plying and cabling

I was using some commercial, 2-ply warp thread to cable up some gansey yarn.  It was so easy!! It made me forget everything I had said about using a tension box to ply. And, that is one argument for cable construction yarns - you are plying 2 or 3-ply yarns that are balanced and  are easy to work with.  On the other hand, plying balanced yarns means that they must be well blocked (again) with steam prior to knitting.

For straight plying high twist singles, I like a tension box device, and a plying comb.  Most most modern Lazy Kates are sold on the basis of attaching to the wheel so they are handy, or having an attractive design, or storing compactly, and they are not sold based on how well the Kate actually works.

Blocking high twist singles prior to plying is like ironing the fabric before a sewing project - it makes everything come out smoother and neater. Then, twist has to be calculated, measured, and inserted.  When the singles have been blocked, ply twist cannot be done by feel. And, if you are working fast, then the flow of the yarn over your hand will burn or cut your hand - hence the plying comb. To say that you always control the the tension of the plies with your bare hands is to say that you like to work slowly. There is  nothing wrong with enjoying the process, and there is nothing wrong with working fast enough to produce a useful amount of yarn in a reasonable amount of time.

The descent of knitting

For the last 3 or 4 years most of my knitting has been done on 2.38 mm (~ US#1)  needles.  Now, after much swatching and soul searching, I have moved onto 1.5  or 1.6 mm needles (~US# 000).  I note that all of my current knitting is being done on 1.63 mm gansey needles (knitting pins) and 1.98 mm swaving pricks (which produces a similar gauge for me.)

If I knit on the 1.6 mm  needles with gansey yarn, I get ~ 11 spi .  If I knit on the 2.38 mm needles I get ~8 spi with standard commercial gansey yarn. That means that the fabric knit on the finer needles is much denser and warmer -- despite being much thinner and lighter.  This goes beyond what I have been knitting.  Thus, we enter into the glory that is fabrics knit on "knitting pins".  Yes, now I am knitting sweaters on 14" long US 000 needles. Current knitting projects are a gansey for myself from 6-ply @ 1680 ypp and socks from 5-ply @ 1000 ypp. And, there is an order for a pair of fine gloves

(On a recent trip back East, TSA allowed a set of 6 x 1.6 mm x 25 cm lace needles in my carry-on baggage in a clear plastic tube without comment. Frankly, I think those needles are "pointy" and should not be used anywhere people sit close together.)

The other night at the dinner table, I was sitting across from a knitter with 60 years of experience.  She has daughters that knit, so the cumulative knitting experience of the family is more than 100 years.  She thought the (1.6 mm) needles that I was using were too flexible. I was using them for the gusset of a sock being swaved from commercial 5-ply gansey yarn. I like swaving on aircraft. It is fast, ergonomic, and the needles are blunt, compact, and do not roll away if dropped.

In these socks the ankle and foot are swaved and the heel gusset and toe are knit on the DPN, because swaving produces fast, easy tubes, and the DPN are easier for decreases. Thus, most of the sock is swaved, and I use DPN just for the gusset and the toe.

As the conversation continues, it turns out that the Senior Knitter had never knit a fabric as dense as what I was knitting, nor even, had she ever knit socks. (Her daughters knit socks, but not that tight.) And, she thought the sport weight yarn I was using was "awfully thin". (It was worsted spun so it has less volume than the synthetic yarns she uses).

This set me to thinking.  For knitting tight fabrics, I like the most flexible needle that will knit a fabric at the firmness that I desire.  The more flexible needle is easier on the hands.  The knitter across from me likes aluminum needles at that gauge.   I have  bins of such needles, but I packed the SS needles into the project bag because they were stiff enough, but easy on the hands.

Basically, she likes the flex of her aluminum knitting needles, and I can understand that.  However, I do not know which needles I want for a particular project until I have done a set of swatchs and compared the performance of all of the potential needles.  The winner of the recent comparisons was the hollow SS needles used with a Shetland knitting belt.  Tubular needles used with a knitting sheath do tend to crimp and collapse, and I have said this before, and likely will say it again. Tubular needles tend to be more fragile.  If I was a serious knitter, I would always use the solid spring steel needles because I know they are more durable.  I have no confidence that these tubular needles will endure to knit more than a few ganseys.

No, I do not "just know from experience" which needle is better because I do not do the same project over and over. I try to make each project better, faster, and cheaper.  I do not have a stack of the same objects differing only by color. However, with 60 years of knitting, she knew just from experience that those needles were too flexible. I have moved from the spring-steel lace needles to the hollow stainless steel needles because they produce a similar fabric, and the more flexible needles are lighter and less likely to fall out of loose fabrics.

If I were a serious knitter, I would only knit with the solid spring-steel needles because they endure, and that is a virtue for the serious knitter.  I doubt if any of the the tubular SS needles would endure to knit more than a few ganseys.  Those blankets are more loosely knit, the tubular SS needles will easily knit hundreds or even thousands of such objects.  However frankly if I was knitting so loosely, I would just use bamboo needles.

But I digress. "Knitting pins", produce a qualitatively different fabric.  It is a lot of work, but the results are impressive. No amount of "tight knitting" with bigger needles will produce the same results.  At one time there was a whole industry built on such knitting with very fine needles.  They did not do it for fun, they did it because it produces a wonderful fabric.  Try it.

Confucius say, "Only one who attempts the absurd can achieve the impossible."

Productivity

The setup I used to spin the loom stuff gave a "ratio" of ~20:1. I treadle at a little over 100 strokes per minute, resulting in a bobbin speed between 2,000 and 2,400 rpm. At that speed it took ~200 hours to spin the loom stuff or 3 hours/ weekday for 3 months.

At a ratio of 10:1 the bobbin speed would have been only just over 1,000 rpm and it would have taken me 3/hr /evening for 6 months. At a ratio of 5:1 it would have taken a year of weeknights to spin the stuff - and it is just hard to plan a project that long.

Spinning fast makes more projects plausible.  It makes more, and finer plies feasible.

The weaving stuff has grist of about 2,800 ypp, and thus ~ 5 tpi. For a finer single needing more twist, I  use a higher ratio. Now the wheel is set for spinning 5,600 ypp/ 9  tpi singles with a ratio closer to 30:1.  I use a similar ratio to spin fines that want 23 tpi. That comes to less than 200 yards per hour production, which is ok for worsted but not really fast enough for woolen.

If I go much above that range of ratios, I start getting drive band slippage. And once a drive band starts slipping, it slips a lot. Once a drive band starts slipping, the nature of the friction between the drive band and the whorl it is slipping against changes. Dynamic friction is different than static friction.

Drive band slippage and actual speed is more important than the "ratio".

Not available today

By 1910, American fishermen and sailors had been using frame knit sweaters for more than 200 years.  The British hand knit garments were fractional warmer and more durable, but the frame knit sweaters were cost effective and very functional.

I really do not care whether the sweaters used by Shackelton were hand knit or frame knit, they were very warm. What drives me crazy is that we have forgotten how to make such sweaters.  It drives me crazy that we have forgotten that such sweaters can exist.

I love those garments for outdoor work and play, but the only way I can get them is  to make them myself.  When I was a forestry student, I could still get military surplus (frame knit) woolens made at the end of WWI, but never used.  Nothing that tightly knit that is commercially available today.

Most modern hand knit wear is loosely  knit. Most modern frame knit is loosely knit.  What am I to do when I want to sleep in the snow or sail in the wind?  I knit it myself in the tradition of British knitters knitting for folks like Cabot, Cook, and the generations of British sailors and fisherman  that came before and after Cabot and Cook.  I could modify a knitting frame to knit that tightly, but it is not worth the effort for the few that I need for myself.

Hand knit wool is low tech, sustainable, and very functional.  Most modern knitters have forgotten hand knit wool can be warm.  Not, I mean really warm.

Gansey ven·ti·la·tion

Ganseys evolved on board wooden sailing ships. There, everything was wet, or at least damp.

To be useful, ganseys had to provide extraordinary ventilation, and keep the men dry in a world of wet.

The very first thing I noticed about my first real gansey was the way it ventilated. It's first test was downhill skiing. I put it on at the car, and it was warm in the blast of freezing air draining off the mountain. Then, it was a long walk up hill, and we paused as others adjusted their layers because they were sweating, but my gansey just vented to keep me cool.  At the base, they layered up again, but as I cooled, the gansey stopped venting and I was warm.

At lunch, I was first in the beer line as they took their layers off.  After lunch, I was first in the lift line as they layer up again.

It was at that point that the great advantage of a real gansey hit me - a sailor could sleep in his gansey, and tumble out to shorten sail or repair storm damage needing to stop and find other layers of clothing in a dark and storm tossed ship. A good gansey would keep him alive while he worked a few hours in the rigging - even in a storm. Then, in the warmth below decks it vented in ways I had never thought about.

To make it work, the fabric had to be knit very tightly.  Knitting so tightly took special tools, such as a knitting sheath or knitting stick.  Before I put the sweater on, I expected the warmth, I did not expect the lamentation. The ventilation was an  epiphany.

I had knit sweaters. I had worn sweaters.  I did not understand how different the fabric knit with a knitting sheath could be.

Knitting sheath knit sweaters have to be experienced to be believed. They are outside of anything you consider possible. They are out there in that realm of things like "bananas frozen in liquid nitrogen that will drive nails" that common sense says are impossible.

.

woolen for knitting

I need a new gansey. Some of my old ones are showing the signs of long use..

I have a credit at one of the big yarn and fiber emporiums so the gansey can be anything I want.

What do I want? Long ago, I settled on 5-ply gansey yarn from Romney as my favorite sweater yarn, but I now I spin better and faster.  And, I do less rock climbing and more sailing.  Is there a better yarn? This has triggered a rather obsessive round of spinning samples and knitting swatches.

Certainly, before I started spinning, I knit a lot of mill-spun woolen and Lopi yarns, but much, much less after I discovered worsted spun sock and gansey yarns.  I am not even certain that I have finished a knit object from woolen spun yarns in the last couple of years.  All the objects in the WIP bins are woolen, all the finished objects are worsted.

I went back over all of my sweaters and swatches, and decided that I like knit wear from worsted spun yarns better.  I do wear my sweaters knit from woolen yarns, but I like the sweaters knit worsted spun better.  Thus, the worsted sweaters are more worn, while the woolen sweaters are left more pristine.  Archaeologists should remember this effect.

The mill-spun yarn in the stash is mostly woolen. The mill-spun worsted-spun yarns have mostly been knit, leaving the woolen yarns in their bins. The stash also contains a bunch of fine woolen yarns that I spun. For example, a while back Dana gave me a good price on a few pounds of CVM left over from Lambtown. Now, it is a big bin of fine, soft woolen singles just waiting for a good project.  Should I ply a few of those into the yarn for my gansey to give it extra softness?  No, after much sampling, I like fabrics knit from worsted yarns.  That is why there is still a bin of woolen singles in the stash. Now that I have a loom, they will become weft.

The yarn I settled on for my next gansey is worsted spun, constructed as  5 x 2-ply cable into 1,000 ypp / 10 ply gansey yarn.  The fiber is a generic Falklands fine wool. It will get knit on 2 mm gansey needles with a knitting sheath. The 2 mm needles because they are less stiff, actually produce a looser, softer fabric than the 2.38 mm spring steel needles.  Gauge is ~ 9 spi  The fabric is rather thin, warm, and durable.  It is perfect for a wool "sweat shirt", something that will stand up to cold, wind, and rain.  It will be as light as a fleece shell, but warmer.

