Handspun Sock Yarn

 I returned to knitting in 1999. I started working on how to hand knit objects well suited to keeping fisherman warm on a square-rigged ship, wooden ship.  My path included learning to hand spin the kind of yarns used to hand knit objects which could supply the exceptional warmth needed to sail then through storms rather than around storms. I skipped a lot of other basic skills, including socks/sock  yarns for urban environments.

 In pursuit of warmth, I tried all kinds of yarns, and settled on "gansey" yarn as being a very good yarn for activites away from centrally heated environments.  Sailing, snow camping, sheep herding, duck hunting, skiing, and pruning fruit trees in the winter are all activities that can be better enjoyed wearing objects well knit from a good gansey yarn.

The best gansey yarns that I found were the British worsted spun 5-ply, 1,000 ypp yarns made in old mills. By 2004, it was clear that those old mills were disapearing, and I needed to find alternate yarns.  I set about learning to spin. It took me 4 or 5 years before I could produce yarns that experienced knitters and spinners could not tell from the commercial products from Britain. It took me a couple more years before I could produce those yarns fast enough that they could be a useful knitting yarn rather than a spinning tour de force. 

In the period 2011 to 2020, my normal knitting yarn was some hand spun variation of those yarns. My favorite needles were 2.3 mm spring steel. Certainly, there was a lot of experimentation with finer yarns, often toward 6-ply (3x2-ply cable) 1,700 ypp yarns. These competed with various yarns such as   4-ply Lion Brand Beehive and British Breeds Goosewing yarns, various Blauband, and my hand spun replicas of those yarns. Over the last couple of years, my  projects have moved from gansey yarns to finer yarns knit on 1.6 mm needles.   While the winter socks I knit fall in 2020 were still 5 and 6-ply yarns at 1,000 and 840 ypp knit on 2.3 mm needles, today all my knitting projects seem to be 6-ply cabled 1,700 ypp knit on 1.63 mm steel needles. I have fallen in love with this 6-ply cabled sock yarn for everything. However, I still pronounce "swatch" as "sock". 

Stuff related to Sock yarn project; socks, finished and tested, socks in progress with tools, and more yarn in progress.  Sometimes, I need a magnifier for this project. Gauge on the socks is 12-spi x 14-rpi. Needles are all 1.6 mm = ~US 000. 

Lion Brand Beehive and British Breeds Goosewing have more 'fill', so objects knit from my 6-ply sock yarn have very different behavior and performance.  I am struggling with which yarn structures are better for which purposes. I am working this out prior to sampling a lot of 12-ply sock yarn. (e.g., I am knitting my stash  of 6-ply cabled 1,700 ypp yarns, ) The knitting bag now holds 1.5mm  needles and their knitting sheathes, and cakes of 6-ply sock yarn, before I spin a bunch of 22,000 ypp singles. A bunch of  exotic sock and glove yarns have been banished to file drawer with a layer of bay leaves.  That hand-spun Irish glove yarn that seems so fine and sophisticated when I bought it in Scotland circa 2004, now seems coarse and pretentious.  Bobbins of 11,200 ypp singles are queued up on the  tension box - I have some knitting to do.

The grist of  my sock yarn is not really that different from "Jumper yarn" used in Fair Isle knitting so knitting a sweater from "sock yarn" is not that outrageous. I knit ~120 to 140 stitches per square inch.  And speaking of yarn from the Islands, let us remember that in 1790, Shetland wool was [hand] spun and knitted fine enough that both (together) of the knee-high socks hand knit from hand-spun Shetland wool produced as a gift for the English King would pass through a lady's wedding ring. In this context, what I spin is only coarse stuff, but I practice in hope of doing better. I have been to his Castle, and it is a cold and drafty place (even with modern central heat), and I would rather wear my socks - even in summer, and even if they are thicker.

 I find that my handspun yarn produces warmer and more durable fabrics, than  commercial sock yarn sold retail,  or BeeHive, or Goosewing yarns I can buy.   Sock yarns and jumper yarns from commercial mills sold through retail yarn shops ARE likely to produce softer objects than I knit from my hand spun yarns, but I do not find the commercial yarns durable enough to be worth putting the effort into knitting those yarns on fine needles.  I find fine spinning is faster and more rewarding than re-knitting - fine objects.

