Shelves and hooks

Some folk talk of shelves, but some folk talk of "material handling systems".  A material handling system includes shelves.  It also includes conveyer belts, girls on roller skates, folks with hand trucks or forklifts, or these days, little robots whizzing around.

A hook is like a shelf.  A heck array is a material handling system! On a flyer, the heck array transports the yarn from the point of twist insertion (barrel of flyer) to the bobbin for storage. The heck array does this without creating undue tension that would break the yarn or undue slack that would allow the yarn to tangle.  A hook is an object, but a heck array is a yarn transport system.

If I take a class of elementary school kids on a tour of a warehouse, I will point out the "shelves". Depending on the level of their study, I might or might not use the term,"material handling system". If I am teaching a class on Value Engineering to a group of Bechtel professional engineers, then I will certainly use the term "material handling system".  One chooses one's vocabulary depending on the audience.  Many modern hand spinners may know words such as "heck", without understanding subtleties of the concept. Spinning teacher and authors know this and do not use words/concepts that their students do not fully understand. Heck is a word that a hobby spinner is not going to fully understand, and thus it does not get used until the student demonstrates an understanding of the concepts.

If one thinks of a heck as just a "hook", then there is no reason to put a heck on a Lazy Kate, NONE! And if you look around, modern commercial Lazy Kates do not have hooks (or hecks) on them.  I think Will Taylor's Lazy Kates are beautiful, but they do not work at all for the fine, high twist singles that I use.  Peter Teal had that problem of fine, high twist singles tangling, but his tubing solution is not practical for making 5-ply.   Likewise, the various "tensioned" Lazy Kates change the tension as the effective diameter of the bobbin changes, so all bobbins must be of the same type and must have the same amount of yarn on them to start, and still must continuously adjusted as the bobbins empty.  This is not practical for my projects.

However, if one thinks of a heck array as a material handling system to transport yarn at a controlled tension, then one does put a heck array on one's Lazy Kate.  I do!!

I went through generations and generations of "yarn guides" of all kinds in various trials of various kinds of lazy kates. Yarn guides as "yarn guides" do not work very well for avoiding tangles in yarn coming off bobbins in a lazy kate.  What does work with superb effectiveness is a set of  yarn guides designed to control tension and avoid tangling - a yarn transport and management system - a heck array.

The lazy kate that I use these days has a "heck array" that controls and delivers up to 5 singles with uniform tension, regardless of the kind of bobbin or the effective diameter of the bobbins. It works for grists in the range of 2,000 to 22,000 ypp. Yesterday, I plied some 1,500 yards of  sport weight 5-ply using this lazy kate. Yes, this heck array does have 2 hooks, but it is defined by its function - transport of tensioned yarn, rather than by its mechanical shape.  At this time it is optimized for the blocked singles that I use for warp.  Unblocked singles require another row or two of dowels /hecks to increase tension and reduce tangle.

I think that the reason we do not have commercial lazy kates with a yarn transport and management system (heck array) is because, in general, modern hand spinners in the mood to buy do not think in terms of functional systems - they want something that looks like a fairytale decoration.  And, they like to make fun of spinning tools that are functional and actually work effectively. (Yes, YOU!, Rubbernecker!)

This version of my lazy kate will hold 2 Ashford jumbo bobbins, and is actually easily convertible to 8, 10, or 12 ply, if I use the small bobbin size shown lower left. The pix is of the device is as it was used to make the 1.5 pounds yarn that I need to finish a sweater. I stopped when I emptied a bobbin, which got tossed in the "empties bin".  This morning's empties bin and long wool 10s to refill.

Note that each skein is a hand spun hank of 560 yards.

There are 18 hanks, so that is ~10,000 yards. Yesterday's plying consumed another 8,000 yards of those singles, so yesterday morning there were 18,000 yards of worsted -spun,  lace weight singles from that batch of long wool.  When I started that sweater back in October, I had plenty of the 5-ply on hand, based on the   ~ 5 lb / 50 hanks / 28,000 yards of these singles that I did for Spinzilla.  That was all I had from Spinzilla because because most of the Spinzilla week was spent driving my wife around the Eastern Sierra, Bodie Ghost Town, and Mono Lake. (We  were the last campers in Buck Eye Campground for the season, as in, camping in the high Sierra was starting to get cold.) Then, my wife took me shopping, and while she shopped, I knit ski socks and used up a couple of pounds of handspun 5-ply. Thus, I am down to the last third of the singles spun during Spinzilla. The advantage to being a hand spinner is that this is not a problem.

