Alden shows how do do this with spinning wheel, yarn reel, and custom tools.
It can also be done with a spinning wheel, raddle (or tension box), and the sectional beam on your loom. Some of us do not have space for an extra yarn reel. I did have that space, but now there is a loom there. And, some extra yarn. And, maybe a few fleece. Textiles is about making huge piles of fiber into tiny piles of fabric. Or, vice-a-versa.
You can change your mind about how that yarn was plied.
Lou Grantham at SF Fiber in Oakland, Ca got me some new toys for the loom. They let me move forward. Texsolv heddles on the tension box work much better with hand spun wool than the original 6" aluminium heddles. This is reasonable, as 250 years ago, they were tying heddles from waxed linen thread. Hooper gives instructions on how to tie heddles.
Current warp is 40 epi of handspun wool singles. That means 80 bobbins of handspun on the bobbin rack for my 2" sectional beam. I have developed a true love/hate relationship with yarn yardage counter. The warp is 10s (5,600 ypp, 75 wpi). It is not the fabric I dream of, but I move forward. Singles bed differently, so it is not the fabric that somebody familiar with commercial 2-ply weaving yarns would expect either. There is a box with another 80 bobbins in the workshop for warping at 80 epi, and chips and sawdust everywhere. I know I can buy bobbins, but I need to practice my wood turing to stay sharp. It is like spinning, I need to practice.
Current reed on the loom is 20 dpi, which also seems to work at 80 epi weaving with 40s (22,000 ypp, 45 m/g, 150 wpi). At one time 40s were the top end of "course spinning". Mediums were 41s to 60s. and fine spinning was 61s to ~ 90s. By late Victorian times power spinning produced much finer singles. From here, my goal is good cloth based on 40s at 80 epi. I expect it to weight about 4 oz per yard. Note I use the Bradford system with hanks of 560 yd, which is different from the cotton system, where hanks are 840 yd.
Warping fine handspun wool is more interesting than easy-peasy plying 10-ply Aran knitting yarn. For anybody familiar with weaving bolts of wool cloth, making 5-ply or 10-ply knitting yarns would have been trivial. It is a set of skills that we have mostly lost. A yard of wool cloth woven from 40s takes about 6, 000 yards, which at 17 tpi, is more than a couple of days of spinning.
I do think loom waste would have been plied up into knitting yarns. Yes, those weavers were very frugal with their yarn, but they were also careful not to start with a single that that had knots in it. Better to ply that little piece of single into knitting yarns than tie it onto a warp and start with a knot. On the other hand, I have read that weavers cursed their spinners for the poor quality of their spinning, so I suspect that there were some knots in the warp by the end of the day. LIke I said, I need to stay in practice.
Broken or cut wool singles have a disturbance in the twist, which for weaving, is worse than a disturbance in the "Force".
It can also be done with a spinning wheel, raddle (or tension box), and the sectional beam on your loom. Some of us do not have space for an extra yarn reel. I did have that space, but now there is a loom there. And, some extra yarn. And, maybe a few fleece. Textiles is about making huge piles of fiber into tiny piles of fabric. Or, vice-a-versa.
You can change your mind about how that yarn was plied.
Lou Grantham at SF Fiber in Oakland, Ca got me some new toys for the loom. They let me move forward. Texsolv heddles on the tension box work much better with hand spun wool than the original 6" aluminium heddles. This is reasonable, as 250 years ago, they were tying heddles from waxed linen thread. Hooper gives instructions on how to tie heddles.
Current warp is 40 epi of handspun wool singles. That means 80 bobbins of handspun on the bobbin rack for my 2" sectional beam. I have developed a true love/hate relationship with yarn yardage counter. The warp is 10s (5,600 ypp, 75 wpi). It is not the fabric I dream of, but I move forward. Singles bed differently, so it is not the fabric that somebody familiar with commercial 2-ply weaving yarns would expect either. There is a box with another 80 bobbins in the workshop for warping at 80 epi, and chips and sawdust everywhere. I know I can buy bobbins, but I need to practice my wood turing to stay sharp. It is like spinning, I need to practice.
Current reed on the loom is 20 dpi, which also seems to work at 80 epi weaving with 40s (22,000 ypp, 45 m/g, 150 wpi). At one time 40s were the top end of "course spinning". Mediums were 41s to 60s. and fine spinning was 61s to ~ 90s. By late Victorian times power spinning produced much finer singles. From here, my goal is good cloth based on 40s at 80 epi. I expect it to weight about 4 oz per yard. Note I use the Bradford system with hanks of 560 yd, which is different from the cotton system, where hanks are 840 yd.
Warping fine handspun wool is more interesting than easy-peasy plying 10-ply Aran knitting yarn. For anybody familiar with weaving bolts of wool cloth, making 5-ply or 10-ply knitting yarns would have been trivial. It is a set of skills that we have mostly lost. A yard of wool cloth woven from 40s takes about 6, 000 yards, which at 17 tpi, is more than a couple of days of spinning.
I do think loom waste would have been plied up into knitting yarns. Yes, those weavers were very frugal with their yarn, but they were also careful not to start with a single that that had knots in it. Better to ply that little piece of single into knitting yarns than tie it onto a warp and start with a knot. On the other hand, I have read that weavers cursed their spinners for the poor quality of their spinning, so I suspect that there were some knots in the warp by the end of the day. LIke I said, I need to stay in practice.
Broken or cut wool singles have a disturbance in the twist, which for weaving, is worse than a disturbance in the "Force".
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