Twist holds yarn together, and fine plies can take more twist than coarse plies. Twist is expensive. Energy to produce twist is traditionally the largest single cost of a wool yarn mill. Putting less twist into yarn means lower cost of production, and making a yarn that can be sold cheaper. On the other hand, it is faster for me to put more twist into my yarns than to reknit the objects.

I can produce a 2-ply, worsted spun yarn at 2,500 ypp or 3-ply at 1,700 ypp, but by the time they are spun and knit tight enough (on US 000 needles) to be a good durable sock yarn, the fabric is unpleasant.  However, I find that if I spin 11,200 ypp singles, ply into 2-ply, then make 3x2-ply cable, at ~ 1,700 ypp)  I can knit that on those 1.5 mm needles to make dense, cushioning, durable sock yarn. I love it.  I do not say it is fast or easy, I say it is a nice sock yarn. 

Yes, knitting at 12 spi and 14 rpi  may seem a bit tedious, but that is why I put 19-years into learning to use a knitting sheath. And, no, I am not done learning how to use a knitting sheath. In the last few months, I have learned a good bit about the shaping of knitting needle tips for different kinds of knitting. Horses for courses. 

Yes, my current sock yarn takes passing 8 yards of yarn through the wheel for every yard of  finished yarn.   Yes, I block 2 yards of  yarn for every yard of finished yarn. Moving to a 12-ply based on 22,400 ypp singles does not change the final grist. The final texture really depends on the ply configuration, ply twist, and cable twist. Knitting effort should not change. These are things to cogitate on and sample as I knit my current sock yarn. Spinning twice as many singles raises spinning effort by ~40%.  Considering total effort on the object including knitting effort, that does not significantly change the total effort to produce the object.  It is worth while to expend 4% more effort to get 10% ?? more quality.  

  

Lazy Kate

 Nothing is more indicative of the loss of traditional technologies for  hand spinning is the loss of  using a "tension box" to control tension when plying. It is an old technology, and it works so much better than any of the modern "Lazy Kate" designs.

The concept is simple; the tension of singles or yarns to be plied is controled by a tension box.  Failure to discuss is on one of the deep errors in The Big Blue Book.  Tension box technology is simple and OLD. With this technology you can ply 2 or 5 or 10 or how ever many plies you need for the yarn you want.  I have used either the tension box from my AVL loom or tension boxes that I made to ply miles and miles of 2-ply, 5-ply, and 10-ply. There are bins of 10-ply Aran yarn and 10-ply sock yarn in my stash. There are bins of 6-ply sock yarn that I made. 

With a tension box, you can ply from side delivery or end delivery yarn packages. Yes, you can ply that fine, woolen weft single that you wound on all those pirns when you  want to repurpose all those singles.  I wind 5,600 ypp worsted singles ( steam blocked) into center pull cakes, and ply it into 5-ply gansey yarn.  I do not have to worry about changes in tension as the effective diameter of bobbins change.

You can make a good tension box by drilling some 1/4th inch holes in a piece of plywood, and sticking lengths of 1/4th" wood dowel in the holes. Some of my tension boxes have been upgraded with pieces of steel rod to act as axels with  less friction. However this did not become an issue, until I was working with a lot (more than 10) of very fine plies (e.g., 30s, 17,000 ypp).  My bobbin rack will hold 144 bobbins on steel axels. The steel axels on my tension box is for convivence and  portability, it is not a necessity,

Alden says use some distance between the yarn sources supplying the plies and the spinning wheel doing the plying. I agree.  However, if you are working with several fine plies, it is well worth steam blocking them first, and it is in the steam blocking step, where the distance really counts. 

I do not write for folks that are happy with the quality of textiles produced by the dilatants in Queen Victoria's Court. I write for folks that want to produce better textiles than anyone else.  

I do not have all the answers. The best I can say  is that I sometimes see paths worth exploring.  

Regarding Footnote 7 in The Big Blue Book, the difference between a silk winding machine, and power driven plying machine, and a DRS clockwork controlled spinning wheel that will allow easy spinning of  45,000 ypp fine singles is a fraction of a silly millimeter. Such measurements can be stored as fine knife cuts on a hardwood  "story board", and transferred from storyboard to storyboard or to a piece of work with fine pointed dividers. LdV was sketching freehand, and such measurements would not be visible - and such would be a closely held trade secret. LdV was not going to let his client's/patron's competitors learn trade secrets.  

