Many modern spinning "teachers" say that yarn can be finished by winding a skein, wetting it, and letting the skein dry under various conditions. I do not find that this works, I say so, and spinners bash me.
I like skeins for washing and dyeing. Yarn in a skein can be washed with less water than yarn on a reel. However, I have never been happy with the quality of finish achieved by allowing yarn in a skein to dry in the skein. with, or without, weighting.
If you are going to wash or dye a skein of yarn then it needs to go onto a squirrel cage swift, and be wound off onto a reel.
Fine yarns need to be washed on a reel. The old silk reels work well, as do AA's Shaker Rockets.
As an alternative, if the yarn does not need washing, steam works very well to set the twist. See AA.
I have no doubt that Iron Age weavers routinely worked with blocked yarn. If the yarn was dyed after spinning, the blocking might have been done by the dye, but I would guess that often the spinner finished the yarn. Truth is that if you have a horse trough or a barrel, you can wash the yarn on the niddy-noddy, then dry it in the sun or hang it in the rafters on a rainy day. This is better than letting the skein dry loose or weighted. This works, and is inexpensive, why don't see this in the modern spinning texts?
Why do spinners bash me for honestly saying what works for me and what does not? I think this says more about the spinners than about my testing.
I like skeins for washing and dyeing. Yarn in a skein can be washed with less water than yarn on a reel. However, I have never been happy with the quality of finish achieved by allowing yarn in a skein to dry in the skein. with, or without, weighting.
If you are going to wash or dye a skein of yarn then it needs to go onto a squirrel cage swift, and be wound off onto a reel.
Fine yarns need to be washed on a reel. The old silk reels work well, as do AA's Shaker Rockets.
As an alternative, if the yarn does not need washing, steam works very well to set the twist. See AA.
I have no doubt that Iron Age weavers routinely worked with blocked yarn. If the yarn was dyed after spinning, the blocking might have been done by the dye, but I would guess that often the spinner finished the yarn. Truth is that if you have a horse trough or a barrel, you can wash the yarn on the niddy-noddy, then dry it in the sun or hang it in the rafters on a rainy day. This is better than letting the skein dry loose or weighted. This works, and is inexpensive, why don't see this in the modern spinning texts?
Why do spinners bash me for honestly saying what works for me and what does not? I think this says more about the spinners than about my testing.
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8 comments:
"Why do spinners bash me for honestly saying what works for me and what does not?"
It's not what you say, but how you say it. You don't say "this works for me" and leave it there, you imply that anyone not doing it your way is idiotic, flawed, ignorant. You also never give anyone else the benefit of the doubt that maybe they've found ways that work for them.
We're approaching the season where we reckon up our year, and contemplate what we'll change in the new year. Your year has been challenging on many levels. I would like to suggest that you might want to think about modifying how you interact with others, if you would honestly like to be bashed less. You put people on the defensive, you impugn their skills and intellect, and frankly, you lead people to disbelieve your own expertise, because you ignore any experiences from all but a select few of your chosen sources/mentors.
I'm not saying this meanly. I'm saying it in an honest effort to get you to change, because, really, you have a lot to offer the world. But if you keep going on as you are, the world won't want to hear it.
Personally, as a knitter (rather than a weaver) I prefer to dry my finished yarns in a skein, not under tension.
Yarns dried under tension to control twist either with a weighted skein or on a Niddy noddy or reel can do unpredictable things as twist reactivates when rewashed (and I've got the biased knitting to prove it!) and I prefer to knit with yarns that aren't going to change too much when the final object hits the water.
But then I spin reasonably balanced yarns that don't have much residual twist so there isn't too much issue either way.
I have no problems finishing evenly spun, well balanced fine laceweight in a skein (but probably it isn't as fine or as high twist as you would undoubtedly need to produce for use in weaving)
Personally, as a knitter (rather than a weaver) I prefer to dry my finished yarns in a skein, not under tension.
Yarns dried under tension to control twist either with a weighted skein or on a Niddy noddy or reel can do unpredictable things as twist reactivates when rewashed (and I've got the biased knitting to prove it!) and I prefer to knit with yarns that aren't going to change too much when the final object hits the water.
But then I spin reasonably balanced yarns that don't have much residual twist so there isn't too much issue either way.
I have no problems finishing evenly spun, well balanced fine laceweight in a skein (but probably it isn't as fine or as high twist as you would undoubtedly need to produce for use in weaving)
mostly, I use a spinning oil as I spin. The oil needs to be washed off within 30 days. If I can get everything plied and knit in 30 days, fine. If the project is likely to drag on for more than 30 days, I need to wash the yarn.
I thought balling the unwashed yarn would save me so much time that I could get everything done before the oil started to go bad.
The balling ended up taking more time than it saved.
That's some quality humor in the final two sentences of your comment. Kudos.
Dianne R,
"Impugn" is much too weak a word.
A number of spinners have deeply held beliefs about spinning wheels that are contrary to rational physics.
These myths limit most spinner's abilities to understand their spinning wheels, and use those spinning wheels to their full potential.
Yes, their ways work for them because they have limited their goals. They do not try to spin fine and fast. I understand that not everybody or every project needs fine and fast spinning. Still, belief in these myths makes any and all spinning that they do slower and more effort. The spinning that they do is so much effort that they can not dream of spinning finer, or faster, or of spinning larger projects.
I belong to a spinning guild full of expert spinners. They all remember when I bought my Traddy, they all know AA, and were there, in the room, when I received AA's fliers.
However, they do not understand how I am able to spin so fine and so fast. If they cannot understand it, I doubt if most spinners at a distance can.
I have simply given up, and consider most spinners not worth the effort of trying to teach.
Most spinners cannot distinguish what I do from magic.
What if, one day, you decided that there might be many excellent thoughtful spinners. Each of these persons may have worked with different goals and achieved them. They may have different equipment and a variety of fleece. They may have tested many kinds and reached some valid conclusions. They may have lovely results with well-kept records. They may be adept on many different wheels, they may have been successful in promoting spining/dyeing/knitting/weaving and other fibre arts. You could join them in conversations using non-confrontational phrasing. Your blog could have many interested readers. Imagine.
Some of the nicest people that I know are spinners. Some of the smartest people that I know are spinners.
However, it seems that dumb and rude spinners can shout louder than the nice and smart spinners. On the internet, they seem to always be shouting at me.
This all started when a spinner with a very fast car shouted at me for my trying to make my spinning wheel go faster.
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