More DRS Twist and Grist

It would seem that one would require a whole drawer full of whorls to spin all the yarns that a spinner needs to spin.  However, I find that 3 gang whorls with 3 different ratios on each is more than enough to produce a wide range of yarns.

I use a whorl that inserts 9 tpi to spin soft woolen at 2,800 ypp, firm woolen at 3,200 ypp, and worsted at 5,600 ypp.

I use a 12 tpi whorl to spin worsted at 11,200 ypp and woolen at 5,600 ypp.

I use 18 tpi whorl to spin worsted at 22,400 ypp and woolen at 11,200 ypp.

I use 20 tpi whorl for worsted 30,000 ypp.  Woolen at 30,000 ypp needs about 31 tpi, and I have not made that size whorl to work with the accelerator at this time.

I use 25 tpi whorls to spin woolen at 22,400 ypp and worsted at 44,000 ypp.  Woolen at 44,000 ypp needs ~36 tpi, and and I have not made that size whorl to work with the accelerator at this time.

Thus, 3 gang whorls is enough to spin the yarns that I want from soft woolen at 2,800 ypp, to both the worsted and woolen at 22,400.  If I need softer yarns, I spin a bit thinner, With the controlled takeup, that is easy.

I mostly measure grist by spinning 560 yards and weighing it to the nearest gram.  That is close enough for hand spinning.

True woolen from a drun carder

Recently, I mentioned Henry Clemes neat diz for using a drum carder to make roving to spin semi-woolen.

It occurs to me that I see lots of people spinning semi-woolen from drum carder batts, that I see few but folks that I see spinning true  woolen.  Those that do spin true woolen use spinning from the fold or similar technique. Usually, people tear the batts lengthwise and spin from the tips to produce  a semi- worsted or semi-wool product.

There is an easier way to produce true woolen yarns from drum carder batts.

see for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLFqKR2xl9c

For woolen, one can simply put a thin layer of fiber on the drum carder, and then roll the layer up around a piece of dowel, then slide the dowel out - just like Henry Clemes makes a rolag from fiber on a blending board.  This produces a giant "rolag" - a cylinder of carded fiber.   I use each rolag to spin hundreds of yards of  yarn, so there is more drafting, and the attenuation takes more attention.  However, it is real woolen spun.

My value added here is a suggestion that you  adjust the size of the rolags to the grist and twist of the yarn you are spinning.  When I make thinner rolags in the form factor that Clemes and Clemes use on fiber from their blending board, it spins faster, but the yarn tends not to be as uniform.  I have no idea why this could be.  It may be variation in the fleece I was using.

My rolags off the carder are 8" long, 2,5" in diameter, and weigh ~ 12 gr, so it is shorter, fatter, and heavier than rolags off the blending board.  Using DRS controlled takeup/twist, I can simply rest the cylinder of fiber in my lap,  and draft off of one end.

Rabett Run: Confident Idiots

Rabett Run: Confident Idiots

Why 5,600 ypp?

The old knitting yarns were constructed of many fine plies.  Lace was 2 or 3-ply. Sport weight was 5-ply.  Worsted weight was 6-ply.  Aran weight was 10-ply.

Why?  Why not just go 2 or 3-ply as in the modern mill spun?

Because at about 5,600 ypp, vegetable matter (VM) drops out.

Latter, mills learned to take out VM with acid.  Then they did not need to drop out the VM, and went to 2-ply for everything, because acid treatment and 2-ply was cheaper than spinning fine plies.

If you are spinning acid treated fiber, you can spin any grist at 2-ply because you do not have to deal with VM.  The 2-ply will not be as elastic, but that is a different issue.  (Do you like the texture of mill prepared fiber?  Some do, some do not!!)

However, if you are prepping your own fiber, then spinning fine singles is a part of the easy way to deal with VM -- if you can spin fine and fast.

And, there is the rub.  This approach is only useful if you can spin fine and fast.

The bottom line here is that I come to this as a knitter seeking better yarn at a reasonable price. By and large, I think the mill treated fibers are not as good as the less treated fibers that I prepare myself, so I buy fleece and scour it myself.  I card it myself, and if necessary, I comb it myself.

From prepared fiber to high quality yarn, the easy path is to spin a lot of fine singles and then ply up the grist yarn that I need.  And, I like these yarn better than 2 or 3-ply yarns.

I spin what I like.

Good ideas and better ideas

Good ideas tend to crowd out better ideas.  If one has a good solution to a problem, then better solutions to the problem tend to be rejected.

One cannot consider the better solution to the problem until the faults in the good idea have been realized.

Thus, conventional wisdom wins over and over.

5-ply revisited

I came to spinning as a knitter seeking better "gansey" yarn.  Everyone said that gansey yarn was worsted spun, so I spun worsted.  I liked the yarn better than mill spun. Thus, I started spinning 5-ply worsted.

