The math and physics of knitting

  

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/how-one-physicist-unraveling-mathematics-knitting

I know this wanders around a bit, but the bottom line is in the last paragraph.

 I would put good knitting up; not just with Knot Theory, but with advanced multidimensional  Manifold Theory.  Instead of a thousand page mathematical proof, the competent knitter produces a better and more useful object, likely a garment.

 

Moreover, folks doing knot theory/manifold theory, deal with continuous sets of numbers, while knitters deal with quantum stitches, that have sizes and locations that depend on a large number of variables. Quantum physics is more difficult than knot theory.

 

Mathematical knots and manifolds have abstract forms, such that a line has zero width and a plane has zero thickness. Yarns on the other hand  have real thickness which may not be constant during use, and yarns may change its length in use.  Some yarns material stretch in use and some shrink in the wash, or when you dry your wool socks too close to the campfire  : (   Some yarns (hemp, cotton) get shorter as they absorb water and many yarns get heavier as they absorb moisture, which changes their fit and drape.  And, some yarns tend to untwist and fall apart when they get wet.

 

Then, there is the nature of the yarn. Twist holds yarn together.  More twist, and the yarn is more durable, more elastic, and more stable. However, put a lot of twist in a thick yarn ply and you get “barbed wire”. Yarns designed to be durable have more and finer plies (with high twist), that are then plied together or plied and cabled  (plied yarns twisted together).  Twist is very expensive – mills competing on cost put less twist in their yarns. (And try to disguise their motive by bragging about how fluffy and soft their yarns are.)

 

Wool has scales that tend to lock the fibers together giving the fabric great durability. “Washable” wool yarns have the scales chemically removed, and have less durability.  Nylon is cheap, slippery, and strong. Wool does not grab on to nylon and nylon does not hold wool, so the addition of nylon reduces the durability of wool fabrics – the wool abrades off and you are left with a net of  nylon fibers, so you assume that nylon must add to the durability of the (sock).  No, it is a cheap filler that facilitates wear, so that you buy more socks.

 

All of that is theory before we get into practicality. I have 2 men’s sock patterns, one by a London fashion editor (Mary Thomas), and the other from a yarn mill (Briggs & Little) that caters to people knitting serviceable objects for people working in the cold. The patterns differ by 4 stitches in the heel. The slightly wider heel in the pattern from B&L  is MUCH, much more durable than the narrower heel from Mary Thomas. Small changes in a knitting pattern can result in large differences in the object’s serviceability and durability.

 

The use of different yarns can affect durability and comfort the as much as the stitch pattern.

Yarns with low twist plies tend to be soft and weak. They produce fabrics that are not particularly warm. They are for fashion. Fashion is not expected to endure. If one wants a sweater that is very warm and durable, knit it from a yarn built up from fine plies. If you want a sweater for a dramatic sportive look to wear in a centrally heated pub use a softer spun, more bulky yarn. The real sailor’s sweater will be too warm to wear in a (heated) pub.  (A weatherproof sweater can be designed to vent when the wearer is warm and not vent when the wearer’s skin is cold. These designs only work with weatherproof fabrics. Such venting can reduce the need to layer garments.)

 

 On the other hand, the less dramatic stitch-work in the real seaman’s sweater will be more effective padding when you are storm tossed against spars and rails at sea (or in the “slot” on SF Bay). And, the real fisherman’s sweater will be “weatherproof”.  You can wear it in the rain, and it will be warm and it will feel warm and comfortable. (If vented, the venting may allow a cold stream of water to run down your back.)  In heavy or wind blown rain, you may feel the rain, but such storms do not last long, and when the deluge diminishes to an ordinary rain, then within 15 minutes, you will feel warm and comfortable. Likewise a “garage sale” fall while skiing may allow snow under the sweater, but once the snow has been scraped out, a few minutes later the sweater is comfortable.   That is; a thin layer of fabric next to the skin has dried, and the garment again is warm and comfortable.

 

Such fabrics require wool fibers to be densely packed (e.g., ~spacing between wool fibers less than 40 microns). This slows air flow through the fabric and stops most liquid water.  If we think of a knitting needle as a lever for moving loops of yarn,  and  calculate the leverage available, and the muscles available to provide power; then, hand held needles (cable needles or single point needle or DPN)  have very limited leverage (e.g., 1:3) and are driven the small muscles of the hand via the fragile tendons of the wrist. However, if one end of the working needle is supported, than the available leverage is much higher (1:10).  In the picture of Elisabetta Matsumoto knitting, her working needle is supported by a knitting belt (not visible) and the work is driven by her shoulder muscles.  A knitting belt is the fastest proven technique for hand knitting.

 

The Fair Isle stitch pattern she is knitting has a second strand of yarn carried behind the fabric, which greatly increases warmth of the fabric, which advantage is offset by less stretch.  Traditional Shetland Fair Isle knitting was done with rather fine 2-ply yarns, and the fabrics were warm, light weight, very low bulk, and  well suited for the climate.  A similar knitting technique was used for “weaving” vests which produces a similarly warm fabric/weight with slightly more stretch.

 

The invention of the square rigged ship, some where in the vicinity of the Channel Islands circa 1,000 AD, demanded some way to keep active sailors warm above deck, even in foul weather.  Hence, what we know today as “fisherman’s sweaters”.  Production of such sweaters require the use of knitting sheaths to support the working needle. Knitting sheaths give the knitter more leverage, and allow tighter knitting.

 

Many of the traditional fisherman’s designs make use of the different properties of different stitch patterns used next to one another, to improve the over all characteristics of the object. For example basket stitch used between bands of purling to make a sweater that well suited to rowing or hauling a line.  It is also fast and easy to knit, so it was very popular and was known as “Lizard Lattice”. When such combinations are considered, there are a very large number of useful knitting stiches.

