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.