Witchcraft to the ignorant, .... Simple science to the learned!
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
"Magic" dominates modern spinning. Spinners of fine threads claim to be working with singles that are bundles of only 5 staples. This claim evaporates into fraud when the light of science and technology is turned on it. For example one of the spinners of Orenburg lace tells us that her singles contain only 5 fibers. However these singles have a grist of about 30,000 ypp, Orenburg fibers have a spin count of about 60,000 ypp, so we know her singles are bundles of about 40 fibers. Such singles are then plied (or more precisely, core spun) with silk.
A beginner that attempts to spin singles that are only 5 staples thick will fail, because that is not how one makes such yarns. For one thing, a single of Orenburg fiber that is only 10 fibers thick has a grist of 120,000 ypp (240 meters/gram or 350 wpi). Even with plies of silk to stabilize it, it is too thin. In a knit pattern, it just disappears. And it is very fragile. A single with only 5 fibers would be much thinner and much more fragile. The puff about 5 fibers is bluff trying to support a world of magic, where people do not do STEM.
Saying that there are only 5 fibers in Orenburg lace singles is a lie. In particular, it is not fair to beginning spinners. Such lies are one reason I am so resentful against the spinning establishment.
In fact, an 80s single from a fine fiber such as Rambouillet is actually going to be thinner than an Orenburg lace single. The 80s will have a grist of about 45,000 ypp, while the Orenburg lace single has a grist of about 30,000 ypp. The 80s single is worsted spun and has a compact nature, while the Orenburg is woolen with a soft halo around it. Thus, both by grist and visual appearance, the the 80s single is thinner than the Orenburg lace single.
Granted that an 80s single is not as soft as an Orenburg lace single, but it is thinner, and with the right tools, it is faster and easier to spin. In my world, "softness" is not the only virtue.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jamie-davis-smith/get-your-girls-into-stem_b_5733976.html
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6 comments:
So the idiot who still doesn't know what 'staple' means, after years of corrections, is accusing others of being incapable of learning.
Enough projection for a drive-in.
It is a stretch to link those articles to spinning ability.
Have you matched any of the spinning done by the winners of the Bothwell Challenge?
And what is with links that don't link and the wild changes of font sizes?
Staple - both OED and Alden's Big Book give "single fiber" as the preferred meaning/usage of staple (even in reference to wool.)
Staple as a lock of wool is indeed a secondary usage, but I do not see this useage in books that seem accurate, and well edited.
When I intended to enter Bothwell, I spun a few hundred yards of single in the 220 m/gram range (average 7 or 8 fibers) and made a couple of hundred yards of 2-ply in the 100 m/g range. I was working on packaging when I got sick.
In prototyping the 50 mm flier whorls, on one I cut too deep and came up with a whorl set for 35 tpi. It performs much better than the equipment that I was using when I was intending to enter Bothwell.
All of a sudden spinning in the range of less than 10 fibers became trivial. I was able to make enough of such yarns to test their properties, and I lost interest.
A high powered stereo jeweler's loupe allows one to easily see the process. The downside is limited field of vision results in eye fatigue as the yarn rapidly moves across the field of vision.
I am looking for better textiles. I find that 80s (45,000 ypp/ 200 wpi/ 90 m/gram) is as fine a single as is needed for practical textiles. Frankly, I do not know many spinners that can sit down and spin 80s in useful quantities.
Sorry about the formating, it did not show up in the text editor I was using, and I posted it without checking.
Staple is not synonymous with lock, either.
Dear Dr Gan Sei,
All of my teachers use their real names, that would include Alden Amos, all the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary, Judith MacKenzie, Howard Priestman, J. A. Lapp, and etc.
The meaning of my discussion on "fines" does not turn on the difference between "fiber" and "staple." If I was discussing the engineering of industrial wool spinning equipment, then the difference between fiber and staple would be critical. It does not matter one whit if I spin a single of 20 fibers or a single of 20 staples. The second simply comes from a better sorted and graded batch of wool
By and large I find the modern spinning literature to ignore real differences and make distinctions without a difference.
You are an excellent example of such writing.
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