Also, wraps of  fine spun singles can act as a standard of measure between various textile working locations. Any location with a spinner that can spin "fines" has a way to measure to the closest 1/8th of a millimeter.  That is all the precision that I need to make the whorls/clockwork that I use to insert 26 tpi which will let me build the (DRS) clockwork I need to rapidly spin fines.

The more I spin fine, the more I think that our (English) system of measure (inches, yards, hanks, pounds) was based on the textile industry and wool. What does a square yard of tightly twill woven from 10s weigh?  I think "rods" and "chains" came out of the needs of land survey. 

A Troll

 I have been declared "a troll" on Ravelry. That says more about their culture than my nature.

They do not like people that read a lot, but are skeptical of what they read. They do not like people that test what others write by doing experiments, building math models, and comparing the assertions of various authors. They do not like people that spend weeks and weeks considering Leonardo Da Vinci's notebooks.  They do not like people that go to Europe and look for old buildings where textile work was done. Most of all, they do not like people that do the above, and come to conclusions that are different from the ideas of Queen Victoria's Court.

The ladies of  Queen Victoria's Court believed that the Earth was created by God some 6,000 years ago, and in contrast, I accept most of what is in The Feynman Lectures.  However, I accept new discoveries in science.

I liked Alden Amos, and I trust his writing and statements more than I trust the work of other writers on hand  spinning, and yet he did make errors, and his errors in the Big Blue Book are noted and annotated in my copy. Likewise, Judith McKenzie McCuin is one of the foremost experts on wool. Her errors are likewise annotated in my copy.

As in any journal, there are a multitude of errors in this blog. 

It took me years to work out virtues of different kinds of  knitting needle tips. Now, I sit down to knit with 3 sets of needles, each with a  different style of tip. I knit ribbing, and  knit flat with needles that have round tips. Round tips are also nice for Lizard Lattice.  I knit lace and substantial areas of decreases with pointy needles.  And, I knit plain knitting, in the round with flat tips. Knitting in the round with flat tips is the fast way to knit plain. By switching needle types, I can save 6 or 8 hours on a pair of socks, and I can save days knitting a fine gansey. When I was using pointy needles, it took me about 2 weeks to knit a good weatherproof gansey, With smarter use of different needle tip shapes, it only takes me 8 or 9 days.  In the last 4 months, I have saved about 10 days of knitting time, by using the needles with the correct tip for that particular kind of stitch.  

Everybody that has been following along,  and doing their own experiments on needle tips, likely worked this out long ago.  I may be the slowpoke here.  The key point here is that knitting sheaths work, and they allow knitting better, faster. 

These days I have 3 or 4 knitting sheaths that I use on a regular basis depending on where I am knitting, what I am knitting, what I am wearing, and the needles I am using.   If I am out and about, I use a knitting sheath that slides onto my belt, so it does not fall into the briny deep. Some knitting sheaths work better with some pant/belt combos - the jeans and belt I am wearing today work perfectly with a goose wing, while the dressier pants I wore on Sunday worked better with my favorite Durham style sheath. There is a sock in progress on 12" long, US 000 needles.  Those needles like the "slide-on" sheath, but that knitting wants excellent light, no vibration or bumping, and no interruptions, so sometimes that knitting sheath gets used here in the studio.  If I was a commercial knitter, I would mostly knit the same kind of objects, with the same needles, in the same location, and I would use the same knitting sheath, day after day.

I find that that the people that call me a troll for posting about DRS spinning, are the same people that did not like me posting about knitting sheaths and different tip on my needles.

I have spun in public at Lambtown and Stitches West. anyone and everyone who want to watch me, could.  I have offered to meet them so they can see (film) and measure the full spinning and knitting process. 

Now, I have my revenge. I spin yarns they cannot. I knit things they cannot. 

These are not the actions of a troll.

Gansey Yarn

 Gansey Yarn is one of the glories of knitting. When knit on thin steel needles, supported in a knitting sheath, it results in a fabric that is remarkably warm, comfortable, and durable. Sorry Love, but no woolen spun yarn can compete.  Woolen sweaters that are as warm and comfortable are not as durable. Woolen sweaters that are as warm and durable are not as comfortable. If you are s shepherd or seaman out in all weather for long periods of time, you want a knit gansey. If you live in a stone hut with a thatched roof warmed by a peat fire, you want a knit gansey. If you have to work (or play) in cold, damp weather, knit fabrics will give more freedom of motion than woven garments. I prefer wool fabrics to most synthetics because the wool is less flammable. 

