Monday, September 22, 2014

Hand Woolcombing and Spinning

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Peter Teal did some very good work, but he makes a number of serious errors.  He holds opinions that I strongly agree with, and then someti...

Back to slippage

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Once you have a flier/bobbin set with whorls designed for spinning 60s (30,000+ ypp) then a very small amount of slippage will let one spin...
Tuesday, September 16, 2014

The big blue book

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Having published my notes on  intentional spinning, it is only fair that I publish my notes on Alden Amos's Big Book of Hand Spinning. ...

Notes on intentional spinning

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We were looking at wool pants in Needless Markup the other day, and saw some things that dramatically contradict some points in JM's IS...
Sunday, September 14, 2014

Twist and grist in Chaucer's time

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From the nomenclature in commercial trade, I expect that in the 15th century spinners could consistently and routinely produce hanks of sin...
1 comment:
Saturday, September 13, 2014

Twist and grist

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I said, that for a hand spinner, inserted twist defines grist. A test is reported below showing that hand spinners can control grist to plu...
Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Mean while, back in California

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The weather was colder, and the "slot" breezier (gusts to 55).  The Blue Monday sailed like an old Clorox bottle, blown and tosse...
1 comment:
Sunday, September 07, 2014

More blocking

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These days, I block singles spun at the fiber's spin count on the skeiner. I wind off from the spinning bobbin, on to a storage bobbi...
Saturday, September 06, 2014

spinning at the spin count

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The other afternoon, I looked down into the basket beside my spinning chair and it was empty. What had been a 6 or 7 pound bump of combed...
Tuesday, September 02, 2014

The basics

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The Feynman Lectures on Physics http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/ Too bad this set of his lectures does not include more of his ...

Distaffs for worsted spinning revisited

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When I was spinning slower, I used thicker slivers and used tension between the drafting hand and the distaff to attenuate the sliver. No...
Sunday, August 31, 2014

fraud and technology

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 Witchcraft to the ignorant, .... Simple science to the learned! Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. ...
6 comments:
Saturday, August 30, 2014

Students

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When I started spinning, I wanted certain yarns. I saw that certain skills and certain tools were required. I set myself a group of evo...
Friday, August 29, 2014

Metric

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At one point, I was fully metric. However, as I spin finer, the logic and simplicity of the old Bradford yarn terminology becomes more an...

Sticks and Stones

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When I started spinning, I saw that traditional hand spinners had produced 80s (worsted 45,000 ypp / 90 m/gm) singles as a commercial produ...
1 comment:
Thursday, August 28, 2014

Spinzilla

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Last night's guild meeting sorta became a celebration of Spinzilla. This morning as I flip thorough some of the material, I have some...
2 comments:
Tuesday, August 26, 2014

How long to spin a yarn for a bolt of shirting?

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A bolt of shirting is about 8 pounds, so it is 320 hanks.  At 22 hanks per week, it would take one spinner about 4 months to spin the yarn ...
Friday, August 22, 2014

The end of another chapter in this blog

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Using only bushing bearings of bronze-steel, wood-steel, and leather-steel available in 1500, a spinning wheel using DRS can run at 4,000 r...
Thursday, August 21, 2014

More on spin count

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The distaff is dressed with 60 count flock-run long wool, and the task at hand is 40s (150 wpi) for weaving warp. I need a good bit of the ...
Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Spinning

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I do not care if you are buying Italian designer suits or underwear at Target, the bulk of nice textiles are produced from thin yarns.  If ...