have  Ph.Ds in history from major universities.  I think it takes a good bit of spinning to become a good spinner, and getting a Ph.D in history from a major university takes away from one's spinning time.

(Am I a good spinner?  Not by 16th century Flemish standards!!)

If you want to replicate 16th century textiles as worn by the great and powerful, go DRS.  It has a long steep learning curve, but it is the way to produce high end, luxury thread.  It is how to spin a loom web for a bolt of cloth and get it done before you die of old age.

Spinning productively

Why, Oh Why, comb top, and then knock the fibers out of alignment before spinning?  It is doing the work twice.  No professional does the same job twice, unless they did a poor job the first time.  No the comb/diz did their job, but the spinner destroyed the alignment when held the fiber to keep the flyer/bobbin assemble from pulling the whole top into the orifice all at once, like a hungry grizzly bear eating a Big Mac.


Silly!! The spinner that knows their craft simply keeps the fibers straight, and aligned parallel all the way through the process. The combs /diz can align the fibers better than fingers hurriedly inch-worm drafting.  More, better, faster drafting to realign the fibers is not the answer. The Answer is: Do not mess the fiber up!

The answer is use differential rotation speed (DRS) so that fiber is drawn into the orifice only as fast as twist is added..When, I am spinning 10s at 9 tpi, my flier/bobbin assembly draws in 1/9" of fiber stream and inserts 1 twist.  I do not have to pull back on the fiber stream to retard its entry into the orifice, because it is only going to take in as much fiber as is needed for the twist that is being inserted.

Alden Amos and others have tried selling such wheels but there was no market.  Modern spinners do not have the skills to operate such wheels.  That is stupid because the concepts and math are fully explained in the spinning manuals from the beginning of the 20th century.  And, Alden Amos in his Big Book of Handspinning walks us through the math and concepts.

Still modern spinners insist on messing up their top by using Scotch Tension wheels, and in the discussion of what kind of wheel to buy there is no discussion of  DRS.Even Alden does not discuss the advantages of DRS in his big blue book.

When, I started using DRS, I thought that it was faster because there were 2 drive band contact areas, and hence more friction to drive the flyer/bobbin assembly faster.  And, that is certainly part of the story, but it does no explain the full increase on productivity.  The other side of the story is that DRS speeds spinning by making fiber in take much more efficient.  And, instead of a fiber drafting process there is a very efficient top/roving attenuation process.

So here is the deal. A DRS wheel is inherently faster than single drive wheel - and that includes e-spinners.
A double drive wheel that does not use DRS is somewhat faster than a single drive wheel, but not nearly as fast as a true DRS wheel.  And the difference between a not DRS DD wheel and a true DRS wheel is only millimeters - you cannot tell without measuring unless you work with DRS all the time.

My take is that any spinner that wants to spin productively, will put the effort into learning DRS; the concepts, the math, the tools, and the technique.  How productive is DRS?  Well, it will let me spin 560 yards of lace weight worsted spun single in ~70 minutes.  How long does it take you?  Yesterday, I was tuning my whorls, and running back and forth between the wheel and the lathe.  In the process, I spun a couple of thousand yards of lace weight singles.  How much did you spin yesterday?

50 mm whorls

The new whorls are about dialed in. I am pleased that they allow sustained bobbin speeds in the range of 3,400 rpm.  That is not peak bobbin speed, but is sustained bobbin speed. When spinning 5,600 ypp worsted (10s), that is 10 yards per minute.  Suddenly, turning out a knot free hank of 560 yards in less than 90 minutes is not a problem.  The intended weight of such hanks is 45 grams, and mine are running between 40 and 50 grams.  I think pretty good for hand spinning.  Spinning 20s (22 grams) goes at about the same rate or even a little faster.

My critics look at my pix, and say that I spin "thick and thin".  Perhaps!, but the average comes out to the grist that I want.  Can they sit down and spin their "uniform" singles, to produce 560 yards of the grist that they intend in 90 minutes?

With DRS, and these speeds, the spinning process is different.  There are videos of the way that I spin on this blog.  The top is wound onto the distaff, and is pulled off with my right hand.  DRS controlled takeup pulls the yarn out of the tip of the drafting triangle, while  my left hand controls how much twist runs into the drafting triangle.  The fibers in the top are parallel, and remain parallel in the drafting triangle, so that the final thread is full worsted. In other modern worsted drafting techniques, the fibers have a tendency to become skewed in the drafting triangle, and thus they must be pulled out straight and parallel again. This skewing of the fibers is inherent in the tension required to oppose the continuous take-up from a flyer/bobbin assembly not controlled by DRS.  I do not have  to resist that continuous take-up so I do not bunch up the fibers and push them out of their parallel alignment. My right hand controls attenuation, and my left hand controls twist, I do not draft per se.  This is not a process that works with Scotch Tension, Irish/German Tension, or double drive where DRS is not strictly controlled. It works better with finer singles. This is the fast and easy way to hand spin fine worsted singles.  And, If I have the drive band in the correct groove in my whorl, I know that the resulting hank will be close to the intended grist.

A video of the process shows me sitting there, making tiny hand motions.  It looks like I am treadling and nothing is happening.  The flier is moving much too fast to be captured on video. And, the video does not capture the thread being formed and wound.  At higher grists, the thread just disappears, so it looks like I am just sitting there treadling with no evidence that thread is being formed.

Yesterday, I did make a whorl for shirting/hosiery singles (soft and firm twist 40s, 22,400 ypp).  In a world where much of the wool was 40 count, it may very well be, that for spinners, it was faster to let the fiber flow through their fingers as above, to produce 40s, than to put extra effort into drafting thicker singles.  That is, the spinners traded more treadling effort for less drafting effort. And, the weavers gladly accepted the finer plies because it gave the fabrics a much nicer drape and hand.

Wood blanks to make whorls for "fines" are stacked  on the work bench beside the lathe. These will be for the #0 flier, but I have not designed that bobbin yet.  And, there is a real chance that fines will need a higher ratio accelerator.

A good production rate for shirting using these tools/techniques is 5 or 6 yards per minute, and the drafting technique works better at rates above 3 yards per minute.  This makes it seem like 240 yards per hour (bobbin =3,000 rpm) was a good commercial rate for a hand spinner.  Thus, a spinner could likely produce 4 worsted hanks per day.  Woolen spun requires more twist for the same grist, and thus with a wheel, my woolen yarn production at this grist is close to 200 yph.  For spinning fines, I have pushed bobbin speed as high as 5,000 rpm, allowing fines (more than 30,000  ypp) to be produced at 5 or 6 yards per minute.  This is fairly high effort and noisy, and I am not sure whether this could be a commercial rate.  

This rate of production can be easily sustained without ball bearings.  A wheel running at 3,000 rpm using leathers, bronze against steel and wood against metal bearings can sustain such speed when lubricated with lard oil. It is noisy, but all those bearing surfaces seem to last for at least 4,000 hours of use.

All in all, I think that professional spinners with flyer/bobbin wheels could have spun between 200 and 400  yards per hour of singles in the range of  5,600 ypp -10,200 ypp and between 200 and 250 yph  for grists in the range of  22,400 ypp (e.g., shirting and hosiery) .

Better DRS

I knew I was going to do this within minutes of sitting down with the accelerator.  I  just did not know when,  I was working on a big pile of 10s, and the advice from AA was spin each project on a single spinning bobbin. The I figured that with 5-ply it did not matter so much.  And today, I did it.

A new spinning bobbin for the AA #1 flier with a whorl of 50mm to make turning precise flier whorls easier.
I also moved up to a bobbin core diameter of 0.95" (from 5/8").  And it has ball bearings because that was what was on hand.

I also increased the ratio of the accelerator, so the treadle cadence is actually a bit slower for the same bobbin rpm.

With the new flier whorl, I am getting more precise control of twist insertion, yielding a better quality single at about the same speed. I like this system.  Of course I liked the old system.  That was the only hand spinning system that I knew which would allow me to hand spin 10s at 500 yards per hour.  The new system lets me spin better 10s at 500 yd/hr.  It is made out of some scrap oak that I had laying around, and looks kind of clunky, but it works very well.  It is heavy enough that I would not try using to spin 60s s with Scotch Tension, but it works well with DD/DRS.  The only flier whorl I have for it at this point has grooves for 10s, 20s, and 40s. I am going to try an make the bobbins for the #0 flier also 50 mm, so I only need one set of flier whorls.  I need to standardize and simplify.  I have dozens of spinning bobbins and flier whorls that can be combined to yield the DRS for hundreds of different grists.  Pages and pages of my spinning journal are devoted to the DRS from different bobbin/ flyer whorl combinations.  That stuff should all be dumped and replaced by 2 bobbins and 4 flier whorls.

On the other hand, those spinning bobbins and flier whorls were variations on the spinning bobbins and flier whorls that Alden Amos made for me.  And, by making and using variations, I came to understand the system.  This leaves me in no doubt that professional spinners tools from prior to 1770 were optimised for speed, while spinning tools sold after Queen Victoria came to the throne, were optimised for ease of use.

Anyway, about half of this project will be spun on one spinning bobbin with a 30 mm diameter whorl and the rest of the project will get spun on the new spinning bobbin with a 50 mm whorl. By the time, it is all plied, washed and blocked, nobody will be able to see the difference.  Twist is a bit softer, likely closer to 8 than the 9 tpi I have been aiming for  - but that may change once everything has a finish on it. Make it work, then make it pretty.  I spun ~  thousand yards on it this afternoon.  It works, and I like the bigger whorls.  I do not have them all dialed in yet, but I like them.

Over all ratio is close to 1:35.  That does not sound like much, but there is no slip so it is very productive.  I may have to do another time trial here to see if the 500 yd/hr number is still valid.  Sacrifices to the Gods of Speed and all that.  On the other hand, LdV, has plans for much more productive spinning equipment.  

Knit 2-ply and Lopi

I like yarns with more plies  Fine2-ply and singles can knit into a nice fabric, when they are knit on fine needles.  And very fine 2-ply knit on very fine needles produce a wonderful fabric.

I certainly knit a great deal worsted weight 2-ply yarns, into fabrics that I thought were nice at the time. I knit a lot of Lopi.  I did these things because there was a class of  knitters with experience in knitting such things that told me it was a good thing to do.  It was. It let me learn from my experience, and learning is a good thing.

Lopi has a lot of fans.  Garments knit from Lopi have a particular aesthetic. Lopi yarn is easily and inexpensively produced. (e.g., less effort is put into combing, and less energy is put into twist). And, objects can be very rapidly knit from Lopi.  However, the resulting fabrics are heavy for their warmth.  That is, a gansey weighing less than 2 pounds will be much warmer than a Lopi sweater weighing more than 5 pounds. And the gansey can be tailored to flatter the figure, while the Lopi simply hides the figure giving the appearance of bulk. That is good, if you want to look big and bulky.  On the other hand, my favorite aunt wore pink Lopi socks almost continuously (day and night)  for the last 12 years of her life - all knit by yours truly. The other thing about Lope is that it is not as durable as some other fabric constructions. For example a Lopi sweater will not last as long as a gansey knit from 5-ply.  And, an Aran sweater knit from 2-ply will last longer than a Lopi sweater of the same weight and warmth.  However, an Aran sweater knit from the same weight of wool spun into real 10-ply, will be much warmer, and last much longer. And the 10-ply (or 10-strand cabled) yarn can provide an elasticity that is simply astonishing.  It can be weatherproof, without being stiff. 

I knit a lot camping, hiking,sailing and ski gear for myself and friends from 2 and 3-ply yarns, mostly MacAusland.  When I started knitting, my ski buddies, all told me that hand knit woolens were just worthless  in the cold (i.e., snow camping) .  I convinced them that hand knit woolens could be warm by giving them hand knit objects knit from 2-ply that were very warm and durable.  I know 2-ply can be knit into good fabrics.  I have no regrets knitting all that 2-ply - the objects were better than what I could get commercially.  However, I do wish that I had discovered the virtues of more plies, sooner. (I still have many pounds of  MacAusland, and I still knit it.) However, the objects that I knit today from yarms with more plies are better.  The objects knit from yarns with more plies  are warmer and more durable.  

My point is that yarns with more plies can be knit into better fabrics. And as spinners, we can make better yarns.  It takes some effort, but we can make lighter weight yarns that are just as warm as heavier weight yarns, and which are much more durable. And, they have better drape. As hand spinners we are not so concerned with the cost of inserting more twist. Our hand spun does not have a price point. We can afford to make better yarns.

Alternatively, rather fine  (2,500 ypp) 2-ply ply yarns can be knit on rather fine needles (1.4 mm) to produce wonderful fabrics.  Everytime I make this fabric, I am just amazed by it.  The yarn is easy to spin. and  it is only 30% more stitches per inch then gansey fabric so it is not that many more stitches, I knit the fabric soft, so it is not as much effort, and minimum stress on the hands.  It can be easily produced with either a knitting belt or a knitting sheath,   I also make a 6-strand cabled yarn at ~1,600 ypp that I knit on 1.7 mm needles to produce a  soft, warm, durable fabric.  It is a little thicker, warmer and more elastic fabric.  

I am not talking about the weatherproof, industrial fabrics that I knit for sailing gear. I am talking about soft fabrics that will remain beautiful for many wearings.

Now, I am sure that there are a lot of (experienced)  knitters that will think that my views on more plies is silly. That is OK, those are the same knitters that did not tell me that the easy way to get a weatherproof knit fabric is to use finer knitting pins.  I put in a lot of effort and wasted a lot of time working this out for myself. They could have said, "Oh, it is easy, just use finer needles".  However, they did not.

At this point in my knitting career, my rule of thumb is that more plies in the yarn and finer needles produce fabrics that I tend to like better.

  

Knitting Pins

These days, my default knitting needles are ~1.6 mm in diameter.  I have them in 10", 12", 14" and 18" lengths. I have them in stainless steel and spring steel.  I think they are a tool form worth studying.

These days, I am spinning worsted 5-ply @ 1,000 ypp. The yarn and needles go together like bread and butter at tea time.

I always use them with a knitting sheath or Shetland knitting belt.  Without the support of a knitting sheath or knitting belt, they are slow and awkward -- not worth the effort.

The knitting method(s) are not so straightforward for somebody accustomed to stiff sock needles.  The tip of the working needle is slid into the working stitch, and the yarn looped, the tip popped out of  stitch, and the stitch popped off the end of the needle.  Of course, that much is obvious.  What is not obvious is that the needle motions are made by flexing and bowing the working needle.   The knitting sheath and leg of the working stitch are fulcrums, and the needle flex is driven by either pressing the needle with the upper wrist or the ball of the thumb.

Why no video?  The flex is small and does not really show up in a video without super imposed graphics. However, the flex changes the angle of the tip and seems to be important in keeping the looped yarn from coming off the needle tip. It might be that more carefully crafted needle tips would also help., I do  regrind the the commercial needle tips.  As supplied, the commercial needle tips worked, but the reground needle tips are better and result in faster knitting with fewer dropped/split stitches. And in these fabrics, dropped/split stitches are a pain in the neck to fix.

The motions are very small, very gentile, and very easy on the hands.  It allows knitting a very tight fabric with minimum stress on the hands.  Over all, I do not think the process is a fast as gansey (long spring steel needles rigidly fixed in a knitting sheath)  knitting because it requires 2 hand motions rather than the single motion of gansey knitting, but it is very easy on the hands and reasonably fast.

I had to spend some time working with the more flexible tubular stainless steel needles to work out this technique. Once I understood the motions, I could do it with the spring steel needles, and in fact it is faster with the spring steel needles. However, with the spring steel needles there was more of a tendency to treat them as rigid needles.  Certainly, I can knit with rigid needles, but that is not always the fastest way from yarn to finished object.

If, when I made my first knitting pins, somebody had told me, "Oh, there is a faster and easier way to use them", I would have put in the effort to work out these techniques years ago.  However, nobody said, "Use a knitting sheath or knitting belt and a whole range of knitting techniques using needle flex open up."

Oh, and the techniques works for 1.3 mm needles on sock yarn. And, using 1.6 mm needles on sock yarn produces lovely fabrics suited to summer evenings.   If I were knitting a gansey for my wife, I might use 1.9 mm needles with 5-ply to produce a softer, more elastic fabric. (She does not sail in foul weather.)

I like the tubular stainless steel needles because they are light weight. they are less likely to slide out of the knitting and they are less likely to leave a ladder.  The spring steel needles are likely a bit faster and more durable.

Thus, today, I would not bother to use my 2 mm to 2.5 mm  long spring steel needles to produce weatherproof fabric. I still think that the spring action of long steel needles is the very fastest way to knit large objects. I  used those needles to make weatherproof fabrics because I hand not figured out how to make such tight fabrics using thinner, more flexible needles. Now, I know, and now you know it can be done and  have the clues to reverse engineer the process.

My current list of different knitting techniques includes:

1a) short, stiff needles held in the hands used with  pitch / yaw motions with yarn in either right or left hand (include conventional sock needles, cable needles, Weldon, Irish Cottage, lever, and all the common modern knitting techniques)
1b) short, stiff needles used with knitting stick
2) hooked needles used with an accordion motion (Portuguese)
3) long spring steel needles fixed in a knitting sheath and flexed into the stitch (gansey knitting)
4) long stiff needles used with Shetland knitting belt
4b) long,  needles tucked in a skin crease or under the arm
5) curved needles that rotate in the end of the knitting sheath and roll/are popped into the stitch, and the spring of the fabric pops the needle out of the stitch  and then the stitch off the end of the needle. (swaving)
6) fine, flexible needles held in a knitting sheath or knitting belt that are bowed/flexed in and out of the stitch

notes

• technique 2 is good for knitting while walking
• technique 3 is almost certainly the fastest for knitting large objects; finer needles can be used with finer yarns to produce  fine, soft fabrics at a reasonable pace
• techniques 3 and 4 differ by the source of the spring action.
•  technique 5 has no peer for knitting fine gloves

• technique 6 differs from 3 in that  3 uses a single fulcrum, while with T6 both the leg of the working stitch and the knitting sheath/belt act as fulcrums so that there is a compound lever/spring action
• technique 6 allow production of fine, dense fabrics  at a reasonable pace

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.

More on Reading History

I went to Spinning at the Winery on Saturday. On the way home, the wheel was badly damaged.  Monday morning was spent fixing it, and yesterday afternoon was spent testing the fixes. It took about 6 hours to spin a hank of 5-ply gansey yarn.  I guess, I tuned the wheel up a bit.  Another sacrifice to the Gods of Speed.

I would say that  everything one needs to know in order to spin that fast is in the Big Book of Hand Spinning by Alden Amos. He spends a lot of time on DRS. Thus,  I knew DRS is very important, so I worked out thousand problems in DRS -- that means I have a very good feel for the solution of any DRS problem I come across. He talks about drive band tension and friction enough that I could see that it was really important.  It was so important that I had to find ways around it. In the discussion of wheel types, 3 of the 11 drawn wheels are are accelerator wheels.  That tells me accelerator wheels are important. And, then he says quite bluntly to use a distaff.