 

Such hand knit sweaters, kept Shackleton’s men warm in their year (1914 -1917) on the Antarctic ice.  And, they have enough stretch to allow sailors to preform acrobatic work. Objects hand knit with a knitting sheath can be truly “weatherproof”. The last large group of people to knit using knitting sheaths were men on British destroyers in the Pacific during WWII. They knit to pass the time while on battle stations. They hated that knitting because someone was about to try and kill them. They  loved it because, if they were still knitting, nobody was actually shooting at them.

 

In the period 2005 -2010, several of the old British mills producing the dense yarns used for the traditional fisherman’s sweater had failures of their 100-year old spinning equipment and they stopped producing such yarns.  When I started hand spinning such yarns, I was told it was impossible and had never been done.  In fact, such yarns had been spun in the past, and they can be seen in any museum with a good textile collection.

 

The standard text on modern knitting techniques is (The Principles of Knitting) , and the author teaches the history of knitting sheaths, but does not know how to use knitting sheaths. 

 

I think that from 1,000 AD, until ~ 1840 AD thousands of bright eyed, nimble fingered knitters somewhere between the Shetlands and Lisbon were doing what Elisabetta Matsumoto and her advisors would consider graduate level, university physics. Those knitters could run their hands over a departing fisherman, and when the fisherman returned, he would have a fisherman’s sweater well suited to his duties on board, the climate where his ship fished, durable enough to last a fishing season; and that sweater was knit to fit.  These are a set of skills we have lost.  Elisabetta Matsumoto does not even know that weatherproof wool fabrics can be knit.

Good sock yarn

 I like good socks.  Good socks require good yarn. I do not like the commercial yarns that I see in retail yarn shops or fiber festivals.  Thus, often I spin my own sock yarn.

However, sometimes I buy 2-ply/ 5,600 ypp weaving warp, and ply (cable) it up into sock yarn.

Weaving warp in various grist is often available very inexpensively as "mill ends".  

For the last 10 years, this has been my source of "commercial" sock yarn. I buy 2-ply warp, and cable it up into sock yarn.  Today, I think this is the easy approach to a Sheringham gansey. A Sheringham is enough knitting effort, that you may as well use a very good yarn. 

Mostly, I get such yarn from :   http://www.mitzis-yarn-weaving-knitting.com/

(I am her customer - no other relationship.)

Better yarn

 I started spinning circa 2006, because the venders that sold me the "gansey" yarns that I loved were closing. It took me years to get/make the spinning equipment that I needed, and more years to learn how to use it. I assure you that having the right spinning gear is half the battle. 

With the right gear, I can sit down with a bin of wool, and quickly spin the yarn needed for a good British Seaman's sweater. Those knitting yarns were based on 5,600 yards per pound worsted spun singles as a 5-ply. Or, I can spin 6,000 ypp singles and make a 1,200 ypp like most modern "gansey" yarns such as Frangipani. Or, I can ply up those 5,600 ypp singles as 4-ply to make a nice yarn at 1,260 ypp.

I do not need fancy wool.  After much comparison and testing, I think buying raw fleece and scouring it, oiling it, and combing it myself produces the best fiber for hand spinning. Much of the commercial fiber is treated to reduce crimp.  However, the Heinz-57 wool sold by the Woolery, can produce an excellent produce if I wash it, oil it, and comb it.   It really can be spun into fine lace yarn, and it makes good yarns for socks, hats, sweaters, and whatever.  I have spun a thousands yards of "good" singles in ~5,6000 ypp range from it right as it comes out of the bag.  It does not spin as nicely as fiber I process from the raw fleece, 

Key to this is that: Mostly, I spin worsted.  One of our famous spinning teacher tells how when she was a girl, there were 2 ways to spin. There was worsted, and the wrong way.  Woolen, semi-woolen, and semi-worsted were not acceptable. The the famous teacher goes on to tell how wonderful it was to learn all the other spinning techniques.

I accepted her wisdom, and learned all of the different spinning techniques.  I used those techniques to spin different kinds of yarns, and I knit the resulting yarns. I used the resulting objects. And, I relentlessly moved toward spinning worsted.

There are 4 reasons:

1) Speed of Spinning: A double drive spinning wheel with differential rotation speed between the spinning bobbin and the flier, allows spinning worsted as fast as it can be drafted. And worsted can be drafted as fast as the wheel can insert twist. A  double drive spinning wheel with differential rotation speed between the spinning bobbin and the flier can insert twist much faster than any other kind of  wheel or spindle. Worsted needs less twist than woolen or the "semis" and thus over all can be spun faster.  On my modified Ashford Traditional, I can spin a hank (560 yards) of 5,600ypp worsted single in Alden's golden hour of 48 minutes. In 5 hours by the clock, I can spin the 5-hanks of worsted single needed to ply into 500-yards of real gansey yarn.  Woolen spun yarns need 30% more twist, so it takes  me 6.5 hours by the clock to spin woolen singles of the same grist.

2) Durability: Twist holds yarn together. Twist a fine single, and you have a strong, elastic thread.  Put the same twist into a thicker single, and you have barbed wire. Put the twist necessary to make the thicker single a competent yarn, and there is not enough twist to make the object as durable as one fabricated from fine singles (plied together). Yes, spinning high twist yarns and plying them together is a lot of effort, but not as much effort as spinning twice and knitting twice because the object was not durable.

3) Drape of the Fabric: Woolen spun yarns do not lend themselves to fabrics with graceful drape. Woolen fabrics tend to hang.  

4) Warmth:  Fabrics from woolen spun yarns tend to have more bulk and less warmth. Many, including famous spinning instructors, confuse bulk with warmth.  Woolen objects that have been tightly woven or knit, then fulled (related to felting) can provided great warmth, but fulling takes away much of the elasticity, and comfort of the fabric.  If you want elasticity and wearing comfort, and warmth, use a worsted spun thread to make the  fabric.  