I tested the good gansey yarns I got from Britain against the good woolen yarns I was getting mostly from Canada, and found the the gansey yarns to be inherently better. More expensive per pound, but they produced warmer, more comfortable objects that lasted much longer.  I used 20 pounds of woolen yarn in testing the relative virtues of  woolen and worsted virtues. Before I stopped testing, I was spinning very good worsted 5-ply, 1,000 yard/pound yarns.  

Spinning gansey yarn was the goal that drove me to buy a spinning wheel in 2006.   Then, it took me 10,000 hours of work and study to learn how to spin useful quantities of gansey yarn. I had to  figure out the traditional tools, make them, and learn to use those tools. I certainly had all kinds of help from folks like Alden Amos, Stephenie Gaustad, Henry Clemes, and Will Taylor. AVL looms showed me how to ply high quality yarn.   By circa 2011, I could spin 560 yards of gansey single in an hour, and make a good hank of  5-ply gansey yarn in a day. In 3 easy days, I could make the 5 hanks of 5-ply gansey yarn needed for a sweater that would fit me. I spun a lot.

The best wools for gansey yarns are long staple and a rather coarse. I use wools with a spin count in the 40s to 55s range. I wash, oil, comb, and plank the wool.  Mostly, I spin wool at ~5,600 ypp (75 wpi, 10s) at ~ 9 tpi. More twist, and the yarn does not "fill" as well making the fabric much less warm.  Less twist and the yarn loses durability and it does not have the density to stop air flow through it and the yarn/ resulting objects are not as warm. Many modern woolen yarns simply do not have the density to stop air flow through the yarn. Woolen yarns that do have the required density tend not to be skin friendly.  Most woolen yarns are warm only in the context of structures with central heat.

Differential Rotation Speed (DRS) set for the desired twist insertion results in a clockwork effect that allows much faster drafting than can be achieved with single drive with either bobbin or flyer lead. This is a concept that modern spinners have forgotten. Their forgetfulness is not my fault.   My job is physics (knowing what works).

Using DRS clockwork, changes in inserted twist can be minimized either by spinning small amounts of  yarn and then winding off or using a flyer whorl with band grooves of differing diameter, and changing the drive band from groove to groove as the effective diameter of the bobbin increases. Depending on what I am spinning, I use the appropriate approach.  I think spinning 7 times faster is worth this little effort.  Using DRS clockwork is the only way I know to spin a good hank of  5-ply gansey yarn in an easy day. 

Spinning /plying a hank of 5-ply yarn in a day, requires tools, skill, and a significant level of fitness.  I consider wool combing to be one of the very best exercises for developing core strength. Then, with knitting sheath and steel needles, I could knit myself a good gansey in a couple of weeks.  Again, knitting fast requires real skill, tools, and a significant level of fitness. When I have been doing a lot of knitting, rock climbers admire my arm and shoulder strength. Only by spending a lot of time spinning and knitting can one have such productivity.

However, we have good reports of professional gansey knitters, knitting a gansey in "a couple of days" and "herring girls" knitting a fancy gansey for a favored fisherman in a couple of weeks while keeping their jobs of cutting fish during the day.  So they were knitting by candle and fire light after working all day. By these standards, I am not much of a knitter.  Likewise, compared to the professional hand spinners of  Florence or Bruges, I am not much of a spinner.

I think the traditional spin twist/ply twist allowed stitch patterns that protected seamen by padding contact with railings, spars and deck on a rolling ship.   Stitch patterns such as Lizard Lattice also provided additional stretch for activities like rowing, while remaining warm and weatherproof.

Yarns like Frangipani are spun for decorative knitting and are spun from finer wools with more twist,  so the stitch patterns "pop" and are more visible. However these yarns have less fill are are not as warm or weatherproof. On the other hand, objects knitting from these wools are more comfortable in modern heated environments.  

