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.

The Craft is Textiles

So! the question is, "How good are the textiles that one can produce?"

I look to history for clues as to what textiles can be produced, and clues as to the best ways to produce textiles, but how they actually made textiles at any particular time and place does not matter to me.  All that matters to me is:  "How good a textile can I produce?", and "How can I produce a better textile?"

And, if you are in the craft, I am going to judge you by how good a textile you can produce. I do not care about your knowledge of history, I care about the quality of textiles that you produce.    You may be a great textile historian and have published in many peer reviewed journals, and written many books, but I am going to judge you by how well you spin.

Why?  Because, good spinning is the basis of great textiles.

Even if you are a weaver or knitter, I am going to judge you primarily on your spinning ability.  Mill spun yarns are a baseline. Mill spun is average. Anyone can BUY mill spun.  It is hard to knit an exceptional object if you are using the same yarn as everyone else.  If you are going to be making superior textiles, you need to be working with superior yarns.  That means you must have a deep understand of spinning.  The only way to have a deep understand spinning is be a very good spinner.

The exceptional textile will be constructed from exceptional yarn because the exceptional knitter, weaver, lace maker, and etc. capable of making exceptional textiles will use exceptional yarns.   The only way to know exceptional yarns is to make them. The skill to make exceptional yarns is earned, it cannot be bought. Taking the class does not mean that you have the skills. The skill to spin exceptional yarns comes from spinning miles and miles of exceptional yarn. Do not tell me you took the class; show me the yarn.

The other side of this is that a yarn is not exceptional until it has been fabricated into a textile that has a purpose.  Only then, do we know if the yarn has all the qualities and attributes required for the purpose, so the textile is of exceptional quality. No yarn can be exceptional until its purpose is defined. The spinner must understand the requirements and purpose of the textile before the spinner can spin an exceptional yarn. Just as the spinner enables the competent weaver, the competent weaver or the competent knitter enables the competent spinner.

No yarn sitting in a yarn shop is exceptional, because it has no purpose. Sitting there in the yarn shop, we do not know if it is going to be baby booties, a seaman's sweater, socks, a rug, or a tapestry. The yarn cannot be judged exceptionally fit for its purpose, until its purpose is defined.  We do not know if it will be worn by a red head or a blond or a brunet. Each person's coloring demand it's own wardrobe palette.  The fitness of the yarn cannot be determined until it has been assigned to a specific project/task.

Likewise, a modern hand spinner that spins yarns and waits for the yarn to tell her what it wants to be is not going to produce exceptional textiles.  The textile maker must plan the yarn so that the yarn is fit for the project in every way.  Only then can the yarn become an exceptional textile.

Five years ago, I took up spinning because I was a knitter, and I was NOT happy with the mill spun yarns available. For 3 years, I regretted the move to spinning because I was not seeing other spinners producing yarns that I liked better than mill spun.  The turning point was the better fliers from Alden Amos.

In the last 6 months, with the accelerator and the better Lazy Kate, I am finally producing yarns that make hand spinning worth while.  I am very pissed off that most of the experienced hand spinners seemed desperate to limit my technical advances in spanning by depreciating and deprecating everything that I did that was a little different from the way that other modern hand spinners spin.

Modern hand spinners have forgotten how to spin fine and spin fast.  Moreover, they have forgotten that it is even possibly to spin fine and to spin fast.  Modern hand spinners tell every begging spinner: You cannot spin that fine.  You cannot spin that fast. You cannot make yarns with that many plies.  And, everyone in the echo chamber keeps repeating those mantras until the next generation of beginning spinners comes along.  It is not fair to the beginning spinners.

More Plies

I was sorting through swatches to take to CNCH, and the effect that gobsmacked me was how much more elastic yarns with many plies are.

I look at my spinning books and my knitting books and I do not see much discussion of the effect.