I spun a lot of worsted 5-ply, then I started spinning worsted warp for spinning, and the 5-ply knitting yarn became a by-product of what I was spinning for the loom.

Then, I started spinning woolen weft of about the same grist.  There was a basket of it by the lazy kate.  Plying up a ball of woolen 5-ply was easier than going up stairs to get some worsted.  I liked the 5-ply woolen.

As I spin more woolen weft, it becomes a source for singles to be plied into knitting yarns.  After all, I have a big basket of weft singles sitting there, so when I want some knitting yarn, I just ply some up.

I like knitting yarns plied up from lace weight (6,000 ypp) woolen singles.  They are more elastic that any mill spun.  They are more elastic that any 2-ply.  They are more elastic than my 5-ply gansey yarns.  I like elastic knitting yarns.

They are durable.  More durable than any mill spun or any 2-ply.  They are almost as durable as my 5-ply gansey yarns.

They are warm.  Perhaps too warm for modern centrally heated environments.

The yarn is less splitty and more elastic than 5-ply worsted, so it knits faster. And, I tend to knit it on bigger needles than I use for worsted. I am still using blunt needles for all woolen knitting.

The yarn is much rounder than 2 or even 3-ply, so it shows stitch patterns almost as well as 5-ply worsted, Since the fiber is not combed, I can add something to give a halo and hide the stitch pattern.

Carding and fine spinning drops out the veggy matter. If one spins 1,800 ypp woolen singles, most of the VM stays in the single, thus, getting the VM out become a large effort in fiber prep.  Spinning fine, drops the VM. Dropping VM remains a worth while reason to spin fine.

Combing for worsted spinning rejects much fiber.  Spinning woolen conserves fiber.

Woolen is easy to spin from short fibers.  Some days I get tired of spinning Merino worsted.

It is soft.  I can spin it from fine wool and it is always skin soft.

Why did I not do this before?  I had the idea that the right way to make 5-ply was to spin worsted.  Nobody was making 5-ply/sport weight woolen yarns. I was a captive of the conventional wisdom.

Net time to spin 5-ply woolen yarn is about 100 yards/ hour for me. A sweater is ~2,000 yd, so it takes me about 20 hours to spin the yarn for a sweater.  Having DRS lets me afford better yarns.

A heavy heart

Some say that one cannot spin very high quality fine yarns when one has " a heavy heart".

Rubbish!!

If one is trained so that one believes that cannot spin very high quality fine yarns when one has  a heavy heart, then a heavy heart becomes an excuse not to spin well.  Having an excuse not to spin well,  allows one not to spin well.

If one is trained that one should be able to spin very high quality fine yarns any where, any time, no exceptions, no excuses, then one tends to be able to spin very high quality fine yarns any where, any time.

If you want to train people to spin well and consistently, then you do not give them any excuse for spinning poorly. One encourages spinners to spin well under all conditions. 

the evolution of a yarn

I started spinning because I wanted better gansey yarn.  Worsted spun 5-ply sport weight was my very first goal and my first spinning project.  I cannot tell a lie, handspun gansey yarn is better than mill spun.

However, more recently I have been spinning woolen weft, so I have those singles around and -- they get plied up into various knitting yarns, including 5-ply.

The woolen spun 5-ply is softer, but not as smooth as the gansey yarn.  It is stronger and much more elastic than 2-ply (woolen or semi-worsted) sport weight.  The additional elasticity gives fabrics/objects a wonderful drape.

Is it worth the additional effort?  The objects are nicer.  Are we doing this for fast objects?  Or, for nicer objects? And, I have the singles around.  Lazy Kate is beside the wheel, and can make me a ball of  knitting yarn faster than I can bike into town and back.

(Perhaps this is just a reaction to doing 10-ply cable yarns.  They had virtues, but were less elastic, and took a lot of attention to knit to fit.)

Luster in fine wool

A couple of years ago, our guild had THE expert on wool come in for a lesson on how to buy a fleece.

At one point she said that the "fine wools" were never "lustrous".

I asked a couple of questions on this point, to make sure I had heard her correctly and had properly understood her  She is the expert, so I accepted the point, and have restated it here.  I took some flack on the point from "Anonymous".

However, the Rambouillet fleece that Anna Harvey just sent me is fine and lustrous.  The trusty twisty stick says the fiber is fine - mid 80s count - call it 18 or 19 microns, and it is lustrous.  It gleams. It sparkles. There is no oil on it, no resins, no dyes, it is just clean, white lustrous wool.  If I did not know better, I would say it was synthetic, or had been treated.