 

 

Here is a photo of a sock in progress, being knit at a gauge of 12 spi x 20 rpi:

The needles are 12” US 000; the yarn is 6-ply (cabled 3 x 2) 1680 ypp, with light ply  twist so it is very  splitty, but gives great fill.  There is lots of twist in the yarn plies so it does not need nylon. This yarn is a bit more durable than the 4-ply Behive that was traditional for Sheringham ganseys, but the Behive produces a softer fabric on these needles. (Mills put nylon in socks, because nylon is cheaper than wool and the extra twist that makes wool more durable.)

 

Note the blunt needles. These make the knitting motions much smaller; and thus, much faster. However, knitting this tight, if I drop a stitch, I need a crochet hook (that green thing) to fix it. This is not knitting I can do in a dark movie theater.

 

This is one of my favorite fabrics. It is NOT “weatherproof” but is very warm, light, elastic, with a lot of  cushion.

The knitting sheath for this project is on the left. It is not a traditional design, but with adapters, it works for any size or length of needle, and thus allows many different knitting techniques.

 

 My knitting diary is  on the right.

 This is the second sock of  the pair, but the first sock was not handy to photograph.

 

 The Victorian Court reinvented hand knitting without great attention to historical facts. One of their myths was that most knitting was done by amateurs  - e.g., some woman in the household.

In fact, in various periods, England had robust guilds of professional knitters. Even after the guilds of professional knitters had declined, there were collectives of contract knitters, that would spend part of most days knitting objects for sale through commercial channels.  Regions developed particular skills for knitting certain kinds of objects. Those skills represented a comparitive economic advantage, and factors would come to those regions to buy knit objects for sale elsewhere.

Part of the comparative advantage of a region would be a specialized knitting toolkit for knitting certain kinds of objects. We have forgotten that knitting toolkits can be specialized - today everyone has very generalized knitting needles. In most strata of the knitting community, most people use circular needles for socks, baby clothes, and sweaters. 

However, if my family made most of their cash income from knitting ganseys for sailors and your family  made most of its cash income from knitting socks for royalty, then we might have different tool kits. 

Certainly, a knitting toolkit optimized for ganseys or fine socks can be used for knitting anything needed by anyone in the extended family. Still, toolkits for knitting can be optimized for a particular kind of knitting.

There were a lot of different styles of knitting sheaths produced by various regions in different periods of history. I have long wondered if the differences were just regional and/or temporal variance or whether they indicated different knitting techniques which were useful for knitting different kinds of objects.

There is a bunch of yarn sitting on bobbins waiting for the twist to relax, so I have been finishing up a bunch of old knitting works in progress.  This has involved abrupt transitions between objects with different needs. None of the gentile approaches, where one starts knitting swatches, and gradualy falls in love with the style of the fabric, and accustomed to the technique used to produce that fabric.  No! I pick up a KIP, and with the knitting sheath at hand, I start knitting. 

My conclusion is that Durham Sheaths are better for the technique that I call "gansey knitting", and Yorkshire Goose Wings are much better for what I call "swaving.  I have settled on using the Durham Sheath for knitting anything a fisherman might use - anything knit from 5-ply worsted spun 1,000 ypp yarns. For such knitting, I use blunt "needles" (aka "pricks") , about 30 cm long and between 1.5 mm and 2.3 mm in diameter. I have stopped using 16" and 18" long "gansey needles".  The skills learned from swaving have informed and refined my gansey knitting skills, so now the shorter pricks are are faster and more convenient. I have knit swatches (pronounced as "socks")  from 4-ply equivalent to the  4-ply Beehive listed by Gladys Thompson for the fine Norfolk - Sheringham ganseys, knit at 12 spi and 20 rpi on 1.65 mm needles.  For these fabrics I prefer the Durham Sheath with spring steel blunt spring steel pricks.  However, the first time I strapped on a Yorkshire goose wing, I was struck with the absolute brilliance of the design for general purpose knitting. (It took me a long, long time to come to appreciate the virtues of  Durham sheaths.)

I am not saying one kind of knitting is better than the other. A well knit gansey has saved many a British seaman from hypothermia - and allowed Britain to rule the seas, and Britain to become very rich.  I am very partial to objects knit from 5-ply worsted spun 1,000 ypp yarns.  My wife is generally partial to objects knit  more softly; and; such objects are quickly and easily produced with a Yorkshire goose wing. (However, I have swaved wicked hard fabrics from fine cotton crochet thread.)

Posture while knitting - Or a Perch for knitting.

Over the years, I have used several favorite knitting chairs. Each seemed to work best with a particular kind of knitting sheath. (Airline seats like leather knitting pouches!)

A review of old depictions of knitters suggested that while Victorian and modern knitters were often depicted in various armchairs (often padded or stuffed) older depictions tended to put the knitters on low benches or stools.

After some trials, I have settled on a little Ottoman stool as my new favorite knitting “chair”.   It is low enough that I can easily reach down and touch the floor, and this is my first knitting chair where the top of my thighs are approximately level, and I can set my feet flat on the floor.   It is not a place to lounge at one’s leisure. However, I am not perched there to lounge at my leisure – I set there to knit.

The first thing that I notice is that most of my various styles of knitting sheaths work very well; and all allow very fast knitting. The perch involves a bit of athleticism that encourages fast knitting.

All of a sudden, a small goose-wing I made 10-years ago with needle hole lined with brass and epoxy is a favored knitting sheath for use with 18” long gansey needles. I never knew it could work so well with long needles. It can be tucked over my right hip and used with short needles for knitting socks, or with curved needles to allow swaving fine gloves or hose; or, tucked into my belt over my right gluteus to firmly anchor long needles for fast knitting of ganseys.

While I love sitting in the benches along the San Francisco waterfront and knitting, I expect that the low stone benches along the quays in the UK, provided seating more conducive to fast knitting than the more comfortable park benches along the SF water front. In a bench with a back that slants back, I knit much slower.

About 20 years ago, I started my exploration of how durable, weatherproof wool seaman’s garments could have been expeditiously produced prior to 1840.

Early on, it became clear that the style of knitting had to be very ergonomic so rapid knitting could be sustained for a very long time. 

I had to discard the modern conventional wisdom.  Traditional knitters used knitting sheaths, knitting sticks, and knitting belts.  Few modern knitters use these tools. There were at least 3 classes of “needles” used with these tools, and much of the knowledge of these needles has been lost.  Early on, I discovered the virtues of long “gansey” needles, and later I discovered the virtues of long blunt needles.

The above tools allowed me to knit a bunch of weatherproof, durable sweaters, and great piles of good warm socks (pronounced “swatches”).

Early in the process, I had started spinning my own yarns, which I knit while they still had (Alden Amos’s recipe) spinning oil on them. The oil was washed out during blocking. Then the finished objects were “oiled” with lanolin A recent knitting project reminds me that commercial (not oiled) yarns are not pleasant to knit on gansey needles. I did not mention this issue before, and I am sure people that ran into it think I must be crazy.

Also, for a very long time, my favorite knitting chair was one of our folding deck chairs. They are certainly comfortable for a couple of hours knitting. However, if I have a gansey to knit and a short time to knit it, I use one of our little Ottoman stools. The Ottoman is not as comfortable to just sit on, but, that position allows me to knit longer and faster.  Now, I see that Ottoman forces me into a posture like what I see in old drawings and tapestries depicting knitters.

Some while back, I read an account of professional knitters who were each able to produce a good seaman’s gansey every 3 days. At the time I dismissed the account as impossible. However, today, I could replicate my “Rose Garden” gansey in less than a week. That sweater took me more than a month to knit; it protected me while I did essential work in some terrible storms, and it saved my life when I got caught in a fire. It is a good gansey.

My point in this post is that it is not a single tool or skill that allows very rapid finishing of a gansey or other large knitting project. Expeditiously knitting large objects is the of pulling together several sets of tools, skills and insights that are no longer commonly found among knitters.

For example, I consider long steel needles to be essential to rapidly hand knitting good seaman’s sweaters, but they are so much faster and easier to use with oiled yarn.  On the other hand, I consider yarn hand spun “in the grease” to be of intrinsically low quality. One cannot control grist while spinning in the grease, and accurate twist and grist is essential to high quality yarn.  Fleece should be scoured, dyed, then oiled prior to being carded/combed, and spun.

Learning advance knitting

Carson Demers (https://www.ergoiknit.com/ ) and I met on the SF quay the other day and had a little master’s class on swaving. I gave him the Durham style knitting sheath that I originally made for Alden Amos, and we worked on his swaving technique.  He is a better teacher than I am; and, now he can offer/ teach more techniques for ergonomic knitting.

Knitting needles - revisited yet again

I had not been doing much knitting, but looking around I saw that there were a number of WIP, some commercial yarn, and a good bit of hand spun 5-ply/ 1,000 ypp gansey yarn.  My Guernsey/gansey yarn has more twist in the plies and less ply twist, so it is splity to knit, but has much better "fill".  And at 1,000 ypp, it produces a tighter, warmer fabric than the 1,110 or 1,200 ypp commercial yarns. And with more twist in it, it wears better.  Anyway, I have a lot of it and it was time to do some knitting.

I sat down to a WIP, and started knitting. ACK! I did not like the needles, not one bit. I have dozens of needles that I have made over a period of years, and different WIP have different generations of needles in them. These particular needles were made well into my migration toward flat ended needles, but the ends were slightly tapered and rounded. After a couple of hours of knitting, I went out to the shop and squared up the ends of the needles. They are now cylinders with flat ends. Yes, I buffed the burrs off, but they are cylinders with flat ends. 

They are music wire - spring steel. They fit into cylindrical needle adapters (mostly lined with brass).  Yes, at this time, my favorite sock (and hat) needles are 12" long pieces of music wire. (And by using 6 of them, I can knit a gansey for a big guy. However, by using real 18" long gansey needles (with flat ends) I can knit faster than I can with the 12" needles, so sweaters still get knit on the longer needles (now with flat ends). 

I freely admit that flat tipped needles require a knitting sheath! And, I admit that many lace stitches are better done with pointy needles used with a leather  knitting belt. Nevertheless, if you need to hand knit weatherproof garments quickly, then a knitting sheath and needles with flat ends produces the better product, quicker. For some products, the technique of choice is to use "bent" needles with a knitting sheath, rotating the needle into and out of  the stitch. That is a two-handed motion that some call swaving.

I wish someone had taught me all this back when I first asked, "How did sailors keep warm?"  

The rules are:

1. Rather coarse long wool, spun worsted, dyed blue, with high twist singles, but the yarn plied up with low ply twist. It will be splitty, and the stitches will NOT "pop", but it will be durable and warm.
2. Knit very tight, and block well.  (I can knit fabrics from Rambouillet fleece,that will pass through the cotton cycles on our washer and dryer without damage or shrinking. That requires high twist yarns that are well blocked, and tight knitting and good blocking. Long coarse wools are easier to stabilize.)
3. To dye one must scour the wool, so it must be re-oiled.,
4. Some stitches provided extra warmth (e.g., Lizard) , some provide padding as one gets knocked around the boat, and some provided ventilation (e.g., bobbles) between the sweater and the oil skin. Sweaters intended to be worn under oil skins  do not need to be dyed.

Spinzilla

This last week, I spun about 25,000 yards of wool yarn, about half semi-worsted from flock run 56 count wool and half woolen from fine Rambouillet. All totaled, It was about 6.5 lb. All of that yarn has a grist of about 4,000 ypp and is for a  piece of weaving. It feels good to get it out of the way - scoured but not carded, it filled a couple of big plastic bins,

It is not what I planned to do, but all things considered, it was not a bad Spinzilla for me. And for me, it was not the end of this project. I have a few more bins of these fibers left to spin.

Cotton Cards

I like my drum carder - it is a Clemes and Clemes. I think hand cranked carders can be gentler on fine fibers than the motorized.

However, for very fine fibers spun woolen, hand cards are better.  I was told that my wool cards were well suited for carding fine wool. Well sort of!

I was told that my cotton cards were only suited for cotton, and not to use them on wool. No!  Use your wool cards on almost all wools, but when you have a very fine fleece, all sorted, graded, and perfectly scoured, use your cotton cards.  

Spinzilla

All of this talk about fine spinning has put me in the mood to do some spinning. My wife is off to a school reunion, so I am off to Spinzilla. (Her car will be out of the garage, so I can arrange my spinning gear in the air conditioned garage.)

My goal is to spin a pound of  Heinz 57 wool into 22,400 yards (40 hanks) of worsted single at 20 tpi in 7 days.

eta 9/9/18
The Heinz will have to be prepped; washed, oiled, combed, dized into bird's nests. . . . . the start is washing and oiling - here I begin the study a bit early, because I may be required to make a new flyer whorl to get the correct grist. I have whorls spin it at its spin count (30,800 ypp) or to spin knitting yarn at 22,400 ypp but this is somewhere in between.

Some Heinz 57  having been carded, washed, oiled, draining and drying. A day in the sun and it will be ready for combing etc.

Edited 9/10/18 to add:

Combed Heinz fiber as bird nests drying in the sun because the Aden Amos carding/spinning oil has water in it, a I added some more as I was combing. Each bird nest weighs about 4 grams, so 3 are required to spin a hank. The roving is very soft and has a tensile strength  ~4 grams.  About 15% or 20% of the fiber in the commercial fiber  product as received is left in the combs and is set aside to be carded and spun woolen. I could get a higher yield of the fiber for worsted spinning, but I need fiber for woolen spinning anyway.  Note that at this point, the Heinz is much whiter than as received. 

9/12/18 ETA 

My lawyer says it is a team "sport" where the goal is to spin a lot. It does not matter what I spin, as  I support my team by spinning a lot of yards.  My wheel spins fastest when spinning  woolen and semi-worsted yarns  at ~5,000 ypp. I guess I owe it to my team members so spin woolen  and semi-worsted at 5,000 ypp.

THREE

All the wheel makers indicate the "ratio" of  their wheels in various configurations. However, because of drive belt slip, it is not a very useful indicator of anything. In fact, I did not really begin to understand my wheel until I got my digital tachometer that told me how fast my flyers and bobbins were really spinning.

Higher ratios should indicate that more twist is being inserted to into the yarn.  IN THEORY, for any wheel, the diameter of the drive wheel is fixed,  so smaller whorls should mean more twist is being inserted?!?!?! NO! Smaller whorls mean there is more slippage. When you get down to the tiny whorls of "lace flyers", a lot more slippage!  My tachometer told me that my fancy lace kit did not spin any faster or insert any more twist than my standard bobbin, and the double drive kit inserted more twist than the lace flier, but when I tried  to speed up the double drive, by making smaller whorls, speed actually went DOWN, DOWN, DOWN. Deep thought indicated that there are good physical reasons for this related to vibration waves in the drive belt so smaller whorls have much less contact with the drive belt and much more slippage. This is an effect that dominates lace flyers in modern spinning wheel making.

You get a big wheel with fancy lace flyers, and lace production is -- disappointing.  First, they are Scotch Tension,  -- the drag of the tension system must be overcome before you can spin anything.  And, that fine lace yarn that you want to spin must absorb enough twist to become strong enough to overcome the drag of the Scotch Tension, and that is a huge hurdle. I often spin yarns that are so fine  (grist greater than 30,000 ypp) that they need more than 15 tpi to have any strength. Certainly some twist can be stored in the leader, and that can be transferred to the proto-yarn before the proto-yarn must overcome the drag of the tension system, so the proto-yarn can maintain yarn lock and receive twist from the spinning bobbin. I took my tachometer around, and most modern wheels with Scotch Tension insert twist at much less than 1,000  rpm.  I can do much better with a drop spindle, and I am not even very good with a drop spindle.

Modern DD wheels are a bit better in terms of  delivering twist to the proto-yarn, but are desperately tricky to adjust the drive belt tension so the bobbin spins faster than the flyer, but drag on the whorls does not slow the whole system to a crawl.  However, a lot of things can go wrong in a DD system that will slow the system way down: too much drive belt tension, too little drive belt tension, wear on the drive belts, wear on the whorls, lack of drive belt dressing, drive belt dressing accumulating on the  whorls, are all things to monitor every few hours of spinning.   DD systems have rightfully earned a reputation of being high maintenance.  Which is not to say that I did not LOVE my DD, when I got it.

The obvious solution is to design a clockwork system so the bobbin spins fast to insert twist, and the flyer spins slower to wind the yarn onto the bobbin, and to wind yarn onto the bobbin no faster than twist is inserted. Such a system was invented in Florence, Italy  in the 13th century for use in the silk production industry. It was the  size of a room, and required a man and a boy  to operate.  A century later it had been reduced in size so one person would use it for spinning worsted, and it remained one of the most valuable trade secrets in the world.

In essence, a DRS wheel is a double drive spinning wheel set up as a clockwork mechanism with the bobbin whorl just enough smaller than the flyer whorl, that the bobbin spins fast enough to insert twist as the flyer winds yarn on to the  bobbin at the proper rate so each segment of the yarn has the correct twist. This concept has THREE important advantages. 1) It relieves the spinner from having to control twist, so all spinner needs to do is draft to the correct grist. 2) It reduces drag and slippage in the spinning system, so much less labor is required to insert twist. 3) It can be true bobbin lead, so the bobbin can spin faster than the flyer, and some of the problems of a flyer spinning at high speed are reduced. The net results are that  one can easily spin 560 yards of  5,600 ypp (75 wpi) single with 9 tpi in an hour,  and spinning/plying a 500 yard entry for the longest thread contest is an easy day's work. (E.g., one can easily spin 45,000 ypp singles at 150 yards per hour.)

The downsides with DRS are:

•  you need to know what yarn you want to spin
• you need the correct whorls for the yarn you want to spin
• you need to be able to draft to a consistent grist
• you need to keep drafting as long as the drive wheel is moving or the yarn will break off

I have 5 whorls containing about a dozen "grooves" that I store on the wheel, and which allow me to spin almost any yarn I might want to spin, and I have more whorls in the spin chest. It takes me about 3 minutes to swap whorls.  I can spin the singles for all of the knitting yarns that I commonly spin with just 2 whorls containing 6 grooves.

TWO

Alden made me 2 DD flyers - a #1 and a #0, his "Competition" flyer.  The #1 Flyer has a capacity  of about 3 ounces of yarn and the Competition has a  capacity of  ~ 2 ounces.  The Competition, just looks elegant and fast, and like something that would be just right for frog hair yarns. When I first used it, before making DRS whorls for it, it certainly was better for fine singles. On the other hand, running DD (not DRS), spinning fine was difficult.

When I started making DRS whorls for those flyer/bobbin assemblies, the whorls for  the  #1 flyer were for 5,600 ypp (75 wpi) singles , then 11,000 ypp (105 wpi) singles then 22,000 ypp (150 wpi).  They worked and I spent months learning to use them. Then, I made DRS whorls for the #0, and yes it was wonderful for spinning fine. For a long time, If I wanted to spin 5,600 ypp I used the #1, and if I wanted to spin 30,000 ypp, I would use the #0. Later, I went back and made whorls for spinning fine with the #1.

AA never did much spinning of yarns with grists greater than 24,000 ypp. On pg 215 of the BBB (big blue book), he writes of spinning 58 count Targhee at 19,000 ypp, on a single drive, bobbin lead flyer/bobbin assembly the size of the  #1 flyer he made for me. I have spun dozens of  hanks of such yarn with that configuration.  I had to answer the question, "Do I need DRS for fine spinning on the #1?"  However, by switching whorls and using DRS I could take that same fiber and spin it at 30,000 ypp, and spin twice as many yards per hour.  Or, with DRS I could spin it at 20,000 ypp twice as fast as I could using single bobbin lead, single drive. That is the power of DRS.

When spinning 5,600 ypp singles, I would spin about a 1/3 oz of yarn, which would increase the effective diameter of the bobbin, then I would change flyer whorls, and  spin another 1/2 oz of yarn, which would increase effective diameter of the bobbin, then I would change flyer whorls again, and spin the final 5/6 oz of yarn to make just over 560 yd or a hank of yarn. I estimated weight based on guidelines that I marked on the ends of the bobbins. Much later, I moved to making flyer whorls with 3 grooves on them so I did not have to change whorls, but only slip the drive band from groove to groove. This was wonderful, so I made such flyer whorls for 20s, 40s , 60s, and 80s( ~200 wpi). In those days, I was spinning knitting yarns, so the whorl for 10s inserted 9 tpi for 3 different effective bobbin diameters, and the 80s whorl inserted 26 tpi,  and had only 1 groove because 560 yards is less than 7 grams and does not change the effective bobbin diameter significantly.

At that point, the big flyer was better than the Competition flyer for spinning fine singles. Alden used bronze bearings in his bobbins, and I had upgraded the bobbins for the big flyer to ball bearings.  Fine yarns want a lot of twist, so the bobbins for  spinning fine yarn, need to be able to spin very fast.  Ball bearings make this possible. In addition, the larger flyer has a thicker axle and is more stable when the bobbin is spinning at very high speed.

When spinning 80s, I sometimes spin the bobbin at over 4,000 rpm, while the flyer is rotating at about 155 rpm less. 

When the finished  yarn is less than 3 oz, I use the #1 flyer with the proper whorls to give the proper ply-twist.  For gansey yarn, I spin the singles hank by hank (1.6 oz each), wind off on to bobbins, steam block, and ply the 8 oz hank of 5-ply yarn on a standard Ashford Jumbo flyer using a weight and some fishing line for Scotch tension.

ONE

I spin at a reasonable speed. I did not learn to spin until I was old, my eyes dim, and my fingers stiff. My advantages were curiosity and a desire for better yarn so I could make better fabrics. This desire pushed me to use the lessons of history to make better spinning gear.

The engineering precepts are in Big Book of  Handspinning by Alden Amos. What is not in that big blue book are the skills to use equipment made to those precepts. The skills are somewhat different from those required by conventional Double Drive and Scotch Tension wheels. So any wheel maker that makes such wheels should set up a training organization.

Alden's big blue book is symbolic of how much of the hand spinning tradition has been lost.
The other day I went back to http://www.twosheep.com/blog/?p=608 . That blog post is from the days I was learning to spin on stock Ashford equipment. My Traddy was still STSD.  I thought that was a fast wheel. However, upgrading to DTDD made it faster. Then, I bought a wood lath and began re-turning the whorls to make the flyer/bobbin assembly go faster.  Then, I had Alden make me new flyers. He did not make them to DRS specifications, he made them standard DD. However, those small, balanced, stable flyers were the first BIG step toward more speed. Then, I started making my own spinning bobbins. That was the second big step towards more speed. The new bobbins had whorls very slightly smaller than the flyer whorls, but that tiny change made a huge difference.  All of a sudden, I could spin much faster. (It was not "all of a sudden", I had to workout, and learn a block of skills! There were thousands of "breakoffs" in the learning process.)

In those days the goal was good, hand spun, 5-ply gansey yarn at 1,000 ypp. Thus, I focused on singles of 5,600 yards per pound (75 wpi). For knitting yarns, I spin them at ~9 tpi.  I learned to spin them fast enough that I could make useful quantities of  5-ply knitting yarn for knitting fisherman's sweaters.  For a while I was diverted  and waylaid by  https://sweetgeorgiayarns.com/2013/09/spinning-fastest/  .
However, that was not a path  of truth.

I thought about entering the Longest Thread contest. (https://bothwellspinin.com.au/the-longest-thread-competition) So I turned bobbins designed to work with the Alden's #0 flyer to insert 26 tpi, and put some thought into fiber and fiber prep. I bought a bunch of nice Rambouillet from Anna Harvey, and spent the summer learning to spin fine, and measuring what I was doing, so I could do better. I had an entry of 10 grams of fiber in ~ 500 yards of 2-ply yarn. I was working on packaging it, when I had to leave for Europe.  The package never got sent.

Under the streets of Bruges in a 500 year old textiles vault, I learned that there was no real purpose in spinning wool finer than its spin count. The useful goal was to spin wool competently at its spin count. I gave up on the Longest Thread competitions, and put some effort in to just spinning Rambouillet well, at its spin count. As a result, I can sit down at my wheel, and spin Rambouillet at 45,000 ypp (200 wpi), at 150 yards per hour.  That means today I can spin 1,000 yards of single and ply it into 500 yards of 2-ply  (20,000 ypp) in an easy day. Or, I can ply it into 270 yards of 13,000 ypp, very round, strong, and durable lace yarn in a day. This is nothing exceptional, this is a good day's work with good tools and good skills developed over 10 years (allowing time for my Lyme Disease.)

However, I still liked "gansey" yarn so I went back to spinning it. I learned to spin it at a hank (560 yards) per hour.  At that rate, I built up an inventory of those  10s (for 10 hanks per pound), so I bought a loom. The 9 tpi 10s are not firm enough for weaving warp, so I started spinning 10s at 12 tpi.  That is a third more twist, so it should slow everything down by 1/3.  However, part of the speed limit for spinning 9 tpi  singles is drafting.  To insert more twist, I can treadle faster, so  I find that I spin 12 tpi singles at about 500 yards per hour.  They are ~ 75 wpi when packed to refusal per the Alden Amos protocol, and they are STRONG enough to be weaving warp. For some weaving, singles can be spun harder and stronger.

 Singles at 20 hanks per pound (11,200 ypp, ~105 wpi )  need about 14 tpi for ordinary yarns or about 17 tpi for hosiery. (And, hosiery yarns are spun worsted.) Twist holds yarn together, and as 5-ply at ~2,000 ypp (44 wpi) this has enough twist to hold the sock together long enough to be worth the time to knit. Knit on fine needles, the fabric has the texture of very fine commercial men's socks --  the kind of hose that in the past one could buy at Needless Markup Department Stores, but which are no longer available. You will need a couple of ounces of yarn for a pair of socks, so it can be spun and plied in an easy day.

A tension box used for rapidly plying 5-ply yarn from singles on 4" bobbins.  

A DRS wheel makes spinning a 100 grams of fine, durable sock yarn a trivial task.  Spinning enough singles to warp a bolt of cloth (4.5 lb or 50,000 yards) is more effort, but doable with a fast DRS wheel.

There are wheel makers out there that can make such wheels - if they would just clear out the back of their shop and turn it into a classroom where clients could learn the skills of spinning. Heck, they might even run a University on carding in the same space. 

How fast did professional hand spinners spin?

 See http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/longest-thread-of-hand-spun-wool-in-one-hour/

My normal single is 5,600 ypp  (75 wpi  @ pack to refusal) semi-woolen. At 9 tpi, I use that grist of single for making 2-ply jumper yarn (2,500 ypp), 5-ply “gansey” yarn (1,000 ypp),  or 10-ply Aran yarn (500 ypp),  and at 12 tpi, I use it for weaving warp.  With my Ashford Traditional equipped with an Alden Amos flyer/bobbin assembly, somewhat modified by myself for DRS spinning as described in Alden’s Big Book of Handspinning pgs 390 et seq. 

I spin the knitting singles at more than a hank (560 yards) per hour (wound onto bobbins). I spin the weaving singles at about 450 yards per hour (wound onto bobbins). 

Thus, the actual spinning time is about 45 or 48 minutes.  2,400 ypp singles take less twist, but are thicker and have to be wound off more often, so I can spin them at ~400 yards per hour.  Finer singles require more twist, and thus are produced more slowly, until well prepped fiber for 70 or 80 count singles (e.g., 42,000 ypp, 200 wpi) require about 26 tpi and can be spun at about 150 yards per hour even though I can spin for days without winding off.  For this, I need an accelerator on the spinning wheel. 

(see AA’s big blue book, pg 185) I run the spinning bobbin at 3,000 to 4,000 rpm (by actual tachometer measure) and the flyer slow enough to allow the appropriate amount of twist to accumulate. The flyer rpm is between 330 and 150 rpm.  The DRS clock work controls the relative speeds of the bobbin and the flyer.  Mostly, this allows the bobbin to spin much faster, and thereby insert twist much faster, while the flyer to spins slower causing less drag, and reducing total effort.

Right now there is ~32,000 yards of 12 tpi singles on 320 bobbins on the warping rack beside the loom.  Upstairs there are bins and bins full of hand spun and hand plied gansey yarn and Aran yarn for knitting, containing about another 60,000 yards of singles. I know how many yards of  this single I can spin in an hour. 

And, I cannot spin that fast with any commercial e-spinner, no way, no how.

Traditional professional hand spinners with training and professional grade tools spun faster. 

The easy check on grist, is to look at the thread with a linen tester and see that there are 20 staples in the cross section of the thread. Or cut a ¼” inch piece of the thread, and drop it in a few drops of water in a saucer, and verify that there are 20 little pieces of wool fiber in the water.

Vogue Knitting Live

The Vogue Knitting Live San Francisco will be at the Hilton the long weekend of  September 21. On the September 21, 2018, I will be in the Hilton Lobby with my Peggy's cove hat and  Red CRAFTSMAN  knitting bag from about 10 am to 5 pm.

I will have a lot of swatches of exceptional fabrics knit from ordinary yarns the traditional tools (knitting sheaths, gansey needles, knitting belts, and swaving needles) required to knit such fabrics.

You can touch and feel fabrics like nothing you have ever felt before. And, I will answer questions. This is a free master's class - or guild meeting. For example, I will show you how well and how fast, blunt needles knit. I am not selling stuff, so I can tell the truth.  ; )

DRS Spinning wheels revisited

Is it DRS? 

Spin and maintain treadle pace, then draft faster.  If the wheel sucks all the yarn into the orifice faster than it can insert twist to make a competent yarn, it is not DRS.  If you get slack, it is likely DRS. A DRS wheel will insert the same twist all the time, so the grist must be adapted to the twist setting on the wheel. If you can spin thick or thin, without changing whorls, it is not DRS. Thin yarns need a lot more twist than thick yarns. Woolen yarns need more twist than worsted yarns of the same grist to have the same strength.

edited for clarity 9/11/18 because I had been calculating whorl ratios, and was thinking of all rotation relative to the bobbin, and here, that was pure nonsense.

The basic text on DRS is Alden Amos’s Big Book of Handspinning. It is not very mathematical, but it works.  First, how much twist do you need to insert to make a competent yarn?  That is critical. See the  Big Blue Book page 383.  Then, assuming bobbin lead, what is the effective diameter of the spinning bobbin. (I make my bobbins so their diameter is ~3π” to save math.) Thus, 1 rotation of the flyer (relative to the bobbin) winds  3 inches onto to the spinning bobbin, and for my standard single at 9 tpi, the bobbin must rotate just over 27 times every time the flyer rotates 26 times relative to you.   That is, the flier must make ~96% of a rotation or 346.3 degrees every time the bobbin rotates once (360 degrees). Thus, the ratio of the bobbin whorl to the flyer whorl is 1:1.037. The bobbin whorls are about 50 mm in diameter (sometimes I fall off the English system) and the whorl for the flier is 51.85 mm in diameter.  For 12 tpi, (or second layer of 9 tpi on a bobbin with one layer of single on it) the bobbin must rotate 36 times while the flier rotates 35 times. Therefor the bobbin whorl/flyer whorl ratio is 1: 1.027. I have a groove for that!   As the effective diameter of the spinning bobbin increases, the bobbin whorl/flyer whorl ratio must change to keep the twist consistent. Thus, my flier whorls have 2 or 3 grooves on them and I change grooves as the bobbin fills and the effective diameter increases. I spin woolen at about 25% higher twist than worsted of the same grist (e.g., 5,600 ypp worsted is spun at  ~9 tpi and the woolen of that grist is spun at ~12 tpi). The 5 grams of a fine single in a hank does not change the bobbin diameter much, so the whorls for fines have only 1 groove in them. In fact, fines are spun on a smaller flyer/bobbin assembly based on bobbin whorls of 100 mm and flier whorl diameters of 101.2 mm as this makes the wood working easier.  That should all be clear as mud. 

The deal is that I spin my spinning bobbin at something over 3,000 rpm, and my flier at about over 2,845 rpm, and that is good because fliers have much more wind resistance so this system spins them slower. Spinning bobbin lead is much faster than spinning flier lead. With “yarn lock” systems (e.g., Scotch Tension, or Double Drive systems with slippage), you end up spinning your flier as fast as your bobbin most of the time, so you put a lot of effort into overcoming the wind resistance of your flier most of the time. I see trying to spin a flier at 3,000 rpm as being a lot of work, I am lazy, I do not work that hard. I do a little math, and save myself a lot of work.

Carbon Steel needles

When I started all this, I was pleasantly surprised that my carbon steel (spring) steel needles did not rust nearly as much as I expected.  When I sold carbon steel needles, I included a bit of crocus cloth to polish corrosion off of the needles, but I find that I do not need it nearly as often as I would expect.

Recently I was sitting by a pool, knitting.  The ground under me was rocky, and I dropped a needle. It clattered and bounced some yards. And then I noticed that the needle was scratched until it was distinctly rough. At home, I would have gone into the shop and buffed it. On other trips, I would have swapped another needle out of the knitting bag, but all I had was a very limited sock kit. So I kept knitting with the scratched needle. In a couple of hours, the roughness disappeared, no buffing or polishing with crocus cloth. The yarn was certainly NOT harsh enough to polish steel that fast. What happened?

My yarns have lanolin on them, and it leaves a film after knitting. As the steel starts to rust, the lanolin gets into the rust, forming a patina that protects the metal.  However, sitting next to the pool, I was using hand lotion, suntan lotion, and a commercial yarn with no lanolin on it.  I think the hand lotion and suntan lotion was enough to allow the metal to form a patina that protected the metal, but was "soft enough" to be scratched on the rocks. In fact, I notice that the patina on those needles is soft enough to be polished off by a few hours of knitting, but will reform in a couple of days.

Sharpening HSS

I have been turning thread bobbins from solid blocks of maple and oak. Often the shavings are like long (hundreds of feet) strips of paper. This is the result of using very sharp tools. I do not see many wood turners use tools that produce those fine, continous ribbons of wood. Very sharp tools make the job much easier and faster.

Often, in the past,  I wanted to make specialized lathe tools, so I would buy inexpensive sets of  tools, use a couple of them to make the  tools that I wanted, leaving me with several medium quality tools of ordinary design.  I often use these spare turning chisels for anything that  does not require a very  high level of craftsmanship - such as singles bobbins. I grind these  to the same angles as my other higher grade tools and I use them for things like singles bobbins. Yes, I have to sharpen these inexpensive lathe chisels more frequently than my higher quality tools, but that is perhaps honing them with 400 grit paper every 45 minutes rather than every hour.  With a good grinder, honing takes only half a minute, and is not a big deal.  In contrast, for very high precision cuts, I will hone my best tools with a diamond hone by hand every few minutes.

I still have some carbon steel lathe tools with sentimental value, but I do not use them much.  In theory, they can be sharper and produce a better cut than even my best HSS.  In practice, they do not.  To produce the quality of cut that I get with my good HSS tools, I would have to hone the carbon steel tools almost continuously.