Thus, for me, reading between the lines is as important as reading the lines.  And, the result is I can spin hank of 5-ply gansey yarn in 6 hours total time, start to finish.  Now, a lot of people tell me that I do not understand or know history.  I read history like I read Alden Amos.  What is not written  can be as important as what is written. Reading between the lines is as important as reading the lines. How the people that tell me that I do not understand history, read Alden Amos?  Do they get enough out of Alden Amos to enable them to spin  hank of  worsted 5-ply sport weight  in in 6 hours?   If they do not, perhaps they did not read carefully and missed something?

Alden writes clearly.  If someone misses something in the Big Blue Book, perhaps they also miss things in the obscure and verbose tombs of history?  I assert that I get  more out of AA, and I get more out of history.  I assert that my critics get less out of AA and in the same way learn less from history.

I am going to keep that view, until my critics can come to me and show me that they can get more out of AA than I can. That is their reading test.  I eagerly await their comments telling me that they can use the information in AA to spin a  hank of 5-ply in only 6 hours.  :  )

I would refer everyone to the article in the march Scientific American on "Why Good Thoughts Block Better Ones, by Bilanic and McLeod.  These days a very limited set of approaches dominate the thinking of hand spinners and keep them considering way better ways to spin.

To HC:  I know you understand DRS, and have very good reason to hate it, but it allows me to spin a third faster, with less physical effort. I go back and review the options every so often, and I always come back to DRS.   For me, spinning a third faster, is worth developing and maintaining the extra skill.

With the changes to my wheel, the flyer orifice is much farther away.  As I spin worsted, my hands are almost 2 feet  from the orifice.  Spinning woolen, my drafting hand stays 3 or 4 feet away from the orifice.   My hands are near the orifice only when it needs rethreading. On the other hand, I do need to reach over and change hecks frequently. So, I do need to see the bobbin., and I do need a wheel that can be started and stopped fairly quickly.

Some would say that I should use something like a WooLee Winder.  I am certainly thinking about it.  That stopping to change hecks eats rpm. To get my 3,000 rpm average, I am really running at 3,300 - 3,500 for 50 seconds and then stopping for 6 seconds.  And, I have not perfected the stopping. Starting is easy, give a spoke of the drive drive wheel a good push.  However, I cannot stick my hand into my drive wheel when it is spinning at 90 rpm, well I can, but the results are not always good.  It turns out that spinning wheels need brakes.

Cakes of sock yarn

Mostly, spinning in May was about 10,000 yards of 5,600 worsted singles and then plying up couple of hanks of  5-ply, and making up 5 hanks of  6-strand cabled "sock yarn" @ ~ 1,600 ypp  from 2-ply commercial warp yarn.

The  handspun singles were on little bobbins, each holding just over 100 yards.  Thus, 2 hanks of  gansey yarn frees up a whole boot box of  little yarn storage bobbins -- leaving almost a boot box of little spinning bobbins, each with about 100 yards of single on it. Making gansey yarn is about bringing order to chaos.

For the sock yarn, I go from a neat cone to a sweater box full of yarn cakes.  Then, the trick is to turn the yarn cakes into sweater.

Kit for Sheringham gansey: 2,600 yd of 6-strand cable at 1,600 ypp, 5 x 8" and 5 x 14" stainless steel DPN in size UK 15 with crochet hook. I will use a wide Durham style knitting sheath with a 1.65 mm needle adapter. Note that this sizing is a bit different from what is in the modern charts.  These needles and sheath have become my default knitting tools for this yarn.   At 10 spi, it will be a soft, warm, durable, elastic sweater, but NOT weatherproof. (This yarn is magical. It sucks the light right out of a room. Thus,I expect it is very good to wear while sleeping.)  The cable is a little bulkier than 3-ply. For ordinary 3-ply/ 1,600 ypp,  I drop down to  UK 16.  For straight 4-ply, I would stay stay with the UK 15 needles.  There has been enough swatching and sampling to drive my wife crazy.

This will be a soft fabric. Could I knit it without a knitting sheath?  Sure, it would just take me longer and the tension would not be as even.  The needles are fairly blunt, so a leather knitting belt would also work, allowing similar fast knitting and even tension.  

Again, these are all commercial needles and I have used fine emery to 'break" the polish just behind the tip for faster and easier knitting.

Tips again

For a few months, I have been using commercial stainless steel knitting needles. Mostly they are fast and easy, but some decreases and fancy stitches were a problem.  Ordinarily such stitches are only 1% of the total number of stitches, so I seek needles to do the bulk of the stitches easily and suffer the fancy stitches.

Then, the other evening, it hit me, I had  been here before.  There was a solution.  Just use a bit of emory cloth to break the polish on a 1 mm annular area around the tip. Yes, it works. And those little annular areas are not so large or so rough that they interfere with knitting the 99 %.

Actually breaking the polish on the tips significantly speeded up my knitting with those needles. I am back to the position that commercial needles are just too polished for fast knitting.

Textures

Today, perhaps the very best place to see contemporary fine hand knitting is at Textures on  Montana Street in Santa Monica, California.

Jane, the owner, was an integral part of the Three Bags Full sweater store in San Francisco, California.  Three Bags Full closed a couple of years ago,  In many, ways the new store is better.

Textures is a fashion boutique. They are not the blue wool sweaters you would buy in the shops of Saint-Malo.  Mostly, the fabric weights are less than what Three Bags Full  carried  in SF (because it is in Santa Monica and only 8 blocks from the beach.)  However, it is also only a few miles from LAX, and many of Jane's customers travel frequently to the southern hemisphere, so Jane carries summer and winter weight objects, all the year round.

While they are very nice, Jane manages to keep her prices much lower than what I have seen for similar objects at places like Neiman Marcus, Saks, and  other designer fashion boutiques.   And, nobody else has the selection and range of fine hand knit objects that one can find in Textures.

Many of the objects are so finely knit and shaped,  that a drawing of the object gives no clue that the fabric is knit rather than woven.   When objects are knit by skilled professionals, paintings, drawings, and sculpture cannot indicate whether the clothing was knit or woven.  Objects produced by skilled professional knitters are much better than the objects that we see produced by amateur / recreational knitters.  On the other hand, these days we do not see much fine work by skilled professionals.

All of which brings up the question of:  "Why we do not see more finely knit objects produced by  recreational knitters?"  Yes the professionals have more skill, but amateurs have more time.

Pathological Excellence

I have been recently accused of a pathological need to be the best.  There were perhaps 20 comments on this.

Do you accuse Melody Cameron of wanting to be the best? And, how many Irish dance competitions has she won? Yes, she likes being the best Irish dancer in the world.      Did you accuse Michael Phelps of a pathological need to win as he piled up gold medals? Yes, he likes winning.  Do you send "nasty-grams" to  NFL teams that the win the super bowl?