However, the fleece came to me, just as it came off the sheep, and I washed 3 samples from 3 different fleece with things like Ivory soap or Kirkland dishwashing detergent that do not leave oil residues or optical brighteners as in laundry detergents.  The expert was wrong.  When fine wool is coated to protect it from the sun, it can be very lustrous.

All of a sudden, I have no interest in spinning anything but Rambouillet.  I like the sparkle!


Anyway, for once "Anonymous" was correct.

Better accelerator bearings

Spinning has been a series of sacrifices to the gods of speed.

I settled into double drive and differential rotation speed (DRS) controlled flyer/bobbin assemblies in the pursuit of speed.  I went to smaller fliers from Alden Amos in pursuit of speed. I went to an accelerator in the pursuit of speed.  By the time I had spun my first fine warp (5 lb of lace weight worsted singles) I expect that my wheel was one of the very fastest in the world. Production of 5,600 ypp worsted at sustained rates of more than 8 yards per minute with peak production rates of more than 10 yd/min is easy.

Nevertheless, I spent a good part of today making better bearings for the accelerator from graphite/Delrin provided by Henry Clemes.  The result is another 800 rpm in the flyer/bobbin assemblies.  And the wheel runs quieter, with less vibration.

This raises the production rate of higher twist yarns. Every time, I thought that my wheel was going as fast as possible, I have found rather straightforward ways to it make go faster. I cannot believe that I am the only one.  Between the invention of DRS by silk throwers in Italy during the 12th century and the advent of  powered spinning frames circa 1780, millions people had a strong financial incentive to improve the spinning wheel in various ways.  It was a very large, very competitive industry, with huge incentives for very small increases in spinner productivity.  The competitive nature of the industry ensured that useful improvements were kept very secret, until they were obsolete. Thus, textiles were generally unique to a locality, because other localities did not know the details of how those fabrics were produced.

The way to determine what tools and technologies were used, is to become expert in textile production technology and reverse engineer the technology from found textile samples.  Proof is in my spinning wheel.  No historian viewing history through the prism of modern commercially produced and sold hand spinning wheels could conceive that a 16 th century hand spinner could have a production rate of  8 yards per hour. And, yet this afternoon as I tested the the new bearings, anything less is silly.  It shakes and rattles, but it spins faster than any wheel you have ever seen or heard. I have no doubt that wheel makers in Flanders were making faster wheels by the end of the 15th century. There is nothing in my wheel that they could not do with the tools and materials that they had.  Yes, the materials they had might have resulted in a bit more lard-oil splatter, but in a commercial spinning factory, that does not matter. Any historian who says that 16th century professional spinners that did not spin that fast, simply does not not know the craft of spinning.

As Ed Deming told us over and over, "You get what you measure.  If you do not measure it, you do not get it".  Professional spinners measured production - it was called income.  Modern spinners do not measure it, and do not get it. Modern historians do not have a clue about the productivity of traditional hand spinners. Since spinning  was the base of textiles, and textiles was major item of trade and a base of the economy,  modern historians do not have a clue about the economy of the period.

And it solves that great question: Why 5-ply? A) Because they had DRS wheels set for 10s, and 5 plies of 10s knit into a fabric that was warm enough to keep a sailor from going hypothermic.

Now that I am spinning a lot of warp, hand spun 5-ply has become my go to yarn.  I always have pounds of 10s around and plying up some 5-ply is just natural.  It is a way of using up left overs.  It is a stash buster.

More on Diz your roving

You can use a length of dowel to wind the roving/pull the fiber off the drum carder through the diz.  Now the roving is wound around a nice dowel, rather than being juggled above the carder cylinder.

I use my distaff, as my dowel.  thus, the fiber from the diz is wound directly onto my distaff and is ready for spinning. It then unwinds nicely, except for the bottom layer - that gets slid off the distaff and treated like a rolag.

 Sometimes I put 1 tpi Z twist into the roving to stabilize it.   This takes care of the bottom layer issue.  Once you get accustomed t the motion, it is fast and easy.

Using a diz to strip roving off the drum carder

Folks are using a diz to take a strip of batt off the drum carder as continuous roving.

It is fast and easy, and it works very well -- to get carded roving.  However, carded roving going to spin up as semi-worsted or semi-woolen.  I like both  semi-worsted and semi-woolen yarns for many things, but not for everything.

This approach is great for most knitting yarns that do not need great durability or warmth.  I would say it is very well suited for 95% of the spinning that I see.  And it is how I intend to prepare the fiber for a sweater for my wife.

I have made my own diz for a long time.  They were not the best for this technique.  Clemes & Clemes worked out diz that work for this technique -  they make better ones.  Get one, or get a set for spinning different grists.

Pix of 20 fiber bundles

You have seen them. Every serious spinner drafted out super fine as they added lots of twist and the result is a few inches or a few feet of a spin count thread - a bundle of 20 fibers.  It is the natural result, you just did not recognize it for what it was.  There are lots of photographs of such fine threads on the internet. See for example  https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXrybvkX9PcCrzRrmxBT2rInv73snovA-5bUrK7sZSgrilYYwhAPfhtmAHgq4ZC3iJ303T_yZ-5UJr_4dzKlIOmvMg3YADCWVsiYGR1Mm0nQjndj5jz0cjw5CaPDscukn_sJJZ/s1600/co6.JPG by li12345 on Ravelery and  http://russianfibers.blogspot.com/

What is less common is folks that spin miles of such threads in a reasonable time.  

I do not seem to have a teacher, so I am still working out the process.  It is slow work.  As I explain it, I get a lot of push back.  I would rather spend my time working forward, than dealing with the same pushback attitudes over and over.  I have a few students, and do not worry about the public.

In 1400, spinners did spin  spin miles and miles of such threads very quickly.  Most modern spinners cannot do what spinners in 1400 could do.  Why is that?  Taking pix of the threads is not a big deal.  Taking pix of how to do it quickly is hard.  At internet resolutions, the moving thread just disappears.  It looks like I am making new clothes for the emperor out of frog hair, so I just post pix of the equipment. Smart ones will figure it out.

How to use a twisty stick

It is simple.  It takes a fair amount of skill, but it is simple.

First learn to spin worsted singles that are a bundle of only 20 fibers (e.g., spin count yarn).  Practice with with different kinds of wool, so that you can spin a single of 20 fibers regardless of the kind of wool.  In the old days, this skill was expected of all competent spinners. Wool buyers and wool inspectors (such as G. Chaucer), were all competent spinners.  In England, circa 1600, spinners were expected to be competent after 2 years of training.

As you draft spin count yarn watch your drafting triangle so that you can easily recognize when 20 fibers are feeding into the yarn.

Now, you can take your  twisty stick and spin a 20 fiber yarn from any wool sample. By eye and experience you can then easily estimate the spin count of the wool, and the chart below will translate the spin count to microns.

The chart below makes it clear that micron count can be estimated from the traditional spin count. Is it as accurate as the modern lab micron count?  Not at all, but it was good enough for wool trade, and a textile industry producing fine cloth from hand spun yarns for a thousand years.  Some of those yarns were were much better than anything hand spinners produce today.  Fancy lab analysis of my wool does not make me a better spinner.  A cheap twisty stick will provide enough information about a bin of wool for even the best hand spinner to work their best skill on the wool.

USDA Standard Wool Specifications
Type of Wool	Old Blood Grade	Numerical Count Grade	Limits for Average Fiber Diameter (microns)	Variability Limit for Standard Deviation Maximum (microns)
Fine	Fine	Finer than 80’s	<17 .70="" td="">	3.59
Fine	Fine	80's	17.70-19.14	4.09
Fine	Fine	70's	19.15-20.59	4.59
Fine	Fine	64's	20.60-22.04	5.19
Medium	1/2 Blood	62's	22.05-23.49	5.89
Medium	1/2 Blood	60's	23.50-24.94	6.49
Medium	3/8 Blood	58's	24.95-26.39	7.09
Medium	3/8 Blood	56's	26.40-27.84	7.59
Medium	1/4 Blood	54's	27.85-29.29	8.19
Medium	1/4 Blood	50's	29.30-30.99	8.69
Coarse	Low 1/4	48's	31.00-32.69	9.09
Coarse	Low 1/4	46's	32.70-34.39	9.59
Coarse	Common	44's	34.40-36.19	10.09
Very coarse	Braid	40's	36.20-38.09	10.69
Very coarse	Braid	36's	38.10-40.20	11.19
Very coarse	Braid	Coarser than 36's	>40.20	--
1The blood system for most all useful purposes is outdated and has not been recognized by USDA since 1955.

The idea is that the difference in thickness between the fibers in two different wools will be no more than about 20 microns and may only be a few microns. That difference is hard to see with the naked eye and may be obscured by the variability in the fibers.  However, the spun yarns provide a statistical sampling that averages out the variability; and, the difference between the thickness of an 80 count yarn and  a 40 count yarn is about 50 microns, which is clearly and easily visible to the human eye.  Discrimination of rather fine increments in spin count (e.g., 42's v. 44's) can be achieved by having a reference collection and comparing the wool being tested to those standards. (A reference collection is otherwise known as a stash with labels.)

As you go down this lane, you will find that the better sorted and graded a wool is, the finer and easier it spins. Blends of fibers are harder to spin.  The blend may be desirable for the final textile, but it requires more effort from the spinner.  This is less of an issue, if you are spinning at grists of less than 20,000 ypp  (40/1 Nm). 

Historic wool garment fabric ran 20 to 70 epi  and when we do the math  (Look in Alden Amos) we know that many of the  yarns (warp  and weft) were in the 40 to 80 count range.  Hosiery was traditionally knit from yarns based on 40 count singles.  Spinning fine yarns for weaving is what competent spinners did.  If you can do it, you are a spinner. 

If you must blend, blend fibers of the same spin count. I spin a lot of warp from a commercial blend of 56 count wools; and, it spins well. Everybody that sees the hanks asks, "What kind of wool is this?" In this case, the blending is to produce a uniform top and the fiber sizing is more uniform than is found in roving from individual flocks or even individual fleece. In fact it spins so well that I am starting to think of 56 count weaving singles.  As tabby that would be, Ouch . . .6,000 yds of single per yd^2 of fabric - 20 hours of spinning for every yd of fabric.  Perhaps, I need a 20 dent reed.

I will freely admit that while I have been able to spin at the spin count for a few years, mostly the samples were small,  in the range of a few hundred to a few thousand yards. (And yes, I called those early 560 yard hanks weighing only 6 grams, "My little shits". There was good reason, the first ones were not properly blocked - they were not pretty.  A lot of people that cannot spin 80s laughed at me.  The joke is on them.  They still cannot spin 80s, but I can spin pretty 80s.   All it takes is thousands of yards of practice and learning to block hanks of fine singles.)  Now, I am coming to grips with spinning pounds and pounds of wool at its spin count. Am I a spinner? Not sure yet.  I will know when I have woven a bolt of shirting from my hand spun.

The craft is broken.  We will rebuild it thread by thread, my friends, thread by thread.

The Truth About Spinning Finer

There is a story in the spinning world that the very fine threads are spun by assembling bundles of only 5 fibers.  I know you have heard this story.

In truth, the finest bundle of (wool/goat/camelid) fibers that can be spun at commercial rates is ~20 fibers, and results in the traditional spin count singles.  The finest bundle of fibers that can be hand spun is ~10 fibers.  With any fine wool, a bundle of 10 fibers produces a grist that is far, far beyond the world record.   If someone is not spinning far, far, far beyond the world record, then they are not spinning a bundle of only 5 fibers.

I pointed out that my singles composed of ~20 fibers of Rambouillet were finer than a particular spinner’s threads that she claimed had a cross section of only 5 fibers.  I exposed the fib that was the basis of much of her status in the lace spinning community.  She was very unhappy.

She made a point of seeking out one of my suppliers out, and talking about me.  I expect that there was a lack of truthfulness, and possibly slander.  In any case, their accounts of the conversation differ markedly.

Her lace designs are wonderful.  The yarns she spins are wonderful and fit the styles of lace that she makes much better than they would if the yarns were much thinner. I looked at her stuff because I admire fine textiles, and hers are excellent. Her yarns do not need to be thinner.  So, why is she pretending that they are bundles of only 5 fibers? 

An aspiring lace spinner would read her posts on Ravelry, and simply sit down and try to spin 5 fibers together, and be frustrated.   The aspiring spinner would think that anybody that could spin 5 fibers together, must be a genus spinner.   Thus, the story of 5 fibers keeps others from learning to spin fine.  Thus, her story is restraint of competition by  -  fraud.

I certainly went down that path - worsted spinning best Rambouillet into a bundle of 14 fibers to make yarns in the 100,000 ypp range.  However, it was not real spinning; it was too slow, and the yarns were too weak and too fragile. 

I went back to my knitting.  Later,  I set out to learn to spin at the spin count (a bundle of 20 fibers), and then noticed that my spin count yarns were (often) much finer than the yarns which some were claiming had only 5 fibers in the cross section.  That was physically impossible. Then, rather than posting a rational rebuttal, they got indigent, and told me that I should not bother with spinning because there is no money in it.

If you want to win the “Longest Thread Competition”, you can spend a thousand hours spinning a bundle of 14 fibers of wool as found at your local fiber supplier.  Or, we can get some 11.75 micron Merino from commercial channels that can be spun into a bundle of 20 fibers that will result in 1,500 yards of 2-ply yarn that weighs 10 grams (e.g., singles @ 150,000 ypp).  That would be a world record and  likely a winner.  Your DRS will need to insert 36 tpi.  With a wheel running at 2,000 rpm, it is 50 or 60 hours of spinning.  Fiber available at local fiber stores (Merino 15.5 micron) will get you to singles @ 95,000 ypp, which when all plied up will get you into the honorable mention class.  I have gone far enough down this road to know that it can be done.  In some cases, I used Guanaco from Dana over at Royal fiber rather than wool. Sometimes, I just used the best few grams of the best fleece Anna Harvey could sell me.  It is a matter of craft, not an Olympic challange.  I have no doubt that some Longest Thread competitors do choose the small bundle path.  However, it is clear from the analysis referenced above that that some winners have not been honest about their approach. The grist of their entries proves that the yarn singles have a cross section of more than 5 fibers.  The numbers do not lie.

I stay busy, so these days, I do not bother to spin anything finer than its spin count, and with the fine Rambouillet that I am getting from Anna Harvey, that is sometimes pushing 60,000 ypp.  That is about the grist of the singles from which men's fine tropical wool suits are woven.  (Take you linen tester down to the mens section of the local Needless Markup Department store and tell them you want to look at Super 110 tropical suits.)  The best suits are woven from even finer yarns.  From here, I do not see any reason to go there. So why bother with spinning the 60,000 ypp?  That is just part of my evolution to improve my skill with a twisty stick to grade fine wool.

twisty stick

With some practice (take it to fiber shows), your trusty twisty stick will always give you the spin count of the fiber. For all the virtues of micron analysis, just being able to quickly estimate the spin count of a fiber with a cheap, portable, tool is very nice.  And, a spin count will allow you to estimate micron count.  It is not exact, but it is close enough for hand spinning.

For example, Merino is generally classed as our finest wool.  However, 3 minutes with my trusty twisty stick tells me that the best of the Anna Harvey Rambouillet is finer than any of the Merino in the house.  It also reminds me that the most expensive Merino in the house, has lowest spin count (e.g., highest micron count.)  I admit it.  On the day I bought that pricey Merino, I did not have my trusty twisty stick.  There is a lesson there.

With my trusty twisty stick close at hand, I have a big bin of Anna Harvey Rambouillet on order and none of the pricey Merino on order.

Size the day

When I bought the loom, they proudly told me that they (RAC) had just replaced the harness springs.

I thought, "Good" (a set of springs is not cheap)

However, the replacement springs that they bought are much stronger than the springs that AVL designed for weaving garment weight fabrics.

Less spring tension seems to have much reduced my warp abrasion problem. (And makes weaving much easier.)  Research on sizing has been put aside.

A Victorian was taking a survey of what kind of sizing the various weaving factories were using.  At one factory he was told, "We don't use it.  We know how to weave."  That set me thinking that perhaps I needed to read the manual. And there it is; large or heavy warps require more spring tension.  One reason that I had bought this loom is that I heard stories about the original owner using it to weave very fine  fabrics.  The original springs had been intended for much finer warps than the students at the RAC wanted to use.  No, if they were going to weave rugs on this loom, they needed much stronger springs.

Anyway, I am to the point where I am sampling garment weight cloth from hand spun, and am working out how to live in the realm of 24 to 30 epi.

When you see the loom that you want: Carpe Diem.  However, carp always have bones so having seized the day, and gone fishing, "Caveat Emptor".   

Spinzilla II

I did not enter Spinzilla.

The way to win Spinzilla is to spin a low twist, low grist yarn.

In the last year, I have spun over 120,000 yards of yarn, with more than 100,000 of those yards, "lace weight."  In the next year, I plan to spin a quarter-million yards of 40s ( ~22,000 yards per pound.)

I am not going in the direction of low twist, low grist yarn.  If I do spin that week, it will be lace weight weft.  I have a lot of warp, and I have to admit that I am enjoying spinning woolen weft from Rambouillet.

The ultimate fiber stash

I got to thinking, what is the ultimate fiber stash?

For me it is 5 lb of each of the following:

• Long wool/40 count (Cotswold or Romney)
• Medium fine /56 count  (Shetland or Jacob)
• Downy / 56 count (Suffolk)
• Fine / 76 count (Rambouillet, Merino, Cormo) 

It is large enough that I can spin almost any project from stash, but small enough that I can spin the whole thing in a few weeks.  It is about what is on hand right now, but more is on order.  

In fact, today is a sort and clean day in hopes of finding enough bobbins to warp the loom using the sectional beam.  I did  find enough bobbins even before getting to the big box of  weft on bobbins. With that weft on pirns, I will have a surplus of bobbins- perhaps for the first time in my spinning life  I do not believe it.

I have not found a way to wind off from the spinning wheel to a pirn, so I end up winding off onto a storage bobbin, and then from the storage bobbin to a pirn.  I like my wood lath as a pirn winder.  It is fast.

knitting belts, knitting sheaths and stainless steel needles

A year ago, I switched to knitting needles made of hollow stainless steel for much of my knitting. Mostly, I bought inexpensive needles from Hong Kong. The sizing is weird, but if one knits gauge swatches (and all good knitters do) then one can find a size that works very well.

Knitting sheaths tended to break these needles, so for the past year, I have mostly used a leather knitting belt.  The leather is easier on the needles than the wooden knitting sheaths.