This comes back to the old question of: Why 5-ply?

Today my response is: When you consider the universe of possible yarn constructions, 5-ply is an economical compromise.  10s (worsted spun 5,600 ypp singles) were the base of the English weaving industry, and thus were produced by every contract spinner - and widely available everywhere.  5-ply is about the point where those weaving singles when plied together are thick enough to knit into an outdoor garment suitable for the climate in the 15th Century.  On the other hand, 5-ply is cheaper than 6-ply, and people did not want to buy that extra ply that they did not need.  As regards the extra effort, that is in the spinning of the finer singles, and there is a payback because the finer singles are warmer and more durable. The extra effort to ply 5 singles together is paid back because the yarn is warmer and more durable.  The bottom line for 5-ply is that it was the cheapest thing that works.  Today, many spinners think plying up a 5-ply yarn takes some skill.  It does, spinning is a skilled craft.  However, once the spinner has the skill to make 5-ply, it is easy.

Over the last couple of years, I have made a lot of various plain yarn constructions ranging form 2-ply to 12-ply and then cabling 2 and 3-ply yarns into yarns ranging from 4 to 24-ply. Certainly 6-ply (worsted weight) and 12-ply (Aran weight) have virtues for extreme cold, and I have to thank Judith Mackenzie for pushing me into making a long series of 6-ply and 12-ply yarns.  The difference between 12-ply Aran weight yarn and the 3-ply semi-worsted mill spun that is sold as Aran weight is the difference between "LIGHTING!" and a 'lighting bug".  Real 12-ply Aran weight is the right yarn for knitting polar gear (on long stiff needles with a knitting sheath.)  

The easy way to make Aran weight yarn is to use a weaver's bobbin rack as a lazy Kate and route the yarn through a tension box as weavers use for warping. Cabled yarns will be more durable, but not as warm.  Cabled yarns also give better stitch definition.

All  in all, I like the way 5-ply made from singles of 5,600 ypp worsted spun wool knits up. It can be knit loosely to breath in warm weather and it can be knit tightly to be weatherproof.  For me this answers the question of,  "Why 5-ply?".  I think people worked with different yarns for knitting, and liked the fabrics made from 5-ply.  Moreover, their customers liked the fabrics made from 5-ply.

I was going to say that plying 5-ply sport weight is the same effort as plying 2-ply sport weight, but that is not true.  The 5-ply takes twice as much twist, and twist is energy.  What I mean to say is that making 5-ply with a low windage flier is faster than making 2-ply with a high windage flyer.  And, most modern flyers are high windage.  It is much, much faster for me to work with a small flier and windoff frequently than to work with a large flier and windoff less frequently.  Thus, I work with small fliers except when I need knot free hanks of yarn.  Three knots are the difference between plying a hank in 3 hours and taking a full 9 hours to ply the hank on the Jumbo flyer. (And, I can replace those knots with long splices when I rewind the yarn, meaning the net time for plying on the small flier is ~3.25 hours. )  What can I do with 5.75 hours?  Well, I have a pile of fresh yarn, I can knit!  I like to knit fast because that leaves more time for sailing, gardening, and . . . .

Edited to add that I actually liked the 3x2-ply (1,800 ypp ) yarn so much much that I promptly  started a Sheringham Gansey from it at a gauge of 10 spi. The swatch gauge just kept going  : ) I love these yarns. It is a fairly soft fabric that I am knitting on 14" long, 1.7 mm SS tubular needles with the Shetland knitting belt.

Working with rather fine needles on rather fine yarns in a cool house, I have gotten out the leather knitting apron.  Look at the old pix of knitters - they are all wearing aprons - they knew what they were doing.  Fine DPN are pointy, and aprons protect the legs.   1/12/2014.

Dutch in NZ

One way or another, I am frequently thinking about how the old seamen stayed warm.

It turns out that the Dutch were in NZ 50 years before Captain Cook. Circa 1700, European sailors were braving the Southern Ocean.  Those sailors survived because European knitters had experience clothing fishermen/whalers to work along the edge of the Arctic Sea ice.

While the Southern Ocean has its own special sea conditions, the great enemy of polar seamanship is hypothermia.  The great friend of polar seamanship was the elaborate knit seaman's outfit.  The outfit kept them warm enough to do their job.

The only way to understand such knitting, is to wear it out in a storm.  Knitting with a knitting sheath and long steel needles produces a garment that is unlike any other garment in modern life.  If you have not worn one, you cannot understand it.

You cannot drive "framing" nails into wood with your bare hands, but with a carpenter's hammer, it can be done.  Sorry, when you are building a house, tacks and pin nails that can be pushed in without a hammer just do not count.  Likewise, you cannot knit a weatherproof woolens without a knitting sheath, but with a knitting sheath, it can be done.  Without a knitting sheath, you can knit a sweater that is warm by modern standards, but by polar weather standards, it does not meet performance standards.

Cross-lacing flyers

There is a school of spinning that thinks spinning fine is facilitated by cross lacing the flyer.

No!, If there is so much take-up that it is difficult to spin fine, then there is a problem with the setup or maintenance of the wheel. First clean and oil the wheel and make sure everything is set up correctly.  Cross-lacing will always slow down a well setup and well maintained wheel.