 

Spin Tec

 I spin because I want yarns that I cannot buy commercially.   The best of the British 5-ply worsted spun yarns are no longer produced. The demise of these yarn mills is why I started spinning. To make the decision whether to buy or spin a yarn, I need to know what is available and what I can spin. I need to be able to measure things other than just skin feel and appearance. I put some effort into learning to what and how to measure various characteristics of  yarn.   

Science is the systematic collection and organization of information. Science is what is what is recorded on how things work. Technology is the allocation of science to a particular industrial process, whether that process is concentrated in commercial facilities or distributed across society. Thus, physics is the science of how electronics work, and technology is how Apple makes cell phones and the function of those cell phones in people’s hands.

Some times technology gets buried in detail and misses phenomena at its edge. Hand spinning is one of these technologies.  Prior to spinning mills, spinning was done by hand. The various technologies included supported spindles, drop spindles, driven spindles, Scotch Tension, Irish tension, double drive with slippage, and double drive without slippage.  Each has its virtues, and each has its drawbacks. Supported spindles and drop spindles required little capital, but were labor intensive.   Driven spindles were less labor intensive, but were better for woolen yarn which had a lower value. Spinning wheels with Scotch Tension, Irish tension, double drive with slippage technologies had a higher capital cost, but were more productive. Scotch Tension, Irish tension, double drive with slippage are also not well suited for spinning grist wool at grist above 24,000 ypp. And the pricing of wool was based on its "spin count, right up to more that 45,000 ypp, with finer wools being more valuable. The only way recover the higher price of finer wools was to spin it finer. Double drive without slippage can easily spin wool at 45,000 ypp and spin coarser wools at rates 6 to 8 times faster than Scotch Tension, Irish tension, or double drive with slippage. There are 2 solutions to the DRS issue of decreasing twist per inch as the bobbin fills: 1) spinning fine yarns such that a hank of yarn on the bobbin does not practically change the effective diameter of the bobbin and hence the inserted twist, and/or  2) multiple grooves on the flyer whorl so the drive band can be easily moved to keep inserted twist constant as the effective diameter of the bobbin changes. I use both methods as needed.

The real virtue of DRS/double drive without slippage is that it changes the nature of the drafting process. I started working toward double drive without slippage because I thought it would give me more speed. It does. However, there are other ways to get that raw speed. The real virtue of  Double Drive without slippage is that it forms a clockwork that automates the drafting process.  I can run my flyer/bobbin assembly at 3,000 rpm with Irish tension. However,  I can not control my draft at that speed with Irish tension or Scotch tension or double drive with slip.  With the clockwork of double drive without slip, I can spin what ever I want at 3,000 rpm. It took me 10-years to understand and harness the process.  It was worth the effort.  Recently, I spun a worsted hank of Shetland at  ~7 grams - it took me ~75 minutes, so the wheel was turning about 3,000 rpm. Yes, I could have spun it Irish tension, but that would have taken me all day, and I mean a very long day.  Friday, I was spinning a coarser fiber at ~ 16,000 ypp, again at about 75 minutes per hank. DRS clockwork is the only way to draft at that speed, and high speed is the only way to get the clockwork effect. The other glory of the clockwork is that it provides real time quality control of twist. Control of twist helps control grist. The clockwork sets controls on my yarn. This is very helpful if I want to produce consistent yarn, and a pain in the neck, if I just want to just play at producing all kinds of different yarns. 

Alden Amos did not spin fine. And, it is with fine singles which need a lot of twist that the virtues of double drive with no slip shine. For a long time, my standard spinning products were based on 5,600 ypp, worsted-spun singles. A 5-ply yarn from those singles remains the best yarn that I know for knitting  comfortable, durable, warm objects.  Those singles need about twice as much twist as Alden's typical singles.  More recently, I have moved to finer and finer singles that want more and more twist. Some of these yarns are exceptionally cool in warm weather.  This is a great adventure. My wife plans road trips for adventure, I plan new yarns. These yarns make the advantages of double drive no slip more valuable.   I find it very sad that I seem to be the last spinner that knows and uses this very useful technique.

At one time, I was Senior Scientist at one of the largest engineering firms. It was my job to do things nobody had ever done before.  My job was to know what worked and what did not.  In the case of my spinning, I am doing what thousands of people did for hundreds of years. From this background, I say if  the members of Spin Tec, did any "tec" thinking, they would have either come and watched me spin, or would have spent a couple of hours making their own flyer whorls and used those whorls to investigate the technology in their own studios. That is what I did.