Certainly, I have been knitting gansey yarn for years without the effect seeming so noticeable.  Part of this that for a long time, I was knitting very tightly for warmth, and those fabrics did not display the yarns elasticity to best advantage.  Part of it is that I had to have tools for making better high-ply yarns see http://gansey.blogspot.com/2014/02/real-hand-spun-10-ply-aran-yarn.html , and with the accelerator, I can drive the jumbo flyer at 1,000 or even 1,600 rpm, so I can get the job done.

Most bobbin tension devices on Lazy Kates cause that the tension of the singles changes as the effective diameter of the bobbin decreases as the singles spool off the bobbins.  A tension box device as shown

Making 10-ply with blocked singles.

eliminates this problem and ensures more uniform tension.   It is scalable and works for 2-ply just as well as it works for 10-ply.

For 5-ply

 7-ply 

Other view showing final tension system. Note that no perforated plate to separate the yarn strands is required.  I stop twist from running back to the lazy Kate by running the strands over a quarter inch dowel held a couple of feet from the orifice.

 Other modern lazy Kate bobbin tension devices change tension as the effective diameter of the bobbin changes. This device does not. The one above is my prototype.  It is not pretty but it works very well.  For very high twist singles, more dowels can be added to increase more tension.

Will Taylor was back from his bird watching, and loved the fabrics made from high-yarns and this design for lazy kates. If you want one, ask Will.

More plies does make for better knitting yarns. More uniform tension among the singles makes for better yarns.

More Twist

Twist is what holds wool fiber together as yarn.   Within limits, more twist results in a more durable yarn.

Consider 10-ply Aran weight. (10 plies of 5,600 ypp singles)  Each single requires 9 tpi plus the 9 tpi to ply them together means the final yarn @ ~500 ypp requires 99 tpi to produce.  It is a remarkably elastic and durable yarn.  Just the thing to knit up for warm sweater to protect a loved one as he sets off to fish the wild and cold north Atlantic.  And, in a world where hand spinners are spinning boat loads of of 10s for weavers, a couple of pounds of 10- ply for a knitter is easy to obtain.  (I do not care what history says, I know what works. Women have always found ways to keep their loved ones warm.)

Gansey yarn is 5-plies of  5,600 ypp singles and requires ~ 54 tpi in total to produce. It is not as warm as 10-ply Aran, but then it is only half the weight of wool.  Again, by modern standards, 5-ply is a remarkably elastic and durable yarn. It is also warm, but I today I am saying that fabrics knit from yarns with more plies are more elastic.   And, in a world where hand spinners are spinning boat loads of of  10s for weavers, a couple of pounds of  5- ply for a knitter was easy to obtain.   It was known as wasset

Yes, fabric elasticity varies with knitting gauge and other things, but all else equal, fabrics knit from wool yarns with more plies are much more elastic.  And, a yarn with more plies or strands will be more durable than a yarn of the same grist with fewer plies or strands.  If I was going off to sea, I would rather have a sweater knit from real 10-ply made up from loom waste than a sweater knit from same grist yarn plied  up from 2 continuous plies.  The 10-ply would be warmer, and despite the plies not being continuous, the loom waste would be much more durable. Fabric knit for high elasticity will be knit more loosely knit than fabric knit for maximum warmth.   Sometimes we have enough wool and can afford the weight so that we can trade weight of wool for comfort.  Not all of us are subject to the strict weight limits of  a top man working in a tall ship where we need the most warmth for the least weight.

Aran weight made up from 5-plies of  2,900 ypp singles requires about 36 tpi to produce, and is a nice looking yarn that knits up into Aran stitch patterns better than any modern mill spun Aran ( e.g., 2 or 3-ply), but is not quite as durable as 10-ply Aran or even 5-ply gansey yarn.  On the other hand it is only a third the work of  10-ply Aran and 2/3 the work of  5-ply gansey yarn.  On the other hand, it is almost 4 times as much work to spin  as 2-ply Aran.  That IS why we see 2 and 3-ply Aran yarns.  2-ply and 3-ply Aran yarns are less work to produce, and thereby much, much cheaper.