As proof, I can easily spin singles of 22,400 ypp (very fine lace weight) at rates of a couple hundred yards per hour without cross-lacing my flyer.  I can spin 5,600 ypp  ( heavy lace weight) woolen singles at rates of 500 yards per hour.  I spin miles and miles of "lace weight" yarn per month. (I like knitting yarns plied up from "lace weight" singles.  The yarn for a gansey contains 6 miles of lace weight singles.) And, in the last 3 months, I spun 36,000 yards of 2,800 ypp singles for the loom.

I do not get out much, but I assure you that there are not many people that can spin that fine, that fast.  I can not spin that fast with my flyer cross laced.  Cross-lacing slows me way down. If your teacher says cross-lacing is better, ask for a demonstration.  I can give you a demonstration, I will charge you, but setting up a flyers is one of those things that is worth knowing how to do correctly

Spinning faster

Why not spin faster?

Is it more work?  No, with my Alden Amos flies it actually takes less physical effort effort to spin length of yarn that it takes to spin the same length of yarn with the Ashford stock flyers. I have a different ratio, so I do not have to treadle any faster, and it takes less treadle effort. So, it comes down to a matter of drafting the yarn. Drafting faster is a matter of skill - not more skill, but of different skills.

Now, I am going to sit at my wheel for 3 or 4 hours.  Do I want to get up with 350 yards of yarn or with 1,600 yards of yarn?  What is the difference?  Slightly different wheel setup and holding my hands differently.  The physical effort is almost the same.

Spinning faster is a matter of working smarter rather than working harder.  Spinning faster is a matter of learning the craft so one can spin more with less effort.

Shackleton

Last night there was this thing on PBS about retracing Shackleton's open boat voyage.

They claimed to be using authentic period knit clothing. They were not.

Look at the photos from Shackleton's trip and the modern re-enactment.  Shackleton's knit clothing was knit using knitting sheaths that provided the leverage to knit much tighter and more weatherproof clothing.  The modern replicas were knit much more loosely, and were not as weatherproof and warm.

Likewise, Shackleton's knit clothing provided a great deal more padding between the sailor and points corners that attack the sailor in a small boat in rough weather.  This is something that one must experienced to appreciate.  A well knit gansey pads against against corners and blows to the body in ways that are qualitatively different from modern, looser knitting.  I had been wearing my Mustang Survival coat for reefing in foul weather.  Then, one day I wore my gansey.  That night - no bruises across my chest from the boom banging against me.  It was a revelation of the virtues of a well knit gansey.

The re-enactment expedition was poorly served by their textile consultants.  The knitters, who knit the modern garments did not know the craft of knitting for sailors in polar conditions.  Their stupidity and ignorance caused hypothermia that increased sea sickness and dehydration.  Hypothermia decreases mental judgement.  Hypothermia decreases physical dexterity.

Shackleton's knit clothing was much, much warmer than the clothing worn by the enactors.  This is what happens when knitters and textile historians do knot know their physics and do not do their math home work.

One can look at the photographs of Shackleton's men, and estimate fabric thickness and density.  From that one can calculate  the "warmth" of the fabric.  Then, one produces fabric of similar warmth. The responsible knitters then tests to fabric to ensure that it is warm enough.  Testing garments for warmth is easy.  Find a good polar vortex storm, put on the garment, and sit in storm while you knit. If the garment won't keep you warm as you sit on the quay knitting (watching for a boat carrying a loved one to come out of the storm), then it is not warm enough to sail the Southern Ocean.

When I replicated such sweaters, I used McAusland heavy 3-ply knit on US#3  long steel needles with a knitting sheath. It was about 200 hours of very hard work, and it was the single most difficult knitting project I ever did.  I later wore that sweater to prune an apple orchard during a week of snow, wind, and freezing rain - that included sustained gale winds - It was below freezing, raining, and the wind was blowing trees down. The only other people out were the rescue workers and linemen working on downed power lines. That gansey kept me warm and toasty all day, every day for more than a week's work in the storm.  I had ice climbing gear from Patagonia in my baggage, but the gansey was warmer and more comfortable in those  extreme conditions.  (These trees held my mother's collection of  300 antique apple grafts, and careful judgement was required to prune them. These were full sized trees, and everything was icy so physical dexterity was critical.)

When new, that sweater was as warm as the sweaters that Shackleton and his crew wore.  However, it was not as durable.   Shackleton's knit wear endured on the ice. I respect that greatly.  The kind of mill spun yarns used to knit Shackleton's clothing are no longer available.

That is why I took up hand spinning.

The warp is spun

For the last 3 months, there has been a large plastic laundry basket of wool next to the spinning wheel. It would get refilled a couple of times per week as spinning progressed, so there was always at least a pound or two of wool in it.

Yesterday, there was an obsessive/compulsive spinning session, and the basket is empty.  My legs are sore from treadling long and fast, but the basket is empty. The spinning bobbin is full, all the blocking reels are full, and I need to make some more storage bobbins, but this project is spun.  12 pounds of wool into 36,000 yards of singles in about 200 hours.

That seems very slow, however, it includes climbing a learning curve on how to manage singles.  Previously, I had simply stored singles on bobbins, but I ran out of bobbins. So, I learned to wind the singles on niddy noddys and steam block them. This takes a more robust niddy noddy design. This gives some insight as to why the use of niddy noddys for measured lengths of yarn for sale was outlawed.. Yarn wound on a niddy noddy tends to be much tighter than yarn wound on a skeiner.  Steam it, and it gets really tight. Many modern niddy noddy modern designs are not suited for steam blocking - you will end up breaking the yarn as you try to remove the yarn from the niddy noddy. Thus, I had to make some better niddy noddys.  A well blocked, well  made skein wound up into a "pretzel", is stable - until it gets wet.  Then it needs to be re-blocked.  Small skeins of knitting yarn that get wet can be (sort of) blocked by hanging a small weight on them.  A hank of woolen singles that gets wet wants to be wound onto a blocking reel.