No, but you are rude to me.  That is the key phrase.  You are rude to me.  Your mother failed to teach you manners.

 As Dean Wolf taught me, "Make sure you are right, then go ahead."  That is, the foundation of being the best, is being right.  And, we were the best. We took on environmental cleanup jobs that nobody else would touch and we did them: Faster, Cheaper, Better.  And if I might add we did them safer.  At Hanford, we went a million man-hours without an accident -- despite working with toxic, radioactive, hazardous, and explosive waste. Other places, there were burning oil wells and we put out hundreds of them  - that is an activity where only the best survive. On those projects, one little mistake and many, many people would have died. If I have a need to be the best, then you may be sure that I am going to make a point of being correct.

Being the best is a good thing.   Try it, you will like it.   Since some of you are not going to be best spinner, you might try going for "best manners."  As it is, I think some of your mothers are rolling over in their graves and scaring the gophers.  If you had better manners it might give the gophers some rest.

The other thing is that at Hunters Point, FMC Pocatello, and at Hanford we had complete drawings and inventories of the buildings, and then we had to go out and find stuff. We had detailed journals and logs.  I supervised many thousands of soil samples and test wells. I compared our results with the results of other RI/FS/RA teams at other CERCLA sites. We went out and talked to retired workers to find out what really happened. I know the limits of archaeology and history.

Ribbing

Socks knit from fine, multi-ply or multi-strand yarns do not need ribbing for stretch. These fabrics have enough stretch in the fabric.  However,  knit to fit - you do not have the crutch of ribbing to hide defects in fit.

This has implications for interpretation of old art for the presence of knitting.  Look at the socks and hose in Weldon's, and  it is difficult to determine if the fabric is knit or woven.  It is even harder working from an oil painting or fresco.  You may not be able to knit like that but, people can and do, and people did.   I find that textile historians tend not to be able to knit that well, beginning with Rutt.

Earlier, I mentioned that the current generation of sock needles are 8" long. These days, my finer needles corresponding to UK 16, 17, and 18 are 14" long, and I have stopped using the shorter needles in these sizes.  A work in progress on these needles is difficult to transport, and thus, these days all the fine knitting is done at home.   (Just a year after I got a knitting bag big enough to hold my gansey needles, I have stopped using them).  My favorite chair while knitting with the long needles remains a wooden folding chair - because it gives clearance for the knitting sheath and the needle.

The leather knitting pouch works very well for the more flexible, blunter needles (if any 1.5 mm needle can be called blunt  ; )  that I am using these days,  and I could live with a knitting belt as my sole knitting support.  I do like the knitting belt for knitting in the car or on aircraft.  And, certainly the Shetlanders knit gloves professionally on such long needles.  However, swaving with bent pricks is a game changer for fine gloves, and one cannot swave with a leather knitting belt.  Thus I need to keep my knitting sheaths for swaving. And I do think that the right knitting sheath is faster than a knitting belt. On the other hand, a knitting belt is faster than the wrong knitting sheath. And if one is switching back and forth between different sizes and lengths of needles, it is difficult to always have the right knitting sheath at hand.  And on socks, I like Eastern Cross Stitch on the sole, and swaving does not do that easily, so currently all socks are knit on 8"  straight needles with a knitting sheath.  Right now, the only WIP being knit on a knitting belt is a gansey from 6-strand fingering yarn on 14" long 1.5 mm knitting pins.  It is a nice fabric.

At this point, I think that modern knitting patterns are the result of trying to make a silk purse out of fat, 2-ply yarns.  There was a time when wassit was a standard yarn, used for utility knitting.  It was 5-ply.  The resulting fabric was durable and elastic. It was DK or sport weight, but could be knit on UK 13 or 14 needles to produce a very dense, elastic fabric.   Then, as we started using cheaper 2-ply yarns, they did not have as much elasticity, so we started doing more ribbing.  Ribbing is a trademark of a knitter that does not use multi-ply yarn.

When I started spinning 5-ply, I replicated the commercial product.  It produced stitches that "popped!" More recently, I have been making these yarns with less ply twist. They have to be steam blocked to balance, but they produce a denser fabric without the needle holes. I like it a lot.  Not as much stitch pop, but over all, a more attractive fabric.

Socks

I have been knitting a lot of socks recently.

I have been knitting the stash of  6-strand cable yarns,  and yes I like it better than most of what is in the LYS.

I like long wool for socks and that is simply non-negotiable.  (Except maybe sleep socks for my wife.)

 For some uses, I like 6- strand cable construction.  For some uses I like 6- ply construction.   It is no longer worth my time to knit socks from 2 and 3-ply yarns.  Let me restate that: It is no longer worth my time to knit most objects from 2 and 3-ply yarns. It better for me to spend a little more time doing it better the first time, than spinning and knitting twice.  It is a better use of my time to just spin the right yarn the first time.

These days, my sock needles are 8" hollow stainless steel with blunt tips.  These are very flexible and range from 1.5 mm  to 2.1mm roughly corresponding to UK sizes 13, 14, 15, and 16.

The other side of that is that yarns with finer plies and strands are more flexible and can be knit on finer needles with less effort.  Hiking socks are being knit from worsted-weight, 6-strand cable on 2.1 mm, blunt tipped, hollow, 8" stainless steel needles.  These needles are more flexible than the spring steel needles that I made in the past. The bluntness works with the rather loose cable ply to reduce the problems of splitty yarn, but bluntness does make fancy stitches and reductions more difficult.

Some here question the quality of my fabrics.  However, the other day I was sitting, knitting,  and waiting for my wife in a Neiman Marcus store, and one the clerks told the Head of Alterations that I was there. The Manager had her entire alterations team come upstairs to meet me, and see the kind of  knitting that I was doing and the tools I was using -- and that was just a portable sock project -- nothing special.

Aprons

A friend was dying, and tripped backward over a child's toy on the floor and spilled a whole kettle of  boiling dye and wool over herself.  She was wearing an apron, but the pockets in the apron held hot wool against her belly and contributed to her third degree burns.

If you are going to dye, go down to the local cash and carry restaurant supply, and buy yourself a chef's coat and cook's apron.  They help prevent burns.  They are not very expensive, and they will make you look so cool.  And, closed toe shoes, leather is best.  Hot water will go right into many kinds of cloth shoes.

