Tuesday, October 27, 2015

A History of Fine Spinning in America

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Consider how modern mill spun/ mill woven wool shirting and suiting weight wool fabrics drape. Alden Amos instructs on how to estimate th...
Wednesday, October 14, 2015

The Nazi

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I have been called a Nazi.  Pretty mild compared to some of the things spinners have called me in the last couple of weeks -- and people wo...
7 comments:
Tuesday, October 13, 2015

Whorls

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See https://www.academia.edu/11841581/Efficiency_and_technique_Experiments_with_original_spindle_whorls A good spindle is faster than mos...
1 comment:

Celtic spinning

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See Celtic Clothing (with Greek and Roman Influence) form the Iron Age - a Realistic View Based on What We Know by Heather Smith  ( https:/...

Homespun and Professional Textile Workers in Classical Greece

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Stella Spantidaki writing in arachne, volume 3, 2009 tells of Specialization in textiles in Classical Athens. (https://www.academia.edu/398...
1 comment:
Wednesday, October 07, 2015

The Wobble in the Arc

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While there is a clear Arc in the western heritage of spinning, it is not a straightforward arc.  One example is the changes in Austrian te...

Early Midevial Spinning.

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Early Medieval textile finds at South Moravia, Czech Republic show that they had fine spinning and weaving. Early Medieval textiles, loca...

Nomads in Europe -pre Charlemagne

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Nomads in Europe before Charlemagne were using wool fabrics woven sometimes coarsely, and sometimes very fine. Nomads in the cold were spi...
3 comments:

Spinning fine and fast in the old world

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I have pointed to spinning fine and fast as a spinning standard.  So, how fine and did the old spinners spin?  How fine were the yarns pro...
1 comment:
Sunday, October 04, 2015

Spinning as a cultural heritage

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The European craft of hand spinning is a cultural heritage just like art, literature, music, and architecture.  It was passed down to us an...
5 comments:
Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Spinning in the Rain

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Californian has been in a drought, so when it started raining this morning, I went out to spin on the porch. Am I spinning skeins?  Not l...
2 comments:

Multi-ply Refined

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I came to spinning for better gansey yarn. Gansey yarns were all worsted spun so worsted spun is what I did without thought.  And I loved t...

Whcih way to comb?.

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There are 2 schools of combing.  One is to comb so all the tips point in the same direction.  The other is to comb so that the tips point i...

Wool Grades and Sheep breeds

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A good wool grader can recognized more than 300 grades of wool. And, wool grades are important to spinners - more so than the breed.  Havin...
Tuesday, September 29, 2015

More fibs

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I fibbed when I said that I spin hanks. In fact, I also put a lot of yarn on bobbins: That is about 15,000 yards of my hand spun on bo...
6 comments:
Monday, September 28, 2015

Fractured History

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Ok, you have this model of history - does it inform your spinning and make you a better spinner? Or it just interesting?  Or, does it hol...

Hanks?

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Turns out I fibbed:  Not all my yarn is in hanks: I seem to have 10,000 yards or so of woolen singles in big cakes. (right) The cakes in...

Tying it all together.

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From the early medieval until ~1780 the very profitable and competitive European textile industry depended on hand spinning.  It is reasona...
4 comments:
Sunday, September 27, 2015

Spinning stools

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I broke a pitman rod connector, so the wheel is in the shop. I fabricated a new connector and want to test it.  The stool at hand was a ste...

"That Stuff Is Nasty!"

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See:  "Here Come the Judge!"  below. These days I go back to the bins of stuff that I set aside for felting, but did not use, a...