More Plies

I was sorting through swatches to take to CNCH, and the effect that gobsmacked me was how much more elastic yarns with many plies are.

I look at my spinning books and my knitting books and I do not see much discussion of the effect.

Certainly, I have been knitting gansey yarn for years without the effect seeming so noticeable.  Part of this that for a long time, I was knitting very tightly for warmth, and those fabrics did not display the yarns elasticity to best advantage.  Part of it is that I had to have tools for making better high-ply yarns see http://gansey.blogspot.com/2014/02/real-hand-spun-10-ply-aran-yarn.html , and with the accelerator, I can drive the jumbo flyer at 1,000 or even 1,600 rpm, so I can get the job done.

Most bobbin tension devices on Lazy Kates cause that the tension of the singles changes as the effective diameter of the bobbin decreases as the singles spool off the bobbins.  A tension box device as shown

Making 10-ply with blocked singles.

eliminates this problem and ensures more uniform tension.   It is scalable and works for 2-ply just as well as it works for 10-ply.

For 5-ply

 7-ply 

Other view showing final tension system. Note that no perforated plate to separate the yarn strands is required.  I stop twist from running back to the lazy Kate by running the strands over a quarter inch dowel held a couple of feet from the orifice.

 Other modern lazy Kate bobbin tension devices change tension as the effective diameter of the bobbin changes. This device does not. The one above is my prototype.  It is not pretty but it works very well.  For very high twist singles, more dowels can be added to increase more tension.

Will Taylor was back from his bird watching, and loved the fabrics made from high-yarns and this design for lazy kates. If you want one, ask Will.

More plies does make for better knitting yarns. More uniform tension among the singles makes for better yarns.

Plying steam stabilized singles

I like working with steam stabilized singles.  I made a lot of them by passing singles through a steam chamber as I wound off the spinning wheel.  Steam stabilized singles are the only way I know of to make yarns with a large number (10) of very fine plies (23,000 ypp) without a big tangle.  Steamed singles are much stronger and better endure the stress of plying. And, steam stabilized singles can be handled under lower tension, because they are less likely to tangle.  Believe me,  5-ply is much easier easier if you tame the singles first.

It is only in the last few days that I thought of blocking yarn on with steam on the niddy.  This was an epiphany.  For a long time, I had wondered how cottage spinners produced hanks of  fine (23,000 ypp) singles that were stable enough to pack into saddle bags  and move by pack train to the dyer.  Now, I know.  All they needed was a niddy or two and a tea kettle.  It also gives new perspective into the tea kettles that gave Watt the idea for steam engines.  He may well have seen tea kettles putting out a blast of steam as they block yarn.

Even after the laws requiring yarn to be measured on a "weasel", the yarn could still be first blocked on a niddy. And, if you measured a hank on the niddy, the weasel would take more.

Plying twist for raw singles can be estimated by various intuitive methods.  However, estimating plying twist for steam stabilized singles must be calculated.  The math is discussed in AA's Big Book of Handspinning. The  intuitive methods will not suffice to ply steam stabilized singles into a balanced yarn.

The final yarn plied up from team stabilized singles must be steamed or it will be very unbalanced.

Or, the same DRS whorl combination used to make the singles can be used to ply the singles. This almost always works like magic.

One Yarn Project.

About spring thaw, I went  looking to buy a loom, and visited a loom dealer that had put a loom aside for me. We ended up sitting in the back of my truck with her poking through a bin of my knitting swatches. She said, "Dang!, These are unbelievable! We need to take these up to the house. You know he was a great knitter."

He pawed through them, and said, " Kinda grubby!  No hand spun here!"  Thus, was born the hand spun gloves project.

I chose the knitting tools, and sampled hand spun yarns from the stash. No joy. I  made up samples of  other possible yarns from hand spun singles in the stash.

   

 
      No Joy.


I then took some Rambouillet :

 washed it with soap flakes and borax,





 and blended it on my Clems carder with some navy blue combed Romney from a gansey yarn project to produce a lavender color way with white neps for accent.  This is my first "art yarn" (neps!). The Rambouillet makes it soft, the Romney gives it good wear at the finger tips.  Over all the blend gives reasonable wear without being too harsh.