I have complained many times to Williams and Sonnma and Sur laTable, telling them that aprons in the kitchen should not have pockets, because pockets in kitchen aprons hold hot liquids and contribute to burns.  Real  restaurant supply firms have real cook's clothing that will help keep you safe

However, I do have a bunch of aprons with pockets across the belly.  I tie them snugly in front, so I can tuck a knitting sheath in the apron strings.  That means the pockets are all but inaccessible.  This ticked me off for a long time.  Now, I drop a strong magnet in each pocket. The magnets catch my steel crochet hook, my steel darning hook, and my steel cable needle on the outside of the pocket.  Those are the three tools that in the past, always seemed to go astray.  Now, I can drop them in my lap, and know that they will not go too far.

The History Mash

I started "mashing" history when I was looking for clues as to how seaman and fishermen on square rigged ships stayed warm.  Academic history had missed the importance of knitting sheaths and knitting belts. Knitting sheaths and knitting belts allow the knitting of warmer garments. Knitting sheaths and knitting belts were important tools in the day to day life of Europe and GB as furs became less common, and wool became the primary material for warm clothing.  Knitting sheaths and knitting belts allow knitting warmer fabrics than can be knit with only hand held needles.  This is a truth that can be easily proven.

I came to hand spinning in 2009 because I wanted better yarn for my knitting.  That means I wanted useful quantities of  better yarn in a reasonable time frame.

However, hand spinning was in the doldrums.  Everyone was spinning slow.  Sure, I know people that in 2008 hand spun enough yarn for 12 sweaters.   Still, everyone accepted the concept that hand spinning was inherently very slow. And, they were spinning fat 2-ply, which requires minimum twist. There were discussions about which was faster, a (drop) spindle or a wheel and  "slower by the hour and faster by the week" had currency.  Most of my ideas about better yarn include more twist.

As I tried out spinning wheels to buy, they all seemed like they had governors on them to keep them from going too fast.  So, I made a point of buying a wheel that would be easy to modify. It was something that I could modify into a 'hot rod".  However, there was no manual on how to turn a spinning wheel in to a hot rod, and the comments were, " Don't be silly, it can't be done!!"  I used that wheel to learn to spin. After a couple of years, I could spin, and I wanted more speed.  DRS gave me more speed, but I wanted more.

There were stories about CPW being fast. Will Taylor let me spin on his.  I had looked at a number of CPWs, and Will's was far and away in the best condition.  If any CPW was fast, it would be Will's.  My Ashford hot rod was already much faster.   So much for the myth of the CPW, and the people who believe in such myths lost credibility.

I made a series of trips up to Jackson to meet Alden Amos and Stephenie Gaustad, and spun on their wheels.  I ended up buying a pair of  high speed fliers from Alden.  The decision was based on a good bit of historical research into the traditions of spinning.

I was not doing research for an academic paper, so I was not bound by any academic standards in any way.  The sole standard for success or failure in my historical research was Better Spinning as I defined it.  If I become a better spinner the research was a success.  There was a ton of fine academic research out there, but it did not describe a Yellow Brick Road to spinning fine and fast. For example,  The academic researchers do not come out of their academic research on old textiles as great hand spinners.  They research history, not spinning.   I had to go off road. I was researching spinning, not history. I had to think outside of the academic history box. I had to think things that nobody else was thinking.  Many spinners like academic history.  Going "off road" infuriated spinners as a group.  It still infuriates spinners as a group.

Of course my mash of  historical research was only part of the process. The mash developed a set of options, each of which had to be tested. Options that did not test as well were dropped.  What you saw here were options that worked.  Modern textile historians are not good  hand spinners.  In contrast, some of the Victorian historians that my critics disparage were very, very good spinners. (Much, much better hand spinners than the folks who disparage them!)  If I am looking for lessons in spinning, the history written by a very good spinner is likely to be more useful.  My criteria is always, "Does it teach me something me something useful about the practical process of spinning? --  not will it be accepted by the modern academic community.  Remember that the paradigm of  "slower by the hour and faster by the week" came out of the academic community. Those researchers did not do their homework to understand how fast a full time professional spinner could work.

The truth from my mash of history is that it is very possible to spin 500 yards of  worsted 5,600 ypp yarn (10s) per hour on a wheel.  A talented professional might do much better.  Nobody can do that on a spindle.  The wheel/ spindle speed debate was nonsense based on a lack historical information.  If one uses a commercial wheel of the style used by the best commercial spinners circa 1500, the wheel is always faster.  That in 2009, there was still a discussion  as to whether a drop spindle could be faster than a wheel points to the absolute failure of academic historical research to resolve hand spinning questions.  The superiority of a wheel is even more apparent with hosiery and shirting yarns (22,400 ypp).  On these issues, I will not take the word of any historical researcher that has not spun such yarns in commercial quantities on both a wheel and a spindle.  This is not something one can understand unless one has actually tied leases in a a hank of  fresh shirting singles, dyed them, warped, and woven the result.  Actually doing it lends perspective.  

I know spinners that spend more time spinning than I do.  However, I produce more yarn than they do.  And by spinning faster, I have more time to knit, weave, and do other things. Also, at some grists, spinning faster is easier. Just spending more time spinning is not a path to spinning faster and finer. (Assuming you have put in the 4,000 hours needed to learn to spin.)    If one in going to learn to spin finer and faster, one must learn on an ongoing basis from those who have spun finer and faster.  However, they are dead.  If we want to spin finer and fast we have to take lessons from history.

The lessons from modern academic research did not lead to finer and faster spinning (as of 2009).  However, my mash of history did get me to spinning finer and faster.  By my standard, it was an outstanding success.  If you want to claim that academic research is better, then show me that you are a finer and faster spinner, and that you become such a spinner as a result of  historic research conforming to academic standards, and not by using my mash of history results.  I find that the folks that assert the virtues of academic work in spinning tend to recite from rote, rather than explaining logically from critical thinking.  The  comments critical of this blog often sound like the honking of  a flock of geese.  I can recognize the individuals, but they are all saying that I should not doubt the conventional wisdom of the group.   Some are the same individuals that said I should not doubt the conventional wisdom of the knitting group, and I should not use a knitting sheath.  Sorry, but without a knitting sheath it takes me much longer to knit a gansey.  The knitting sheath saves me time, and lets me knit objects that cannot be knit without a knitting sheath.  The group is wrong about knitting sheaths.

Now,  I have blazed a trail to finer and faster spinning.  It is a path that few others will  follow.  Most will  continue spinning thick yarn, slowly.  That is their way. It is not a bad thing.  Still, I expect there are one or two who seek to spin finer and faster.

Today, my Traddy runs many times faster than it did new out of the box. That is the primary result of my history mash. That is a testable result.  It means that this afternoon, I can spin better.  I care about that.