However, in the last couple of months, better knitting technique has allowed me to use the hollow needles with my knitting sheaths. And, frankly knitting sheaths have advantages.  (Shetland knitting pouches have different advantages!)

Thus, these days I  am back to knitting  mostly with a knitting sheath.  There is a gansey that was started on a knitting belt, but I will switch from belt to sheath when I get to the pattern.

These days, my sock knitting kit is in bag originally made as a shaving kit for travel. The needles do not go through the heavy plastic material. This way, I do not have to carry my big (leather) for just socks.

These days, I can have any style of sock yarn that I want - I spin it myself.  The yarns that I like for cold weather socks are remarkably similar to the yarns that I like for my cold weather sweaters -  50 to 60 count wools, spun into firmly spun worsted, lace weight singles, and then softly  plied into sport weight yarns.  Hiking socks and working ganseys get spun up from coarser wools such as Romney.

All  those socks that I knit from MacAusland were very good socks.  I do not regret them at all.  I still recommend MacAusland yarns for outdoor gear for folks that knit, but do not spin.  Today, I hand spin better yarns that make better objects.

On its face, none of this is cost effective.  110 hours for a sweater?!! Any economist could tell me that I would be better off working at Mcdonalds and buying a sweater.  But, I have to be somewhere, for the rest of the day, and I can put in the time when I am not working to good use - that 110 hours can be time that would otherwise be lost - as it while I watch the evening news, or sit and chat or . . . . The last time somebody complained about my knitting during a business meeting,  I recited all the typos and errors in his powerpoint presentation.  He turned red and shutup.  Actually,  The truth is - the time is free.

There are fancy soft fibers (and yarns) out there for high prices.  However, there are also reasonably priced fibers of very high quality.  Both the Woolery and Halcyon carry a blend of American  wools for about $16/lb. It has a lanolin based combing oil on it that will oxidize  and go sticky, so it must be stored in air tight bags.   At some point it needs to be washed/scoured.  As long as you are washing it, you might as well dye it to the color that you want.

Then there is Anna Harvey's Rambouillet ( http://www.annagotwool.com/ ) . Yes, she has "a spinner's flock" but she also has that lovely bright white, fine, Rambouillet. Yes, it is meat sheep!  but that does not keep it from being one of the very best textile wools in the world.  Yes, Merino gets all the press.  Merino needs the press because the great textile mills making the fine fabrics for the couture designers use Rambouillet.  Compared to other fiber in the hand spinner's world, Anna Harvey's Rambouillet is inexpensive. If you cannot scour it yourself, Sherry at Morrow Bay (www.morrofleeceworks.com/) will do an excellent job on it.  I hear of problems at some other (mills) - particularly for Alpaca.  PS Anna's flock won lots of ribbons at the last wool show.  Anna's flock is about as good as a commercial flock can be.  My suggestion is to get your guild together, order a bunch of fleeces.  When they come in, sort and grade the wool.  That way you will have enough wool of a single grade for a project.  Then, have a guild work day and wash all the grades of wool.  The result should be bins of graded wool that are far, far superior to anything on the commercial market, or anything a single spinner can do, all at a cost that is far, far below that of  commercial grade fine wools of a lower quality.

Hand Woolcombing and Spinning

Peter Teal did some very good work, but he makes a number of serious errors.  He holds opinions that I strongly agree with, and then sometimes he just sort of lapses into nonsense.  Such books are worth reading because they train us to keep our wits sharp.

At the core of Teal is the fact that worsted yarns do have extraordinary virtues, and good hand wool combing is the path to those virtues. Most other authors do not say this as strongly or discuss worsted in as much detail.  Worsted yarns are more expensive to produce and are more effort to produce, so they are much more expensive.  Worsted yarns are not as commonly produced by hand spinners.

On the other hand, added to all their other virtues, worsted yarns require less twist to be competent, and thus, a very smart hand spinner can ultimately produce a worsted yarn at a faster rate.

Any fiber can be spun worsted, it is just a matter of having the correct fiber preparation and drafting process.  the fibers easiest to spin worsted are the long wools.  The shorter, fine wools are more difficult.

The glory of worsted yarns is best displayed when they are spun into singles of 18,000 to 30,000 yards per pound.  These have a silken quality.  If the fibers are are consistently oriented butt to tip, the silken effect can be extraordinary.

However, worsted is most easily spun from longer wool which tends to be coarser. Spin at lower grist, such wools tend to be harsh.  Since, many hand spinners do not spin finer than 15,000 ypp, some think of worsted yarns as always harsh, unless they are spun from very fine wools such as Merino and Rambouillet.

Certainly one can spin worsted from Merino and Rambouillet.  However, if you try to comb Merino and Rambouillet with the combs that Teal suggests for fine wools most of the fiber will go off as waste.  Thus, if you follow Teal, you have the expense and effort of making (or buying) 8-pitch combs, and then the on-going cost of very low yields in combing rather expensive fine fibers.  The cost of such combs is greater than the cost of Teal's book.  The cost of a few grams of Merino waste is more than the cost of  Teal's book.