Two of the clients of the Engineering Firm demanded that everyone on their projects take Ed Deming’s course on Quality.  Both clients wanted original transcripts proving that we had taken the course. To get an original transcript for each client, we had to take the course twice. I encourage all spinners to read all of Ed Deming’s books and lectures.  Science and technology is only useful if it really does work. At a technology level, that means knowing how many faults of all kinds are in the product or in a process.   I do not believe in much, but I accept that quality in a process, organization, or product, requires ongoing quality assurance/ quality control (QA/QC), and smart interpretation of the measurements taken. The QA/QC of spinning is not that different from the QA/QC of microprocessors and related electronics. Social media of all kinds has real problems with QA/QC. This results from social attitudes rather than from the underlying electronics of the system.

Spinning technology is about detail. Yarn color, appearance, and feel is developed by process decisions on grist, twist, fiber fineness and length, carding and combing, spinning method, additives, dye, and coatings on the staples, ratchet, and a host of other details. The important details are grist, twist, spinning method/ fiber preparation.  How fast the yarn can be spun is important for schedule and economics. Can I get the yarn spun; and the socks knit before snow flies? Does the spinning take too much time, so I would be better just buying a yarn that is not as good as what I can spin? If the yarn is only about skin feel and appearance, then it is mere fashion, which is conspicuous consumption. Not something I do in a time of AGW.

Or, one might be just spinning this yarn for bragging rights on social media? Does one simply want to brag about conspicuous consumption? If the object of the social media is conspicuous consumption, then one wants their spinning to be slow, their fiber expensive, technical details vague, and their finished yarn fragile. I want fast spinning, and good fiber to make good yarn. DRS is a way I control grist and twist. DRS is a clockwork system that helps me control the spinning process to produce better and more consistent yarn.  I get to the yarns I want with clear technical detail.  I have been accused of being a troll. No, I stand in sunlight without turning to stone. I am not a troll. I use numbers. Many spinners are more scared of numbers than they are scared of trolls. Some spinners assert "Video or It Did Not Happen". Most video does not expose the details needed to reproduce the process or the yarn. The real test of a spinning process is the finished yarn, and the objects made from that yarn.  

The “Spin Tec” group on Ravelry does not talk about the detail of spinning technology.  On Spin Tec, hand spun is discussed in non-specific generalities.  They want soft! It is in the nature of soft yarn to be fragile, and to be spun from expensive fibers.  That smacks of conspicuous consumption. 

I talk about grist and twist, because those are paramount in making a particular fiber into a yarn for a particular use. Grist and twist are at the core of spinning technology, and yet the Spin Tech group abhors these terms. They  do not spin "fines" (grist 60s count, and above; ~33,600 ypp), so they assume nobody can.  

Some years ago, Judith Mackenzie McCuin told my spinning guild a story about being told that there were 2-ways to spin; Worsted and Wrong. She went on to tell us the glories of woolen spinning. And, on the basis her reciting the glories of woolen spun yarn, I did a lot of woolen spinning. Now, I look back at years of objects that I made and used, and I like the worsted spun objects best.  For all of the glories of woolen spinning, I think I wasted a lot of time spinning woolen and knitting woolen yarns.  For effort to spin, worsted is warmer for the weight, and more durable. And, worsted requires less twist, so it can be spun faster; much faster if you use DRS.  I regret the time I spent knitting woolen, because I always had to knit replacements. If I had always knit worsted, I would have had lighter weight, but warmer in the cold, and they would have been much more durable than the woolen objects. Worsted can also be fabricated into objects that are cooler in warm environments than woolen objects.  Judith Mackenzie McCuin understands, and appeals to the spinners in Spin Tec. In particular, Judith Mackenzie McCuin, does not use a lot of numbers.

Judith Mackenzie McCuin in her book, the intentional spinner points out that with Scotch Tension, rather small changes in the adjustment of the wheel can make significant changes in the grist and twist. (She does this without numbers.)  She does not note that as the bobbin fills, its effective diameter changes and this is a significant change that requires repeated adjustment of the wheel to maintain consistent grist and twist of the yarn.  Anytime one considers filling a bobbin, twist and grist emerge as critical factors.