The Arms Race and Edward Longshanks

When I started spinning, a large number of spinners told me that the spinning wisdom of the ages had been passed to them. They made fun of me for trying to spin finer and faster.  They said it could not be done; and it was not necessary.  Comments to me really have not changed in the last 4 years.

They were/are condescending, rude, and wrong. It can be done. If one is going to actually spin and finish objects that were the traditional job of spinners, it is necessary to spin faster.  I do not care how fast you spin, but I do care how well I spin.  I do care how fast I spin.  To that end, I measure and record my spinning.  It is called, "a spinning journal". Parts of that spinning journal will end up on this blog.

If you do not want to know about my spinning, then do not read this blog.

I do not say everyone must spin fine and fast, I merely point out that it is possible to spin fine and fast. I do not judge people (non-spinning) by their spinning skills, but I do judge "spinners" by how fast and how fine they spin. (And, I give real respect and deference to elite spinners.)  If you do not want to be judged by these standards, do not tell me that you are a "spinner",  instead say,  "I am a talker!"

For many, spinning is very much a social pastime with its roots in Queen Victoria's Court. They want to spin well enough to be accepted by the group, but not to spin as well as a "vulgar tradesman".  These are social spinners. I know some very nice social spinners.

In contrast, I spin because I want the yarn, and I want better yarn.  I want to spin as well as the vulgar spinster.  To get there, I have to figure out what parts of the modern spinning tradition are for better spinning, and which spinning traditions are social ritual developed so that all members of the group produce similar yarns, and thereby everyone can feel that they are like other spinners, and therefor belong to the group.

Such group ritual is disrupted when when anyone displays new skills or technology. The group then feels threatened and displays aggression toward the non-conformer.  Does that sound familiar?

There are many brands of spinning wheels - it is a big market. However, modern wheels all have a very narrow envelop of performance design standards.  Is that because they go as fast as is mechanically possible?  No, it is what the group wants, so everyone can spin the same yarns at the same rate.  Alden knew how to make faster wheels, but he only made single treadle wheels which are inherently slower.  He knew about accelerator wheels, but he also knew that his market would not tolerate wheels that went that fast.  He knew about DRS and gang whorls that allow much faster spinning but he also knew his market.

Alden knew how to make a much faster wheel, but he did NOT  bring any of that up when I came to him asking for a faster wheel.  Many spinners had tried to buy speed from him in the past.  However, spinning speed is not for sale, it must be earned.  And, those spinners who earn speed, will find speed, even if speed is not for sale. (The Gods of Speed demand sacrifices!)  And, the group makes sure that speed is not for sale. Selling real speed would trigger an "arms race."  The group does not want an arms race. The group likes the technology adopted by Queen Victoria's court - and that was not the technology of the (vulgar professional) spinster of 1750, or even 1500.  Rather it was a  romanticized technology from a mythical era.

Real handspun from real hand spinners was something altogether different:

Handspun wool with silk,
gold, and silver.

All Handspun

Handspun

Does anything depicted above look like what is most often called "handspun"?  However, it is all handspun.

I want to spin handspun!  The textiles depicted above were made by vulgar professionals.  They had,  "the spinning wisdom of the ages".  Cottage spinners do not add silk, gold, and silver to their wool yarns.

I am not going to get there unless I spin fine and fast.  That requires real spinning tools and real spinning skills.  I am not going to get there with toys and romance.

The depictions above  prove that it was done. The "Boss Cows" of the spinning community are wrong.  Look at how wool was being moved and monetized in Edward's time  (circa 1295)  Yes, in Edward's time there was large scale, industrial, hand spinning in Italy. This is very different from the romanticized, cottage spinning of the Victorian myth. 

see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7788660.stm  

Edwards use of wool futures is not in the books on textile history, and yet Edward's wars helped Italian spinners (and weavers) get British wool cheap!  Why are not these kinds of financial incentives for the Florentine textile industry in the books on textile history?  Such omissions are why I do not trust textile historians. Our textile historians are steeped in the Victorian textile myth of cottage crafts.

See   https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/velv/hd_velv.htm  on how crafts secrets were controlled and protected.  

The secrets of dyeing and weaving were carefully guarded, and the most skilled craftspeople were, at certain times, prohibited from leaving their native cities for fear they would share their expertise with rival manufacturers. The quality controls and strict oversight of the production of luxury textiles reflect their importance not only to their owners but to the entire society that contributed to their production.

 Modern academic standards of documenting historic textile technology are a large part of the Victorian Textile myth. One does not see a craft technology depicted in art until the technology was long outdated.   Academic standards of documenting historic textile technology are silly.  We know better.  Yet they are recited back to me over and over, again and again.  

However valuable silk was to Italy, wool was a larger net source of wealth.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Renaissance  They got there, by miniaturizing silk throwing equipment into the flyer/bobbin assembly which was used for wool - much earlier than it shows up in art, or even LDV's notebooks.   This gave Northern Italy a huge competitive advantage in spinning.  Spinning is the largest cost in wool textiles.  A large competition advantage in spinning, is a competitive advantage in textiles. 

Britain was selling wool (cheaply) because British spinners were not as good as Italian and later Flemish spinners.  Look at tapestries  produced circa 1500.  The spinning in the  British  tapestries is not as good as those from other parts of Europe.  The British cottage spinners taken as a model by the Victorian Court were not the best spinners n Europe. By and large modern English Speaking hand spinners do not recognize the Italian, French, and Flemish contributions to hand spinning.

Modern textile historians get all wound up in their academic standards so they cannot see what happened or figure out when it happened.  That is not my problem.  My problem, my worry,  is to make my next bobbin of thread a little more like the handspun depicted above. 

I am a hand spinner in an arms race with 14th century Italian hand spinners.

Beginning to End

Begin with the end in mind.

Is a yarn that you might be able to cobble into "some textile" at some point in the future what you need to focus on at this time?  Think of all of your wants and needs, including textiles. Is yarn for  "some textile" the effort that you want to make at this time?

In particular, I was thinking about the piles of "art yarns" that I saw at CNCH.  If you are going to put the effort into making art yarn then think the project through, and make a finished object that is worthy of being worn on the red carpet. Having thought the project through from beginning to end, the object will be better.

Think of a builder.  Do they just take a load of wood to a lot and start cutting and nailing?  No, they have a plan, and they take the sizes of wood and amounts of supplies needed for the plan.  They stop to make a foundation. Without a plan, they might not have the big beams that they need to hold everything up and support the load. If the builder has a good plan, he can use it to build house after house, and they will all be good, strong, beautiful houses.