This was not fair to Teal's readers.

To prep fine wool for worsted spinning:
1) Buy fine wool top, oil it, comb it as necessary, diz, and spin.  If the top is good, then single pitch combs will be enough to loosen and realign the fibers with minimum waste.  If it is nice fresh top, that has not been dragged around to a a bunch of fiber shows, the combing may not be required if you are using DRS.

2) Buy a fine fleece, sort and grade, then wash it according to Alden Amos's instructions.  Oil the wool, and comb it with single pitch combs to remove all VM.  Then run it through the carder a couple of times.  Then, comb with 5-pitch combs, and plank.  The comb waste can be carded and spun woolen.  8-pitch combs are not needed.  I have been spinning Anna Harvey's Rambouillet at 45,000 ypp, and there is not an 8-pitch comb in the house.  The yarn is beautiful.  I made up some 15,000 ypp 2-ply (e.g., 30,000 ypp singles)  It makes gorgeous lace.

If I were spinning fine wool into worsted singles and woolen weft for the industrial production of very fine wool flannels, I would likely use 8-pitch combs as was done in the day of industrial scale, hand combing.  However, at this time, the finest warp on my project schedule is 22,000 ypp.  I do not need 8-pitch combs.

A good spray bottle will distribute oil just as accurately as PT's syringes.  It is just a matter of working consistently.

The second problem in Teal, is that he is blinded by Victorian recreational hand spinning and does not see the older professional traditions of hand spinning.  Moreover, he does not look at professional textile engineering references, such as Priestman.

On page 95, he provides Fig. 78,  a drawing of  yarn passing through a Saxony spindle purporting to show how twist is inserted. However, in reality, twist will be inserted on one side of the orifice and removed on the other side of the orifice so that the flyer inserts no net twist.  Twist is inserted into the yarn by the rotation of the bobbin - to which the yarn is attached.  It is that rotation of the attached end of the yarn that inserts the twist that makes the yarn.  My point is that Teal never worked out how a flyer/bobbin assembly spinning wheel actually  works.

Granted that when he wrote that, the Big Blue Book had not yet been published, but there are many older references that do get it correct, and if he was looking at Leo's note books, he should have seen other references that do get it correct.

As a result, all of his twist and take-up math is nonsense, because he neglects the concept of yarn lock and twist accumulation during yarn lock.  He misses the point that most of the time while spinning on his wheel setups, the flyer and the bobbin rotate together, and no wind on occurs. Then, with his very high DRS setups, wind-on occurs rapidly, thereby trapping the previously accumulated twist. That whole discussion in Chapter 7 is not useful. It is an intellectual briar patch, without the rewards of fruit or flowers.

He did not understand DRS.  He did not do the grist/twist math.  He  wants the bobbin whorl much smaller than the flyer/spindle whorl - in my terms, he want a very large DRS (e.g., ~1.6).  Certainly that will ensure fast take-up, but it also ensures continuous slippage that will slow the wheel down and reduce self regulation.  For example Fig. 86 is a Shadowgram that he says ,"will produce over twisted yarn on an empty bobbin and that the two diameters on the spindle whorl are so close as to be pointless."  In fact, it looks remarkably similar to the ratios of the flyer/bobbin assembly that I used to spin 16,000 yards of fine worsted wool warp last fall.  It worked very well.  He did not understand the design of that flyer/bobbin assembly.  It is worth noting that the flyer in Fig. 86 that he does not like is from an old wool wheel, while the flyer in Fig 87 that he likes is from an old flax wheel.  I expect that the wheel in Fig 86 would be very well suited for spinning worsted singles in the 7s to 8s range.

However, I would strongly agree with his comment on pg 113 that, "no one wheel of fixed ratio can cope with and infinitely variable range of fibers and yarns, but that it is a relatively easy matter, once you know the twist requirements of your yarns to have another whorl made so that your wheel is able to produce those you require most of with the minimum effort."  That is a sentiment with plenty clauses that comes out of the fight with another verb in its teeth. However, he is correct - whorls are cheap.

In the additional material (Chapter 11)  entitled,  25 Years On , he has drunk the Kool-Aid, and bought a modern, mass produced, scotch tension spinning wheel.  It is a good wheel for a teacher, because that is the kind of wheel many students have.  However, it is not particularly fast and it is not particularly suited to spinning fine. And, while in the early days, he makes a big deal of consistency and excellence in hand spinning, a ST spinning wheel will not produce near the consistency of a DRS controlled wheel.  I am not saying that DRS is the only way to produce consistency, I am saying that it helps.