The cheaper yarns are not nearly as durable as the higher-ply product.  Are you putting enough effort into your knitting that you want the object to endure? Or are you just knitting for kids that will out-grow the objects?  Or, are you just knitting objects that you intend to discard after this years fashion season?  What are  your goals for your objects?

The astute reader has guessed that the real  point of this post is sock yarn.  Sock yarn  is the modern hand spun yarn that still requires real durability. I have been re-reading Nancy Bush on Vintage Socks and confess myself disappointed. (I also had the original Weldon's open.)  The yarns and needles she suggests result in a sock that, for me, is too thick for business/ dress shoes, and too thin for boots.  I would be reduced to wearing those socks with my water sandals.  I suppose that people that wear such socks have a class of sport shoes that need socks of such weight.  I would like to point out that no where in the book is there a picture of such socks actually being worn. And, there is no discussion as to which heels and toes are comfortable under different conditions.  I have a wide foot, and I like to walk.  Thus, I need a  Kitchener stitch at the toe.  That is not discussed what so ever.  The idea of knitting a sock that is not functional is foreign to me.  I have no problem with making purely decorative items, but if I am going to knit a decorative item, it will be a shawl  or table cloth, and not socks that are pretty, but not comfortable.  If I am going to go to the bother of knitting a sock, it will be functional.  It will be as functional as I can make it.

 Traditional hosiery singles were worsted spun at 17 tpi - e.g., 40s or 22,400 ypp.  Modern sock yarn run 1,400 ypp, so that would be ~ 15 or 16-ply -- a yarn that requires a total of almost than 290 twists per inch to produce.  All of a sudden, the 10-ply Aran does not seem so twist/labor intensive.  However, traditionally hose were knit finer on needles sized between 1.0 and 1.55 mm.  On such fine needles a sock yarn of 6 hosiery plies works just fine and requires only about 120 twists per inch in total. And, 6 hosiery plies has a grist of just over 3,000 ypp and when knit on traditional needles produces a sock that will fit in my town shoes. And,  it wears like iron.  It works for folks like me that like to walk.  And, it is elastic.  It is so elastic that the vintage patterns when knit from fine 6-ply yarns even work for folks like me with wide feet.  It turns out that the Kitchener stitch is a crutch for cheap mill spun yarns with few plies.  If you like knitting with the thicker yarn, you can make 12-ply.  That is the glory of hand spinning.  However, if you have only knit with the modern yarns sold as sock yarns, this is outside of your range of experience.

The Vintage Patterns do work with the traditional hosiery yarns knit on fine needles, but the products are much less functional when knit with modern commercial sock yarns on larger needles as discussed by Bush.

Which bring us to the question of nylon and super wash.  I think that many fine plies improves wool's durability enough that the addition of nylon makes much less difference. However, I like medium wools such as Sufolk for socks.These are more durability that say Merino.   If I was making cheap sock yarn, I would add nylon because it is cheaper than wool and it would allow me to put less twist in the yarn for the same durability.  I make a similar argument for superwash technologies  --  worsted spun yarns, with fine plies, tolerate washing very well.  Super wash allows yarns with less twist or more woolen character to tolerate washing.  Drying is another matter. If you are going to  dry your woolies in the dryer, you NEED super wash technology.  However, fine spun worsted dries very well on a room temperature drying rack.

You are not going to get high twist, fine spun yarns from your local knitting yarn shop. Such yarns are expensive, and capital for inventory is limited. Dye is cheap, so you can have cheap yarns in any color. Twist is expensive, so you are not going to find many high twist yarns.  And not many modern knitters have the skills and tools to work with fine yarns so there is less demand for fine worsted yarns.  All in all, these days, there are not many of these yarns around.  If you want fine yarns, you are going to have to either make them or have them spun to order.  To experiment with these kinds of yarn try plying weaving warp yarns together. (e.g., cable 2 strands of 5,600 ypp warp to make a 4-strand 2,800 ypp yarn.)  This is less work than hand spinning hosiery singles.  This can give you a taste of the possible, but not the full effect. Plied rather than cabled yarn will give a smoother sock fabric. 6-ply  hosiery yarn is unlike anything you are likely to see in a modern commercial setting. It is fine lace weight, only stronger and smoother.  Sock fabric knit from 6-ply  hosiery yarn spun from long wool is smooth, silken to the touch, and durable.  (And, in black or navy blue, these yarns suck the light out of a room better and faster than Peruvian Darkness Powder.)

