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 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.
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.
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.
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2 comments:
Hello Aaron, would you care to explain the term "spin count", and how to determine the spin count of a given fiber, please?
Hi Aaron, i read wit interest your comment about "no point in spinning wool thinner than its spin count" what is this spin count, how do you find this value for any given fleece?
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