If the builder is very clever, they can build strong structures that will withstand storms, without using those big beams. However, this takes real planning.  Likewise the textile crafter needs to plan for rain, washing machines, dry cleaners, wear, abrasion, stretch,  wind, sun, cold, heat, sweat, and etc.  This takes real thought and cleverness.

That said, a lot of the yarns that I use are based on rather standard singles.  I have no problem spinning long wool 10s and 40s because I like these singles as building blocks for yarns used for outer wear and socks. I have plans for the fabrics/objects that I like, and I use those plans over and over because I know they work.  If  I have the singles on hand, they can be quickly  plied up and dyed to make a very nice, and functional fabric. I can do this, because I have thought these objects through, I make these objects on a regular basis, and I have thought about how much I need to produce.

These singles are my "2x4s", and like a builder I have different kinds of 2x4s.  A builder might have 2x4s of oak, pine, red wood, and maple. Each has its proper use, and there are stacks of each in the lumber shed, ready to use.   My stocks of singles are  from different fibers and each has its proper use. If I just spin yarns and then plan the textiles from the yarns, then at some point, I will have yarns that want to be out door fencing (red wood) when what I need now is kitchen cabinets (maple).  If I let the already spun yarn define textile  projects, then I may end up with not quite enough yarn or a little bit too much.  If there is not enough, then the design fails, and if there is too much then there is wasted time, effort, and fiber.

If you are not particular about using the right yarn for your textile, you might as well use mill spun. Mill spun works very well for generic textiles.  If you are going to the effort of making a textile from hand spun, you might as well plan it out and make an exceptional textile.

No, it is better to be an intentional spinner, and spin the yarns wanted for the objects desired.  See Alden Amos, The Big Book of Hand Spinning.

8 hours of spinning

Yesterday, after lunch (1 pm ) sat down to spin, and at 9 pm, I had the above skein of 400 yards of 5-ply (~6 oz), sport weight yarn. The 8 hours includes spinning 2,000 yards of singles, plying, all wind-off and yarn management, and changing flyers. Within that time, I also fixed a nice dinner for my wife and ate with her, had some coffee, and did some garden chores, so it was not like race conditions.

The point is, one can easily spin and ply 400 yards of gansey yarn in 8 hours, so 30 to 40 hours of  spinning time is a very reasonable estimate for total spinning time for the yarn for a  gansey.

Note the ends are tied together, but there are no leases on the skein.  In this project, the singles are not being blocked, so the yarn comes off the plying bobbin reasonably balanced.

Ply Twist

To make a long story short, the old Fisherman's Wool was rather tightly spun singles of fine wool, rather loosely plied. When knit, the plies in the yarn would spread out to form a web.  This facilitated knitting weather proof fabrics.  A sweater that I knit from old LB FW remains the warmest sweater that I own.   In contrast, the British Breeds and Frangipani yarns had much more ply twist so that they tend to leave holes in the fabric between the yarns,  making it more difficult to knit weather proof fabrics. Thus 7 years ago,  there were at least two different styles of 5-ply yarn that produced two very different kinds of fabric. The LB FW of today is a third style of yarn that produces another, different style of fabric.

I had to think about it for a year, but it was the difference in ply twist between the old LB FW and the  British Breeds / Frangipani yarns that convinced me that I needed to learn to spin.  And today, 7 years later, when I sit down to plan a yarn, the first thing that I think about is the how much ply twist does this object want?  Am I looking for stitch definition or a dense fabric?  This is intrinsic to the nature of the object.

We can see from the two LB FWs and the traditional British 5-ply yarn that there is a good deal of variability in what mills think is a good gansey yarn. This goes back to my concept of purpose.   A yarn is not exceptional until its purpose has been defined. The old LB FW, the British yarns, and the new LB FW are three classes of  5-ply yarn with different purposes.

Today there are more sources of yarn for gansey (Guernseys, Jerseys, and Aran) sweaters. There is Frangipani, Blacker Yarns, Iriss of Penzance, Upton, Sunday, Artyarn, and a few others including a bunch of acrylic blends. Of these, I have to salute Blacker Yarns for their use of long wool.  Still, when I think of an object, I cannot be certain that I can find the right yarn for that object from a commercial source.

A competent hand spinner can replicate any of these commercial 5-ply gansy yarns with ease.   The are all based on 5,600 ypp worsted plies, e.g., 10s. 10s are easy to spin. You can spin them in long wool or fine wool.  You can spin them tight, and ply them firm, to produce a very thin, dense, smooth yarn with very crisp stitch definition.  Or you can spin them loose and ply them tight to produce a big round yarn that make the stitches really "pop".   All of a sudden the commercial offerings of gansey yarns seem rather meager.

The exceptional knitter that can also spin is not limited to what some mill thinks gansey yarn should look like.  Fine wool and long wool is always available. Dyes are always available.  The exceptional knitter that can spin, can always spin the right gansey yarn needed for an object -- when it is needed.  If you are a competent spinner, you can spin the 5-ply needed for a gansey in 30 or 40 hours.  Since it takes between 100 and 200 hours to knit an elaborate gansey, the spinning costs between 30 and 20 percent of  the project time.  That is not cost effective for a professional, but for a recreational knitter that enjoys the process, it is reasonable.

I also am willing to put a few more hours into a gansey because I know that a little more effort will let it last much longer, or because I know that the yarn I spin will be warmer - thus I can get by with a ridiculously small bag when I go sailing. For me that extra 30 hours is cost effective because my sweaters last longer, so I spend less time knitting.  In the same way, better yarn was cost effective for knitters knitting for their loved sailors 300 years ago.  Unlike, Lion Brand or British Breeds, I use long wool because it is much more durable, and I spin it tight so that it wears like iron, then I ply it loosely (looser than BB) so that after knitting it forms a dense, weatherproof fabric. Over all, the extra effort to spin my own yarn saves me time and money.

Having the correct yarn makes exceptional knitting much easier. Back in the days when I knit with British mill spun 5-ply yarns, I used very pointy needles.  Experience with swaving, and  now that many of my 5-ply yarns have less ply twist means that today, I tend to use blunter needles that I  pop into the stitches - like swaving pricks.  (Does not work for Eastern Cross Stitch.)  The process is fast and produces a very tight, uniform fabric.  Today, I would say that one can knit fast with either pointy needles or with blunt needles depending on the yarn being used and the stitch being produced.  They are two different techniques, each with their own virtues for different kinds of yarns to produce different kinds of objects.  To say that one needs pointy needles to knit fast is not the whole story.