Even well blocked singles wound into a cake or ball need a core. Center pull balls/cakes of high twist singles are not stable over periods of  weeks.

Bobbins are to weavers like clamps are to wood workers - you never have enough. Today the bench was clear of  wool carding/combing stuff for the first time in weeks, and by late afternoon there was a big bin of bobbins in process.  There are a bunch of bobbins on both the cone rack and the bobbin rack with mill spun warp on them. tomorrow they will be emptied by plying those warp ends up into 5-ply gansey yarn. It is actually a very nice knitting yarn. In fact, these days, it is my favorite "mill spun" knitting yarn.  I need those bobbins.

Now to weave it.

I think about the problems of the fellows packing saddle bags of singles from the spinners to the weavers by horse train in the 13th century. They would have been out in the weather for days on end.  It would have been very hard to keep those hanks of singles dry.  If they did get wet, then winding off those skeins of fine high twist singles would have required great skill.  Those old timers still have their secrets.

 

  

5 days of spinning

One of my goals for December 2013, was to spin a total of 5,000 yards (1.8 lb.) of worsted warp within 5 consecutive  days.

I just could not get it together to do that. Several day's production were well over 1,200 yards, but I would get to the fifth day of spinning and I would get interrupted, so I never got over ~4,500 yards in 5 days.  It may not happen on this project as I have only a couple of  lb of warp left to spin.

On the other hand, this fall has not been a complete bust spinning wise.  The gray bin in the corner has ~12 lb/36,000 yards of  hand spun singles in it, all spun within the last 3 months. About half are worsted warp and the rest are woolen weft. It is all 2,800 ypp so it is low twist, and it was easy to spin.

Later in January, I am going to go do a show and tell to attempt to persuade a wheel maker to make a line of faster wheels for spinners that want more yarn for the time they spend spinning. Small changes in design would allow very fast wheels to be made/sold for the same price as slow wheels.

Abby says, "It is all about the yarn."  I say, "It is all about better, cheaper, faster yarn!"  I do not need the expense of a "mini-mill". I just want to run my spinning wheel at a reasonable speed.

Steam blocking on niddy noddys.

Spinning singles, winding them on to a niddy noddy, and steam blocking them with a tea kettle on the niddy noddy works. Those hanks/skeins can be leased and stored, or packed off to the dyer. It is very low capital, and there are 10,000 yards of singles in the gray bin that prove that it works for singles intended for weaving.

However, a skeiner or yarn blocker with a steamer is faster.

Alden's Fliers

There was a question about Alden's Fliers that I seem to have lost.

The flier sets I got from Alden had whorls with a DRS of  1.2 - which is about right for 1,600 ypp singles,  but the effective diameter of the bobbin changes quickly. And, I wanted to spin finer singles.

Anyway, talk to Alden, and if possible get Alden to make your whorls.  Mine work, his are beautiful. Ashford whorls will be the wrong DRS.

Fine Hanks

I said that with DRS/DD. one could spin fines as fast as one could draft.

This is done by increasing the ratio between the drive wheel and the flyer/bobbin assembly. And this works up into the garment weight yarns (5,000 -15,000 ypp) but it falls apart at hosiery weights (22,400 ypp/  40s)
Yes, it still takes me a full 8 hours to spin a hank of  hosiery single.  And I would like to point out that at one time this was a very common product, and 8 hours work is a common pay unit.

I know there is a little contradiction between my thought of a 3 hour pay unit, and an 8 hour pay unit, but it does not bother me because we know that higher rates were paid for finer yarns.  It is a point that I can look over, while my critics make much of it. The unit of production could still be a hank, with higher rates for finer yarns.  A spinner could make still more money per day spinning finer yarns.

I do not really care whether this is historically accurate, I do care what the ratios of grist, twist, and total time of productivity tell me about spinning wheel design.  It tells me that if I get me wheel all tuned up, I should be able to spin a  hank of  hosiery single in 3 or 4 hours.  And, that is  a real lesson.   By not getting wound up in little contradictions, I can take useful lessons from history.

Here the lesson is that the problem is not in my drafting, but in the way my wheel is set up and tuned.
____________________
A couple of hours later,

However, I  actually made such bobbins and flier whorls last year, during my "Fines Evolution", but at the time I was focused on "how fine" and not "how fast".  I just never did time trials to see how fast they would spin.  A time trial this morning, says that a hank of  hosiery single in 4 hours is a reasonable pace of production.   It says I can walk into any spinning guild meeting or fiber festival or Stitches and spin a 230 yard bobbin of worsted 40s  in 20 minutes, and that translates into a hank in under 4 hours.  Or, I can sit down with a couple of 1 oz batts and 140 minutes later I have 1600 yd of woolen singles.I promise that everyone that says this cannot be done is going to look like a fool. This not is not a "race pace".  This is not wild flailing. In fact, to spin this fast, I have to keep wasted motion to a minimum.  Yarn quality must be excellent or nothing works at that speed.  This morning's time trial was with 36 count Cotswold. The bobbins are for the AA#1 flier.  The AA#0 flier should be faster, but the bobbins/whorls I made for it actually have a lower ratio.   Someday, I will make more sets of higher speed bobbins for the #0  flier, but right now the wood turning work bench is my wool combing bench as I finish the warp.

A bit of engineering says that there is just no reason why spinners in Flanders could not have been running flier/bobbin assembles at ~2,500 rpm by 1550 CE. Yes, one must drop some modern assumptions such as the use of "leathers".    It turns out that wood-metal bearings actually have a lower coefficient of friction than leather-metal bearings.  The use of leathers is to reduce vibration and problems with alignment.

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A couple of weeks later

Is it easy to spin a hank in 4 hours?  No, it is is work, just like half a day of cutting stone for a  flying buttress on a Gothic cathedral , or half a day at the forge making fine armor, or half a day building a carriage.  It is not hard work like building stone fortifications or making hay.  It takes real skill, and the right tools.  The second advantage is that the combination of skill, good tools, and good fiber required to spin fast is also likely to produce a high quality thread.  If you spin a hank of thread per day, you will get very good at it, and spin a very high quality thread.  If you do not spin a hank of thread per day, you will not be as good a spinner as somebody who does spin a hank a day.  These days, I am spinning 2 hanks per day, and the quality is good.  
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This post was about my evolving  from taking  8 hours to spin a worsted hosiery single to doing the same spinning in 4 hours.  I had the tools.  I had the skill. I had the fiber. All I needed was the idea. I was bound up in the conventions of  "experienced spinners". It was like Bannerman and the 4-minute mile.  Everyone said it could not be done, so nobody did it.

We do not need folks telling us what we cannot do.  If you are a good spinner, sit down and spin with us. We can share ideas, and everyone can come away spinning better. If you just want to say that nobody can spin that fast or that fine, you will be embarrassed.

I am ever so tired of people telling me that I cannot possibly spin as well as I do.  I spin this well because I understand the math and physics of my spinning wheel, so I can design better tools. I spin this well because I do build the tools that I design.  I spin this well because I put in the effort to get really good at fiber preparation.   I spin this well because I practice.  The gray bin in the corner of the family room has 26 miles of my hand spun in it.  That is for one spinning project.  One of my gansey sweaters has 6.5 miles of singles in it.  Compare that to the 2.3 miles of single in a 2-ply worsted weight sweater.  And, gansey singles have more than twice the twist so that gansey yarn  has 6 times the twist of  2-ply worsted yarn.  One result is that the gansey yarn is denser, warmer, and more durable. (Lofty yarn is only warm if it has a wind break layer on either side it.  Otherwise, the flow of air advects heat right through it.   In a hand spun world that means you need to spin yarn for two layers of woven cloth plus the yarn for the knitting.  It is easier to just spin gansey yarn in the first place. ) The other result is that a spinner that making 5-ply gansey yarn gets a lot more practice spinning.

Spinning more Hanks

I am in this for the yarn.  I want better yarn.  That means hand spun.

From the start, I wanted my yarn fast.  I was in this for the yarn, not as a way to pass time.  I was willing to put in the time that the chore of spinning demanded, but I did not want to put any extra time into spinning.

I came to spinning knowing how construction professionals worked. They had good tools, they knew how to use them, and they worked rapidly with no wasted motions. They did the job, and then they went on to the next job.  Spinners on the other hand seemed intent on slowing the work process.  Spindles were designed with large whorls so they spin slowly.  Spinning wheels were designed to spin slowly.

Spinners are in denial.  They say, "No, my wheel is fast."  However, they do not stop an think that flyer/bobbin speed is limited by power transfer through the drive band and Scotch Tension systems brake the flyer/bobbin assembly, and thereby reduce the over-all rate of twist insertion.  Then, they have double drive systems that inherently require drive band slippage.  If there is slippage, then the flyer/bobbin assembly is not going as fast as it would without slippage.  For the last 50 years, spinners have been favoring wheels that had SLOW built into them, and wheel makers built what the market demanded.

Spinners say, "These are traditional designs!"  Ok, traditional designs for what?  Linen! The long fibers of flax need a slower speed, and there were a lot of old linen wheels around.  People assumed that a spinning wheel was a spinning wheel, and used old linen wheels as the design prototype for wool wheels.  So what is the difference between the design of a good linen wheel and a good wool wheel?  The linen wheel wants less speed, and the wool wheel wants more speed.  Scotch Tension systems are a logical engineering choice for a wheel designed for linen. They are less logical for a wool wheel. They are not at all logical for spinning cotton.

A traditional wheel design for woolen spinning is Irish Tension. There is no additional braking to slow the flyer/bobbin assembly.  There is no drive band slippage to slow the the flyer/bobbin assembly. The mechanism is simple to make and inexpensive. If you wan to spin medium woolens (30,000 yd/lb and less), bobbin lead is a very good and traditional approach. It is simple and easy to set up. And yet, I remember the feeling of rebellion, when I first tried IT.  Everyone was telling me that most spinners were much happier with ST.  And, yes, IT with the big Ashford flyer does have a very strange feel to it. The sudden increase in take-up at higher speed is very disconcerting for the beginner who is not forewarned.   The beginner (with a big flyer) says WTF, and abandons the concept. The beginner with a small flier feels no take-up and says, WTF and abandons the concept. The ST friction brake provides a steady take-up pressure as speed increases that is easy for the beginner.  While the IT takeup is a cube function that is small at lower speeds, and then increases very rapidly at high speed.   With the big Ashford  fliers, IT does produce excessive take-up pull when one tries to spin fast (more than ~800 rpm).  However, a small flier such as AA's #1 flier produces very reasonable take-up tensions at speeds in the range of 1,800 - 2,200 rpm. On the other hand take-up at speeds less than 1,500 rpm is negligible. At slow speed, one can spin very fragile yarns or make pig tails. For conventional yarns, one either spins fast or it does not work. The AA #0 flier running in IT generates reasonable take-up at speeds in the range of  2,400 - 3,200 rpm.

For the expert with a flyer that has a low aerodynamic cross section,  that low take-up at low speed and high take-up at high speed is a very powerful tool.  The expert can adjust take-up by altering the bobbin rpm by treadling slower or faster. The take-up adjust is precise over a wide range, fast, and does not require the hands to leave the yarn.  All of which  is important when yarn is running through your fingers at 10 yards per minute. However, the spinner much be prepared spin fast, and know that slowing down will stop take-up before the bobbin stops.  This is a set of skills that have fallen out of spinning lore.

Now look at the literature.  Do the experienced spinners warn the beginners? Why not?

What if one wants to spin worsted fines (30,000 to 48,000 ypp)? Fines require some 20+ tpi. Scotch Tension systems will get you there, but it is clumsy and very, very slow.  IT is faster, but it gets very delicate as the flyer is pulled by a fresh yarn of only 20 fibers.  Modern double drive with slippage is a fraction better than ST. Differential Rotation Speed Double Drive is the best engineering design for spinning yarns in this class, but one must prepare and fabricate a specific engineering design for the grist. This is worthwhile if you plan on spinning many miles of a particular grist. Then, these yarns can be spun as fast as they can be drafted, and well prepared fiber can be drafted very fast.  Traditionally, hand spinners did spin fines as a commercial product.  Here, "commercial product" means the yarns were spun by hand rapidly.  Differential Rotation Speed Double Drive has no equal for hand spinning worsted fines.

I spin yarn as I need it. I benchmark how fast I spin, so that I can evolve and improve my spinning.  I do not care how fast you spin, but I do care how fast I spin. I want to make sure that I am spinning at a reasonable rate.  If others are mired in myth and cannot believe what I do, that is not my problem.

My problem is to make the yarn that I need, in the time that I have.

Hanks

I started spinning because I wanted better gansey yarn.  So, I spun worsted, and I spun as fast as I could.  i wondered how fast other spinners could spin but never got very good numbers.

I got to the point where half a day's spinning was ~560 yards of 5,600 ypp - a worsted hank. That made the math easy. This made me think that a "hank" was a unit of work for a professional spinner. It was likely the minimum amount of work for which a spinner would be paid. It was an easy half-day's work,a nd an expert spinner could do 3 or 4 per day. I still think of a worsted hank as between 3 and 4 hours work depending on the grist, twist, and fiber prep.

If we look at AA's calculation on how fast a spinner can spin, he gets 300 inch/ minute for spinning woolen on a great wheel and he indicates that is for an active spinner.  Extending that out it is 3.2 hours to spin the 1600 yards that was woolen hank.  Add in the 15 minutes per hour for winding and steaming and we have just under 4 hours to spin a woolen hank on an average great wheel. Is that fast!?

I have been spinning the woolen weft (2,800 ypp) using Irish Tension and AA's #0 flier  mounted on the DT Traddy, and a woolen hank takes me ~3 hours, wound and steamed.  That makes it a nice unit of work, with an expert spinner being able to do 4 in a very long day.  A #0  spinning bobbin holds 230 yards of yarn at this grist, so a woolen  hank is 7 bobbins worth, and I fill a bobbin in ~20 minutes.  Is that a problem?  Do I want a bigger bobbin?  Well a bigger bobbin would need a bigger flyer, and that would be slower. (A new generation of graphite fliers may change this.)  I like the small and fast.  For weft, I leave the yarn in skeins of 230 yards, and 7 of those skeins makes it look like I have done something useful. The weft bin has about 3 kilo of skeins in it, and I have some more to do. So, I am up the experience curve, and I am motivated to work fast.

Yes, a hank (worsted or woolen) is an easy half-day's work, for a good spinner.  No, you are not going to get there on most modern commercial wheels, but there are a couple of dozen hand spinners that spin at this rate on a routine basis.

the literature

In 2002, I made some predictions about moulins on Greenland, and many, including RS said something to the effect of:

Nonsense, we have never seen anything like that!  It is not likely to happen. RS said "Read the literature!"  

Four years later, RS published the first eye witness account of moulin formation on Greenland in Science. The moulin formed just like I said it would.  Four years earlier, there had been NO discussion of phenomenon in the peer reviewed literature.  It was not considered "plausible".  The literature was wrong.   I had read the literature, and then I had done some thinking.

Also in 2002, I predicted that we would see a major Arctic sea ice decline within 10 years.  Many, including GS said, that is not possible, and told me to "read the literature",  and he used the strongest slurs available.  In 2007, we had the Arctic sea ice decline, and by 2010 GS admitted that I had been correct and the literature had been wrong.  It only took 8 years.  The truth is that I had read the literature, but I had also done some thinking.

One friend asked me, "Where do you get this stuff?" I told him that I walked around my garage, shouting and arguing with myself, and waving my arms  -- which is about how Richard Feynman answered the same question.

I am not interested in textile history -- except as it leads to a better textile future.  I got knitting sheaths out of history and they let me knit better.  I got swaving out of history, and it lets me knit better.  History pointed to the DD/DRS system that lets my spinning wheel go faster than any spinning wheel ever built by Alden Amos.

I do not get everything correct. I do  take large risks by standing up and making bold statements, and mostly they turn out to be correct. And, this drives most people crazy. I do not know if it is the boldness or the correctness that disturbs people. That is not my problem. My problem is that I want to know things that are not explicitly stated in the literature.   Feynman considered  moulins to be freshman physics, and not worth publishing. Those physics with RS's own data from Greenland said "moulins on Greenland; real soon now." GS's own data on Arctic sea ice plus industrial QA/QA statistics developed by Demming, said sea ice would soon melt.  It was just a matter of applying the correct analysis to data that was widely available.  It is like Sherlock Holmes knowing where you have been this morning by the mud on your shoe.  Everyone can see the mud, but only Sherlock thinks it through to figure out which train you took.  Anyone fixated on extant texts is going to miss the significance of the  mud, and fail to deduce which train.

There is a ton of stuff in the textile history literature that I do not know. Many people care about that stuff, and I will let them study it, know it, and be the textile history police. By and large police look back, not forward.  They follow patterns, do replicas,  and other "paint-by-number art".   As long as I follow dreams, I will be ahead of The Police, and they will be chasing me, (shouting that I should read the literature). However, they will be looking backwards, at their texts, and not really able to see where I am going.

I see the objects in Peck as a kind of textile "Everest" that must be climbed by any textile worker that wants to claim to be competent.  Everest cannot be climbed in baby steps. It requires bold strides, leaps, delicate balance, and hanging by one's finger tips. (see Reinhold Messner and his work on Everest). Modern textile handcraft cannot replicate the objects in Peck with only incremental  improvements in technique and tools.  It is going to require bold strides, leaps, delicate balance, and extraordinary finger work. If those skills and tools were explicit in the extant texts, we would be pouring out hand made objects as good or better as anything in Peck. We are not making such objects.  We need to read between the lines, see what is not written, make some deductions, and some inductions. With those clear thoughts firmly in our hands, we need to take bold steps.

Why? Because good, hand-made textiles are a good thing.

Peck - Interwoven Globe

I never actually watched  Bueller.  I could not identify with it. With a few notable exceptions,  I did not go to class in high school.  I would go to home-room for roll call, and then I was more or less free for the day.

On the other hand, calculus class was small (4 students), and the teacher both very smart and very well qualified, so calculus was a delight.  I never missed that class. There was no place I would rather be. There was nothing I would rather do. I did not aspire to be Bueller!

Peck edited  Interwoven Globe, a beautiful book on the history of textiles with chapters by Peck, Guy, Phipps, Denney, Sardar,  and Watt.  In a previous post, in this blog, I noted  that perhaps the most interesting thing in the book was a footnote to Phipps's chapter on the Iberian Globe. It is the "Black Swan" that tells us that circa 1500, textile production in Europe was undergoing a revolution.

And, then the next 6 chapters in the book is a superficial catalog of fabric objects. There is a long chapter on tapestries. (In the Louvre bookstore, the book is actually shelved with the books on tapestries.) This is all very interesting, but there was a revolution in textile production during that time period (1500 - 1800) that affected politics, economics, and social welfare; that the book completely ignores.  The authors are more interested in nuances of  dye print patterns, than in how the base fabric is made. However, understanding base fabric is essential to understanding dye print technology, which is essential to understanding  nuances of  dye print patterns patterns.

This book is like most textile history books; there are a lot of observations, but no thought about what they mean.  It is such a beautiful book.  I am sure that all the folks that love the Ferris Bueller movie will love the book.

I have a very different take away.  The book fascinates me for what it does not say; and, the questions that it fails to raise.  Every  object raises the questions, "How did they make that object?"  and "Could I make that object with the technology base and infrastructure that they had?"  If I can not answer those two questions, then I either do not understand the object or I do not understand their technology base and infrastructure.  Certainly, sometimes we do not understand the objects. However, sometimes it is clear that we have absolutely failed to understand the technology base. That is, they had tools we do not recognize.  Sometimes, we just have to say, that if they had these objects, they must have had those tools. And that logic is valid until someone shows us how to make such object, without those tools.

 Look at the photo of the sample book on page 283; and, we can know by the 1771 date that they are hand combed, hand spun, wool fabrics.  They are producing commercial volumes of  a variety of different fabrics, and they are offering to sell substantial volumes of these fabrics.  If they were able to spin like that (quality and volume), then every competent hand spinner should able to spin like that.  That page gives me a baseline for reasonable minimum skill for a hand spinner (and weaver.)  Moving on, objects such as the great tapestries were the result of industrial scale factories. Hundreds of  spinners, spun for their entire career to produce edition after edition of these works, all produced from the same cartoon and woven on the same looms for a period of ~120 years.  The yarns contained silk, silver, and gold.  If hundreds of spinners could spin like that for generation after generation, then I should be able to spin like that. Note the cottons from India and the silks from China.  If they could spin like that, then I should be able to spin like that. These materials were mostly produced in commercial quantities by professional production spinners.  
with respect to the cottons, we need to remember that printing is inherently a technology of mass production.  If they were printing, they were producing commercial quantities.  Let us call all spinners producing yarn for these commercial weavers  "competent spinners".  Individual spinners with talent and elan could be expected to produce small quantities that were at least 2 standard derivations better. Let us call these "expert spinners".

I see Interwoven Globe as an outline of the skills that a competent hand spinner should have.  I do not see why a hand spinner in 2013 should not be held to the same standards as spinner in 1770.  Looking at British Law, it appears that circa 1600, spinning schools were expected to produce a competent spinner in only 2 years - call it 5,000 or 6,000 hours of instruction and practice.  Does that number seem familiar?

The spinners that made the objects in Interwoven Globe set a standard.  If I am going to call myself a traditional spinner, I need to meet their standard.  What other modern spinners do is not my problem. My problem is to understand  the traditional standard and try to meet it.

Spinning

Spinning and the textiles it produced was essential to civilization.

The modern spinning community has divided into various fractions.  Most spin as a pastime.  Some spin as a form of political protest.  Some spin as ritual at social occasions. Some spin as an art form. Very few spin as the craft that has always been essential to civilization.

Is spinning still essential to civilization?  I think the spinning community should work very hard to make (and keep) spinning relevant to civilization.  Those who spin as a pastime often seem intent on being rude to those who do not accept the Victorian Lady school of spinning.  They tell us that we do not need to spin that fast, or we do not need to spin that fine.  They tell us we do not need those tools or those skills.

Machine made pottery is cheaper, but potters keep their craft alive and relevant. Good potters earn enough that they can afford to spend enough hours doing ceramics to keep their skills honed.  

Do you want to admit that potters are better a their craft than spinners are at theirs?