In that days when hand spinners were spinning boat loads of fine singles for weavers, fine knitting yarns were easy to come by. When I was spinning a lot of 10s, 10-ply Aran and 5-ply were easy to prepare.  As I spin more 40s for the shirting project, traditional  hosiery yarns are easy to prepare.

Competent hand spinners enable competent knitters.

(I find that I like to knit fine hosiery yarns using a leather knitting pouch rather than a knitting sheath.  And, for hosiery I like very flexible stainless steel needles, rather than my stiffer spring steel needles.  The 14" needles are easily available in sizes of 1.125 mm and larger.)

Twist and Grist

I have been accused of getting my twist numbers wrong.

That is unlikely.  I may have made a typo here or there, but over all, I am the one hand spinner that always knows his twist.   I use differential rotation speed (DRS) without slip to control twist insertion.  Once I install the whorls on the wheel, I know how much twist will be inserted.  If I want a thicker yarn, I do a more woolen preparation.  If I want a thinner yarn, I do a more worsted preparation, and thus I can get a range of yarns from particular whorl combination that inserts a specific twist.  However, I can always look at the whorls on my wheel and know how much twist is being inserted.

Thus, I have to know the twist for every yarn that I plan to make.  Once the whorls are (made and) installed -- the twist is set.  How fast I treadle does not affect inserted twist.  How fast I draft does not affect inserted twist.  Yarn build up on the bobbin does affect the effective diameter of the bobbins and hence rate of take up and hence twist.  However, this is a known factor that is predictable.

I know that when the whorls that produce 9 tpi are on the wheel, and I am spinning worsted I get 10s (5,600 ypp).  I have measured, and validated this hundreds of times.  I know that when the whorls that produce 17 tpi are on the wheel, I get 40s.  I have measured and validated this many times. I also have whorl combinations for 5s, 20s, 30s, 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s that have been have measured and validated. Each allows me to produce a specific grist of worsted and a different, specific grist of woolen and intermediate grists of semi-woolen and semi-worsted.

If I want to sit down and just play with a fiber, then I am likely to set the wheel up as single-drive, bobbin lead (Irish Tension).  Most of my plying of hanks of  5-ply  gansey yarn or 10-ply Aran weight are done using the Ashford ST Jumbo flyer. Thus, every week, I do work with ST and IT fliers. With IT or ST my twist is as fallible as anyone's. However, most of my spinning is done with DRS because it is more productive and my twist more precise.    Spending a lot of time working with precise twist makes me a better spinner when I am using ST or IT.  Sock weight yarns with large numbers of plys are plied using DRS control of  the AA #1 flier. This holds twist to within a few percent. That limits my sock yarns to skeins of about 10 grams or about 80 yards.  Small skeins are my penalty for demanding precise twist in my 6-ply sock yarns.

On the other hand, my WPI measurments tend not to be consistent with several other authors.  I worked with yarns of known grist and practiced doing WPI until my measured WPI for 5,600 ypp (10s) was a consistent 75,  my measured WPI for 11,200 ypp  was just over a hundred, my WPI for shirting or hosiery yarns was 150, and etc. This seems different from other authors, but most do not write about spinning this fine. In every case, my WPI tests were done with worsted spun rather than woolen yarns., and this may explain some of the difference. However,  I always pack to refusal, because it provides more consistent results. At this time, I do not trust my WPI for woolen spun yarns.  It is likely off by 10 % when it should be accurate to 6%.  Thus, to get the grist of woolen yarns I weigh a measured length.

I think some authors do not pack to refusal, so their WPI and hence estimated grist and required twist are different from my numbers.  My numbers work - consistently.