I solve the problem of changing effective diameter of the spinning bobbin by spinning finer, and I work hank (560 yards) by hank. My spinning bobbin will hold ~100 grams of thread, but a hank of 16,000 ypp single is only 15 grams. I spin a hank and wind off. It takes just over an hour to spin a hank of 16,000 ypp single, so I wind off about every 75 minutes, and with DRS, my grist and twist remain fairly stable.

Then, when I ply, any small variations in a particular ply are averaged out, and the final yarn is very consistent. That is: I know my grist and twist. I know my spinning method. I know my fiber. I know my yarn. I know my yarn well enough to talk about it intelligently. And, I have plans to spin better yarn. These plans are updated and changed as I experiment with alternative spinning techniques ranging from the shape of the diz to how I block the yarn.  I use the best practice that I know, but I always have hope of finding a better practice.

Do you know your yarn well enough to talk intelligently about it? No? Why not?  Do you know my yarn well enough to comment intelligently on it?  I have offered to let people see it being spun so they can make intellegent comments.  Nobody at Spin Tec has accepted this offer.

DRS Overview

 

I started into differential rotation speed (DRS) spinning with the simple goal of using 2 drive bands to get the flyer/bobbin assembly to spin faster – thus I did not want either drive band to slip. Physics and Alden Amos’s Big Book of Handspinning,(page 390 and seq.) told me that if there was no slip, yarn had to be wound on to the bobbin as fast as it was twisted, and it had to be twisted continuously as fast as it was wound on to the bobbin. DRS is a kind of clockwork.

This was very different from Scotch tension, Irish tension, or double drive with slip, which all have two phases; “yarn lock” and “wind on”. This two-phase process slows the spinning process down – a lot.  I have and sometimes still use Scotch tension and more commonly Irish tension flyer/bobbin assemblies.  My DRS (and accelerator) allows me to spin several times more yards per hour.  The DRS makes the accelerator worth while.  Without DRS, I cannot draft fast enough to make the accelerator worth while.

A single continuous yarn formation phase that combines twist insertion and wind-on, allows a change in the physics of the draft triangle. The yarn “self-assembles”. It is physics, but when one does it, it seems like magic. It seems as powerful as anything in Harry Potter. Suddenly, every spinner that does not use the technology seems like a “muggle”. Those muggle spinners seem to hate all of us that learned our physics and math. Those muggles call us trolls and worse.

Physics and math are learned by paying attention to what is going on. Spinning demands focus, and paying attention to what is going on. Thus, it does not surprise me that the spinners of old discovered DRS. It astonishes me that most modern spinners cannot see DRS. 

Today, with my “accelerator”, I can spin an Irish Tension flyer/bobbin assembly much faster than I can draft – my spinning speed is not limited by the speed of my flyer/bobbin assembly, but by the speed at which I can draft. With DRS and yarn self-assembly, I can spin 4-times faster. It is that yarn self-assembly that allows me to spin 560 yards 9 tpi yarn in one of Alden’s “Golden Hours” of 48- minutes.

The self-assembly of the yarn is an interaction of the rapidly rotating yarn as it is withdrawn from the drafting triangle. My experience with low crimp commercially processed wool tells me that the crimp in the wool fiber is important. However, when Stephenie Gaustad came over, and repositioned my hands so that my DRS system really worked for me, I was spinning cotton. I know my DRS system works for flax as well as any wheel in the local guild. My 2-flyer linen wheel has DRS, but it has some corrosion issues.  Crimp may be more important at the twist/grist ratios of wool.

The mechanics of the system are not new. There are drawings of similar devices in Leonardo de Vinci’s notebooks, along with sketches of treadle systems. The woodworkers and metal workers of LdV’s time, made all kinds of spinning tools and they used various treadle devices in their own tools. If needed, they would have put treadles on the spinning tools that they made.  Sewing machine treadles were not the first treadles used in industry.

You can be sure that both the silk threads and the wool threads in fabrics worn by LdV’s patrons were produced using some kind of a DRS mechanism driven by treadles.  While art uses symbols of heritage and tradition, LdV’s sketchbooks document then current technology. When you look at the sketch books, note that historical objects (from other’s old sketch books) are drawn in one perspective, current technology is drawn in another perspective, and ideas for the future are drawn in another perspective. Devices that are trade secrets are framed by a window or door.