The bats are sprayed with spinning oil, torn into lengths, and wound on my distaff to facilitate spinning. I spin singles at 4,800 ypp (9s) using the spinning technique shown in videos on this blog,
( http://gansey.blogspot.com/2012/01/another-video-of-spinning.html )
but with the gang whorls on the flier.  

My typical spinning wheel bobbin rotation speed as measured with a digital tachometer is 2,300 rpm. Compare that to the 800 rpm that a stock Ashord Traddy can do.  Even with a lace flyer, Ashfords do not go much faster than 1,400 rpm. Most espinners are limited to 1,600 rpm.  Twist is DRS controlled to just over  8 tpi.  Net spinning rate is around 300 yards per hour. I note that there is nothing on my wheel that a 15th century spinner in Flanders could not have had. I very much doubt if I spin as fast as the spinners in Bruges, 500 years ago.  Over all,  "spinning" is a tiny part of the project.

I am sure that I do not spin as well as the spinners in Bruges, 500 years ago.   They were trained pros with elan.

Singles are wound off onto reels using an electric drill to drive the reel, washed (with shampoo),  dried (blocked), and then wound onto smaller plying bobbins. Singles with spinning oil on them need to be washed within a month. Last fall when I was working with hanks of fines, I  found wet skeins to be problematic, and moved to washing singles on reels. I made enough reels that I can wash and dry singles faster than I can spin them.

 

Once the yarn is clean (and loosely wound) on a plying bobbin it can be stored.  I have many yarn storage/plying bobbins.

Current plying technique is to put the plying bobbins on a bobbin rack or lazy Kate, feed the singles through my tension box, and ply with the same gang whorl flyer as used to produce the singles.  If I was making gansey yarn, I would use the Ashford jumbo flyer so that I could produce knot free, 8 oz hanks.  However, the (smaller) high speed flier is much faster and  each glove only requires ~2 oz of yarn in 5 pieces, so smaller yarn packages are acceptable.

 
The full plying train of Lazy Kate,          Tension Box,  and                            Wheel with high speed flier.

A tension box used on blocked singles really is an advance on Alden's Four Great Principles of Plying. Tension boxes are simple to make, and worth their weight in hand spun yarn.

The finished yarn is wound off the wheel with  a cake winder, to produce :

3/4 ounce of 1,500 ypp, 3-ply,  glove yarn

(~70 yards)

Knit, the color matches the lavender buds I was putting in the wool bins at the start of the project, and which inspired the color for this yarn. It is warm, durable, and comfortable.

The swaving pricks are the same 1.5 mm used for the cotton sock fabric in the last post. The semi worsted yarn knits easily at 12 to 14 spi. to make an elastic fabric.  Yarn for final objects will likely get a final  blocking with steam. 

Final objects will get washed again.

Back to the basics of plying

Soft and lofty woolen spun yarns present their own difficulties for plying, but the nature of the yarn hides the art of the plying.  If you want to show off your skill at plying, spin worsted.  Sure 4-ply woolen yarn takes skill, but 4-ply worsted  takes more skill.

If you want to know how good someone is at plying, look at one of their yarns plied up from fine, high twist singles.  In particular, 5-ply gansey yarn is a structure that is hard to get uniform, and the worsted singles make any and all faults in the plying clearly visible.  Because of its more stable structure, I feel that 7-ply is easier to ply into a uniform and consistent structure than 5-ply.

Making 5-ply gansey yarn is a evolution that every aspiring spinner should perform.  It is a good place to master Alden Amos's 4 principles of plying. (Tension, Distance, Re-wound bobbins, Constant Motion) With simpler yarns, one can get way with violating one or more of those principles.  However, a kilo of 5-ply will turn the Principles into habits, and thereby improve all of your yarns.  The lesson is worth the price of the fiber.  Sure it is a week of spinning, but we like to spin, right?

A kilo of 5-ply will also force you to acquire the tools (bobbins, lazy Kate, yarn guides or tension box)  for better plying.  These will stand you in good stead, when you want to make very high quality 2-ply woolen spun.

A kilo of 5-ply is enough for you to start thinking about blocking singles prior to plying. (If you go into one of mills producing high-end luxury yarns, you will note that they block the singles prior to plying.)  Alden talks about plying in Chapter 11.  In Chapter 10, he talks about ways to make yarn better.   I think one of the few glosses in the book is that on page 263,  he should have points 5 & 6 about washing and blocking the yarn.

Sometimes the extra effort to wash and block the singles will save a great deal of  time. I use spinning oil, so washing the single after it is spun means that I can store that yarn, and am no longer under pressure to use that yarn.  Thus, washing yarn immediately after spinning reduces my stress levels. Over all, it saves me time because the spinning oil lets me spin much faster. It produces a better yarn because the spinning oil lets me spin more uniform yarn.  Some singles are just much easier to ply after they have been blocked. One example is fine hosiery singles ( 23,000 ypp, 17 tpi).  And, yarns plied up from those singles will be much better when you do take the time to wash and block the singles.

This post was prompted when a spinner on Ravelry, who has never made any gansey yarn, tried to tell me that it is not important to rewind bobbins prior to plying.  It is this group that makes fun of me because I am only a beginner, but I have the "one right way to spin". They have this up-side-down.  I believe in different yarns for different purposes.  I believe in different tools and techniques for different yarns.   And, I believe that any set of  tools and techniques that has been invented, can be improved.  I always look for Better, Faster, Cheaper!  There is no one right way to spin!  Today's best way to spin is not good enough for tomorrow.  When I see a better way to spin, I adopt it. 

Plying

With all due respect to core spun yarns, plying is critical to the appearance, strength, warmth, and durability of yarn.  Why then, in modern spinning culture is plying considered a second rate procedure?  Spinners that have many beautiful, expensive spindles, use toilet paper rolls as storage/plying bobbins and a shoe box with knitting needles as a lazy Kate.

Sorry, but singles do not feed smoothly and evenly off of  a toilet paper roll on a knitting needle stuck through a shoe box. The result is less even plying.  A smooth, even flow of each single is required for good plying.  This is not a noticeable issue working with a few skeins of low twist woolen singles for 2-ply worsted weight yarns or even 4-ply DK yarns.  However, if one is making fine sock yarns or warp for a large weaving project it quickly becomes an issue.

Alden Amos is craftsman that knows how to ply, and is honest enough to tell his students and readers the truth.  Alden's Four Great Principles of Plying work.  However, Alden does not want to scare spinners off by telling them that they need a lot of expensive tools for plying.  That is my job.  (On the other hand, he has never been bashful about selling a lot of expensive tools for plying.)

Good plying tools are as essential as good spinning tools.  Instead of buying that third spinning wheel, use the money to get yourself some really good plying tools.  Get or make a good lazy Kate, with bobbins that fit, so that they turn smoothly.  (Along the way, you are likely to discover that you need a good bobbin winder.)

If you are working with fine or high twist singles, then they are much better behaved if they are blocked before plying.  Blocking singles prior to plying can result in much less over all effort, and much better yarns. With high energy singles, Alden's principle of rewound bobbins is an understatement.

Blocking can be accomplished by running the single through a steamer under tension.  Such a device can be made from a "T" of  PVC pipe attached to an inexpensive clothes steamer.  Less energetic singles can simply be wound onto reels, then washed and dried on the reel or the "Shaker Rocket Ship". This will take the combing/spinning oil out of the yarn and allow extended storage.  Here are some currently in use at the Tulip Patch:

The pointy thing, holds reels for winding off.

After washing and drying, singles can be wound into skeins for storage or put on plying bobbins.  I have also started using pirns as cores for winding cones.  More docile singles can simply be wound into center pull cakes for storage.

Now, comes the point of this post. Very fine singles are still a challenge to ply, particularly if you are doing 6 or 10  or more plies.  When working with large numbers of fine plies, consistent and uniform tension can be achieved with a tension box of the type used by weavers for warping sectional beams.  

I  use one made by AVl.  The one above by Leclerc is simpler.  For a spinner to buy, there is some sticker shock, but they are easy to make, once you have the idea - dowels between 2 reeds or raddles.

I have mine about 6' from the spinning orifice, and use DRS controlled twist insertion.  I allow twist to occur  as the singles exit the tension box. The result is fast uniform plying even when working with fine, high energy singles. 

Plying from a center-pull cake

With improvised cake holders, the singles twist.  Better is: