An apology

I owe Holin an apology.  I should not have tried to push her away, she seems to be really helping my readership numbers. 

Heck, I think we might even be able to sell tickets to our little "Yarn Competence Contest"?

35 minutes

I issued a challenge to Holin, that we meet up, spin 100 yards of warp from 1 gram of wool fiber in a states time of 35 minutes, and we then test each warp for strength.

Some wonder about the 35 minutes. 

Everyone knows that I feel that competent spinners should be able to spin at the spin count at a commercial rate, which for 80s is about 200 yards /per hour.  So why do I want the extra time??

Well everyone knows I have been sick, and I am just a fat old man with palsy - I deserve a few extra minutes.  It is fair, I will give her the extra minutes also.

Fines on the Internet

There are two established groups of fine spinners on the internet.  One of them spins lace, the other spin for Longest Thread competitions. DRS  spinners such as myself, are the new third group.

Among the lace makers, there are two primary tribes, one does Shetland lace and the other does Orenburg lace.

Northernlace has been making and teaching Shetland style lace making for a very long time.  She uses small Shetland style spinning wheels, very careful fiber preparation, and a variety of tricks to facilitate fine spinning.  If you want to spin fine on a Scotch Tension wheel, get her book!

All in all, you are not likely to find a lace spinner, spinning on wheel that spins much finer than Northernlace, and her finest yarns have grist on the close order of 30,000 ypp.  They are beautiful. As 2-ply they have grist of about 13,000 ypp.

Northrenlace sold a good number of her books, and has taught classes around the world, so there are a good number of spinners out there that in theory can spin 30,000 ypp singles.  Regardless of what some say, I do not see much of such yarn on the internet.  The little tricks end up being tedious, and not using the little tricks ends up spoiling a bobbin of singles.

The Orenburg spinners use a very fine goat fiber (very high spin count), which they spin on a supported spindle, and then ply with silk to produce a very soft lustrous yarn.  The Orenburg singles mostly have grists in the range of 20,000 ypp range, and the final yarn has a grist on the order of 15,000 ypp. The yarn is as thin as it needs to be, and is still durable enough. If the yarn is spun much finer, then the owner of the shawl needs a lady's maid to carefully place and remove the shawl before and after wearing.  The folks who make these shawls say that is not true, the shawls are always very strong and durable. Yes, at the lower grists as they are spun today, they are always very strong and durable.  In Tsarist times, some Orenburg shawls were worn by women with lady's maids, and they can still be found in collections.  They were spun much finer than the modern shawls.  How fine?  I do not know.  They looked very fine to me and I had recently been working on an entry to the 2013 Bothwell, and so I had been spinning singles in the 60 to 70 thousand ypp range and plying them into 30,000 ypp 2-ply.   That vault under the street in Bruges held the two best examples of spinning that I have ever seen. 

Truth is that the supported Russian spindles of the Orenburg spinners provide  similar productivity (yards per hour) as the ST wheels of the Shetland lace spinners.  However, the wheels allow production of both worsted and woolen, while the Russian spindles are a poor choice for spinning worsted.  On the other hand the spindles are cheaper and more portable.

I expect that circa 1700, Shetland spinners were using DRS controlled wheels to improve their productivity.  Likewise, I expect that when there was a large hand spinning industry supporting many wheel makers, the elite professional spinners around Orenburg also used DRS controlled wheels. 


The Longest Thread spinners tend to be competitive, and are are not inclined to divulge their production setups.  Many of the descriptions of their work process are non-sense. The only thing I have heard (that I believe) is that some of the Lendrum spinners use small fishing weights to control the tension on the brake band.  This does work very well, but it does not solve all the problems addressed by Northernlace.

At this time I do not see many spinners that can sit down and spin wool at its spin count.  I do not see many spinners that can spin "fines" - 60 or more hanks of 560 yards per pound.  At this time, the only images on the internet of hand spun 45,000 ypp singles that I am aware of  are on this blog.  I have wasted a lot of time on the internet looking for such images. I say "waste" because I have found more errors and misdirection than good information.  I know what different the high grist yarns look like when laid across a dime.  And, I know how closely it must be photographed to show the difference between a 22,400 ypp and a 34,000 ypp single.  Then, there is much less difference between a 34,000 ypp single and a 45,000 ypp single.  Unless you work with these grists every day, it is not something one can estimate by eye.  And, the central torch on the back of a dime is 16 times !! too large to use as an accurate reference for high grist yarns.

At these grists, know the fiber, clip the yarn, fray the end, count the staples with a linen tester, and do the math.   That will give accurate grist. Or, have your favorite machinist make you up a set of wpi gauges, and do the math.  Wpi gauges (packed to refusal) tend to be more reliable than just measuring the thickness of the yarn with a micrometer.

If spinners like Holin are able to keep grist as a nebulous myth, then whatever they spin is just as fine as whatever we spin and there can be no meritocracy in spinning.  Then, the most status will always accrue to the most senior spinner.  And, as the high status, senior spinner, then whatever lie she tells us must be true!  No, I come out of a meritocracy, where status was acquired by identifying the mistakes of others.  I like a meritocracy where status is acquired by doing things better, faster, cheaper.

In learning to spin, I tried everything that spinning teachers told us, and I made a lot of crap-yarn.  On the other hand, every batch of crap-yarn that I made had some significant virtue.  However, I learned to put all the virtues together, and now I make better yarn.  I would not have learned to make better yarn without taking the risks that resulted in the crap-yarn.  Holin never took the risks that resulted in crap-yarn, so she never learned to make better yarn.  

Holin, in particular has NEVER given this site good numerical information about grist, so I see no reason to grant credibility to her last comment until we have done due diligence on all of her references and citations.  Until completion of due diligence, her last little rant is merely more myth from the internet.

Romney and medium wools

Below is an image of fine thread spun from Romney wool spun with only 5 to 7 staples/wool fibers in cross section. Its twist is about 25 tpi, and it not too over spun, so its grist is also in the 40+ thousand ypp range. 

However yarns with so few staples in the cross section are not durable enough to have ever been of commercial interest. Nevertheless, it shows that fine threads can be spun from rather coarse wools.  Thus, spinning at the spin count is trivial. 

Below is Romney spin at  17 tpi to produce a single with just under 20 staples in the cross section
and which has a grist of close to the fleece's spin count of ~40 hanks per pound (22,400 ypp).  Such singles from long wool  and particularly the finer Suffolk were the traditional basis for hosiery yarns.  Every spinner knew how to spin such yarns because they were in demand by weavers.  Spinning 40s from Suffolk is faster and easier than spinning them from a 40 count wool.

Plied up into a 2,200 ypp knitting yarn, it is smooth, flexible, and durable- a very nice sock sock yarn.

It was not a very good Romney fleece, but it was right for the miles and miles of 5,600 ypp worsted singles (10s)  that I spun from it.  10s are very easy to spin from 40 count fleece.  Coarse wool does very well in wet weather, and it is very durable.  Objects spun and knit from this rather coarse fleece are the objects that endured.

 Above is similar twist/grist spun from flock run 57 count medium wool similar to Suffolk.  It is softer,  less durable, but warmer.   Spun at its spin count, the single would be about  32,000 ypp. or about 16% thinner than the yarn pictured above.

Below we see the 57 count wool spun at near its spin count.

This was about the grist and twist of traditional Shetland lace singles ( pre-1780!).  The fine Shetland wools were spun at their spin count for weaving and some of the singles were then plied up into 3-ply for lace yarn that was just under 10,000 yd/lb, but was strong, durable, elastic, and lustrous.   There was a demand for lace which decorated and protected the fabric of many garments at the neck and cuffs. These singles were also plied up into hosiery yarns to become the hose of kings and queens. 

Alden Amos used a bobbin lead wheel to spin 58 count wool at 19,000 ypp (pg 215).  Using the DRS also in that book, I can easily and quickly spin Targhee fleece at any grist for which I can find my flyer whorl. 

(On the other hand, when I started this series of posts, I put my coarse whorl somewhere very safe, and now I cannot find it.  The fine whorl is on the wheel now.  There is a couple of kilo of fine white wool on the drying rack. At some 90 m/gram, that would be --- a good year's spinning!  Think about it, even spinning fast,  8,000 meters of finished sock yarn would be a year's production. ) 


Sitting at a DRS wheel changes one's view of history.  The best spinners had them, because DRS is the most productive wheel.  The most money could be made by spinning as fine as possible - therefor the best professional spinners had their wheels set to spin the best available wool at its spin count.  Once the wheel was set, changing it was an effort.  Then, the tendency is to spin everything at the same twist/grist.  If you want to make a knitting yarn, it is easier to spin the singles at whatever grist you sell to the weavers  (and your wheel is set to spin), and then ply it up to make a knitting yarn.

This is not bad, because knitting yarns with a large number of plies are very nice.  We do not do it today, because most have forgotten the over wheliming speed of DRS. We think that we do not have the time to spin all those plies.  No, we do not have the skill to use DRS, and spin fast.

On the  other hand, a spinner working with coarse wool will have their wheels set to spin lower grist yarns.  The coarse cloth made from lower grist singles was less expensive, more durable,  and made up the vast majority of the produced cloth, and hence most of the produced yarn.  Spinning coarse yarns was most of the income for most spinners.  And subsistence spinners produced coarse yarns for the Victorians to see.

 If you know what you are doing,  the time to spin and ply traditional hosiery knitting yarns is about the same as the time as to knit the objects. Time to spin/ply 5-ply sweater yarns is about half the time to knit the object.  I am an equal opportunity crafter.  If I am going to put the time into knitting, I am going the use the right yarn.  Sometimes that is mill spun.

The bottom line is that modern fleece are graded by laser, which gives a precise measure of the spin count.  Linen testers do not lie.  If you know the spin count of the fleece, and the single is a bundle of 20 fibers, then you have a very good estimate of the grist of the single.

Pix of Rambouilett at Spin Count

Here is one of my old rusted iron squares with 6 wraps of Rambouilett at Spin count:

 Note the slub on the left-most wrap to help you find the thread.  Otherwise, it just looks like little scratches on the ruler.  Contrast on this ruler is better than on my newer stainless steel rulers.  On my screen, it shows at 5.5 times actual size.

Another ruler with scales marked in 1/16" on top and mm on the bottom. On my screen it is about 5 times actual size.

Here is a greater close up of the untwisted end of the thread, so fibers can be counted:

Those are ~ 18 to 20 micron fibers, and you can see that there are only about 20 of them in the thread.  On my screen it shows at about 10x actual size.

I can spin this grist as worsted at ~130 yards per hour and  a third slower for woolen and semi-worsted.

If Holin wants to complain, then she should post a photo of how this grist should be spun!  And, I want to see all those folk who say that one can accurately measure wpi with a ruler send me a photo of them getting correct wpi of yarns spun at spin count.

The Lambtown Yarn Contest.

In America we have spinning contests called, "Longest Thread", but which have little to do with spinning fine or fast. In the past, the Lambtown longest thread contest was very much about spinning fine and fast.  Now, it is about who can spin wearing gloves, who can spin blind folded, who can spin the fastest given an unlimited amount of fiber, who can spin on other people's wheels, and who can spin "art yarn".  Nowhere in the contest are points given for spinning fine or well.

Real Longest thread contests are still held in other parts of the world such as

 ( http://www.bothwellspinin.com.au/ ) .  Look and see how American spinners place in such contests in recent years!  Under the leadership of Boss Cows such as Holin, American Spinners have distained technical merit.  As a result, the best American entry to the 2013 Spin-in was based on singles of 
~26,654 ypp.   Not a very good showing. (Sorry, when I should have been mailing my entry, I was passed out in a back alley in Bruges. )


"Spin count" has been a part of the British defined wool quality for hundreds of years. It is/and was the finest thread that a COMPETENT spinner could spin from that grade of wool.  The US is one of the world's largest producers of fine Rambouillet wool with spin counts near 80.  The US also produces Merino with similar spin counts.  Why doesn't the US have many, many hand spinners that can spin such wools at their spin count?  There are many such spinners in Australia, New Zealand, and Europe. 


Why did the US not submit hundreds or more entries to the 2013 Bothwell that were at least 45,000 ypp? (Ok, or at least 99 entries, because I was in Bruges.)  I will tell you why.  Because Boss Cows in the American spinning community distain technical excellence.  They distain spinning fine.  They distain spinning fast.  They pretend it does not happen.  They pretend it cannot happen. 


As a result of years of such "leadership", American hand spinners are not as technically competent as spinners in Australia, New Zealand, and Europe. 


In 2013, I was learning what I could spin.  Then, I started looking at how I could use that technical excellence in spinning to produce better yarns.  Today, I make better yarns suited to their purpose.  Holin pretends to  judge them from photos of the process.  The thing is, she spins to win yarn contests.  I spin one kind of yarn if I am entering it in a "yarn contest", but different kinds of yarn for knitting, and weaving.


Lambtown will be a yarn contest, so I will be spinning California Rambouillet at it's spin count -  about 45 thousand yards per pound.  Bring your linen tester.

Fluff

I have been spinning Anna Harvey's Rambouillet - it is beautiful fine white stuff. Unfortunately, I seem to have abused this part of this fleece, and it has some down in it that leaves slubs.  Ok, it looks like home spun, but once it is woven, milled, brushed and clipped, it will just be -  bright white, fine woolen cloth with a very soft nap.  And, I believe in judging the final object.


The drive bands on the wheel were old, and replacing both raised the rpm by 20% -- that is like working 5 days and getting paid for 6 days.  Nice!


This bunch of  rolags seems to want to hang together, so I have to pre-draft them.  Ultimately drafting is faster than take-up.  At flyer speeds of 3,000 rpm, take-up is something over 9 yards per minute.  If I draft a bit faster, a balloon forms around the flyer, and if it gets big enough it hits the MOA and tangles in the other flyer arm.  If the drafting is too slow, the yarn will break off. 


Using the Ott lamp as a strobe, I can see the balloon of yarn around the flyer and adjust my rate of drafting.  Between the balloon and yarn stretch, I can grab another rolag and continue spinning by just dropping rpm to 2,000 for a couple of seconds.


The woolen single is fairly bulky, so I spend a lot of time winding off.  I may need to rig a faster bobbin winder if the fresh singles will take the extra tension of  faster wind off.


Thus, I am embarrassed to admit that this morning's production of woolen 5,400 ypp singles is only just over 400 yards per hour.  I think that when I get past this bag of fleece, production speed will go back up.  On the other hand, it is kind of nice just lounging around at 9 yard per minute.


If Holin wants to tell you that her "slow spun" yarn weaves up into better cloth, then she should be ready to show you pix of cloth woven from her yarn.  The thing is, that unless one spins very fast, it is not cost effective to weave fine hand spun.  How much would enough yarn to weave a bolt of cloth from Holin's slow spun yarn cost?  Do you want to sink that much value into a bolt of woolen cloth?


Edited to add, the problem was in the vibration damper, and flyer speed is now back at 3,600 rpm allowing spinning at over 11 yards per minute.   Still that is another 20% gain in productivity. Now I can spin 4 days what it would have taken 6 days as the wheel was set up yesterday.  This is the advantage of taking the time to tune up the wheel.

The Troll

See

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll


I have been identified as a "troll".  And, from their Norse origins, trolls have been dark and disruptive creatures that pose riddles and eat children.  Now, that my nature has been exposed, I do not have to worry about my reputation, and I can do what come naturally.


Of course, I am disruptive in the same way that Newton, Copernicus, Steinmetz, Curie, Fermi, and Feynman were disruptive;  I tell the truth.  I say things that others should have seen, but did not say.  As an identified troll, I find telling the truth to be deliciously disruptive, and I find telling lies to be calming.


The truth is: that modern spinners have a fanatical doctrine that destroys history just as surely as Taliban blowing up Buddhist statues or ISIS blowing up Palmyra.  I think that if modern spinners had the courage and technical knowledge of explosives, they would try to blow up my spinning wheel because it does not comply with their doctrine.  The have certainly lobbed enough written bombs filled with all kinds of shit at me.


Modern spinners have made a point of trying to write DRS out of history.  SG and AA certainly found 11 spinning wheels with accelerators.  Such accelerators work much, much better on DRS than on any kind of single drive wheel.  If I see an accelerator on a wheel, then I know that it is a DD/DRS wheel. Anybody that has used a variety accelerators with a range of flyers knows this.  Modern spinners that do not know this, do not know their tools, and this is the key.  Modern spinners have not bothered to learn about their wheels.  They have not done their homework.  The spinners that lobbed all those written bombs at me show me that they are as ignorant as the narrow minded fanatics in the Taliban and ISIS.  it shows me that they have a doctrine that is divorced from the physics and mechanics of spinning. It is that doctrine, that lie, that calms modern spinners.

Gauge

Many knitters do not believe the gauges that I knit. That is because they are lazy.  they did not do their homework.


For example, look at The Sweater Workshop by Jacqueline Fee. She shows gauge swatches done on 11 different sizes on needles including US#0 and US#1.  Anyone andeveryone that has knit such gauge swatches, has knit at the gauges that I knit.  Every serious knitting book from Mary Thomas's Knitting Book on has similar passages.


I took those passages to heart and knit gauge swatches.  It was my homework.  I did my homework.  Any knitter that did not do this, was not doing their homework.


I liked the tighter fabrics, in fact, I wore out 2 sets of Addi  size US#1 turbo circs knitting such fabrics. However, knitting such fabrics on circs was hard on my wrists.


So I looked for a better way to knit such fabrics. There it was, right there in Mary Thomas's Knitting Book.  Knitting sheaths!  Such tools in the form of Shetland knitting belts show up again in Wendy Keele's , Poems of Color. So, knitting sheaths and knitting belts are real tools used by professional knitters to knit decorative objects.  Mary Wright's, Cornish Guernseys & Knit-Frocks makes it clear that knitting sheaths and knitting belts were the standard tool of the serious traditional knitter.


Now, many modern knitters want to discard these traditional technique, and knowledge of  textile production for loosey-goosey knitting that is suited only for "art" knitting.  They want to kill and bury traditional techniques, and the associated knowledge of  textile production.  They denigrate and depreciate people who use such tools.


In doing this, modern knitters are no better than some terrorist group that wrecks museums, destroys historical sites, and plunders archeological sites.  In either case, it is the deliberate destruction of  knowledge and history as a result if ignorance and ideology. 

Raging Ignorance

The great thing about wraps per inch is that the square of WPI (when done well) is grist in yards per pound (ypp). With small corrections, it will also work for cotton, hemp, and silk.


Then the square root of grist (in ypp) is the diameter of the yarn in inches.


This relationship is useful in knitting and weaving because if I know the grist, I know how thick the yarn is.  It is useful in spinning, because if I know how thick the yarn is then I know the grist.  It is an easy calculation.


However, it requires that in measuring WPI, the yarn must be packed to refusal.  Learning to do WPI correctly takes real practice.  It is a "SKILL"!  One starts with yarns of known grist and practices measuring WPI until the WPI is the square root of grist.


Now there are a bunch of knitters that claim wpi should be measured more loosely, then they have a little chart to show them the class thickness of the yarn.  Well, if they measure WPI loosely, then they have lost the relationship with grist. All they have is their silly little chart, and their silly little chart does not help spinners and weavers.  It does not even help serious knitters.


Many, many knitters have put their loosey-goosey approach on their blogs until the first few pages of a search for WPI only brings up that silliness.  Now, the authoritative information is buried. 


Here is a good example where hobby knitters have managed to lose and bury useful, traditional knowledge about textile production.  Isaac Asimov told us at the Institute of Man and Science, "Americans think their ignorance is as good and anyone else's facts!".  Today day I would rephrase that to "Knitters think their ignorance is as good as traditional knowledge"!


My favorite single is 5,600 ypp (10s) or 75 wpi.   I have a little brass gauge that I can set to a gap of 0.25 inches.  I can be spinning, and if when I pack the gauge to refusal, and there are ~19 wraps, then the grist is very close to 5,600 ypp.  It works.  I have done this hundreds of times.  I check grist as I spin, and wind hanks of 560 yards, and the hanks are within 5% of the desired weight. It is faster, easier, and more accurate than a McMorran Yarn Balance!  Sometimes I spin 40s (22,400 ypp), then I know that when packed to refusal and there are ~38 wraps in the 1/4" gauge, and the hank of 560 yards will weigh very close to the desired 11 grams.


I ply the 10s up into 5-ply, and sure enough I get ~30 wraps per inch and I know the grist is very close to 1,000 ypp. It works for  sock yarns, gansey yarns, and Aran years.  However, it only works with a wpi gauge and "PACK TO REFUSAL".  It does not work when you wrap the yarn around a ruler or a dowel.


It is less suitable for "art" yarns, but that is no reason to throw the whole concept away.  Some day, we will want to go back to practical knitting and we will have forgotten the traditional knowledge that make it possible.

More masterwork

My latest category of knitting master work is running socks.


The best commercial ones that I have found are made by IceBreaker
( http://www.icebreaker.com/ ).  Pricy, but a good warranty.


OK, but can hand knit running socks be better?  I do not know yet, but it is an interesting project. They need to be thin, smooth, and fit perfectly.  The IB socks are knit with right and left feet.


They need to be smooth, never bunch, and never ever attract debris.  This is the problem with the Under Armor and other polyester/acrylic running socks.  When trail running, they attract and hold organic debris that irritates the foot.   Real wool is better. 


And, of course little socks should be easy to knit.  However, I bought my running shoes when I was wearing commercial running socks.  So the running socks that I knit, have to be that thin.  :  ) 




On the other hand there are a multitude of minor design issues such as how far up the ankle, the top of the sock should go and  how to prevent it from slipping down into the shoe.  It is a whole new world of subtle design options.

Apart at Lambtown

 I will be at Lambtown (http://www.lambtown.org/ ), but apart.  I am going to sit in the parking lot across the street and spin.  Anybody that is interested can come by and see samples of my knitting and spinning.  I will have both top and rolags  and folks can see just how fast and how fine I do spin worsted and woolen.  And you can see the quality of the yarn that I spin.

You can bring your wheel and we can spin head to head and compare productivity (and quality). 

I am not going to sell anything. 

 

 

The Right Answer

A long time ago, I was Senior Scientist at the world's largest engineering firm.  It is a firm where the team is everything.  And, in that team work, is real power.  When there is a problem, a team goes to work on the problem.


I was on many such teams.  Typically there would be at least two solutions.  A standard, convention wisdom solution, and I would propose something else. Often, analysis would show that my solution was better, and my solution would be adopted.


Here, folks assume that because my solutions are different from the conventional wisdom, my research is bad and I must be dumb and unemployable.


For example, I like knitting sheaths.  They allow knitting faster with less stress on the wrists. They are the kind of thing that impartial analysis loves, and sentimentality hates.


For example, I like DRS flyer/bobbin assemblies.  DRS allows spinning much faster and make spinning finer easier.  It is the kind of thing that impartial analysis loves, and sentimentality hates.


For example, I like an accelerator on my spinning wheel.  It allows me to spin much faster and facilitates spinning finer.   It is the kind of thing that impartial analysis loves, and sentimentality hates.  Anybody that skims this blog is going to see that I go for what works rather than current fashion.


Oh, yes, I find better ways to do things.  In knitting and spinning, I did not invent anything, I simply seined history for better technologies that had been lost as a result of Victorian fashion. The fact that they work so well show that my research and analysis was excellent.


Citations are for people who want to cover their ass.  Citations are for people who do not trust their own analysis. Citations are for people that have not read extensively in the field.  And today, citations are for folks that never conquered Structured Query Language.  If I am just regurgitating what others said, then I am not adding value and I should go do something else.  People that want citations, are people that do not trust their analytical skills.  I trust my analytical skills because they brought me things like knitting sheaths, DRS, and accelerators. 


It was my analytical skills that let me build a system that allows me to spin much faster than others.  Is this ego?  No, it is being aware of how various people spin.  It is analysis. It is stepping back and not letting good ideas kill better ideas.  Those skills are still very valuable.


It does not matter how fast Holin spins, she adheres to the conventional (Victorian) spinning wisdom.    I know some of the best spinners in that school, and how fast they spin. It is not physically possible for Holin to spin significantly faster.  I wanted faster, and that was what drove me to find a faster way to spin. 

Craftsman

Craftsmen (male, female, or other) make quality goods. They make better quality goods than folks that are just out to make a buck.  Hobbyists may actually produce higher quality objects, because they are not limited by resources.  That is, a hobbyist can put unlimited time and resources into an object, but craftsmen must keep the cost of objects within the price range of their clients.  Craftsmen produce the best possible product at the most reasonable price, all things considered.


If  someone needs a warm object, then a craftsman knitter will knit an object that is as warm as is required.  If someone needs a durable object, then the craftsman knitter will knit an object that is a durable as it required.  If someone needs a lace christening gown, then the craftsman knitter will knit an object that is elegant enough to uphold the status of the family. Along the way, for each product, the craftsman will make the compromises needed to meet the requirements including cost and schedule. The craftsman can work to a bid/plan/schedule so the cost of the object is as agreed with the client, and the craftsman does not lose money on the project.


Most modern spinners see spinning as a hobby.  They do not care about the cost of the yarn that they produce, or speed of production. And, they are not interested in making better yarn, they only want soft, pretty yarn.  


In contrast, I see spinning as a craft. I want better yarn. I want stronger yarn, I want more flexible yarn, I want more durable yarn and so forth.  And, I want less expensive yarn. I want yarn that has fewer man hours invested in it. I put a lot of effort into working out how to spin faster with less effort. I want yarn that that is just as good but is made from lower cost fibers. That is, I seek to find better fibers at a lower cost. And, I seek yarns that require less fiber, for the same warmth, durability, or strength.  Every spinning project that I do has requirements, schedule, and budget.  When a spinning project does not meet its requirements, schedule, or budget, I pull the plug on it. 


I started spinning because I was a knitter, and I was not happy with the available mill spun yarns. I wanted better.   When I started spinning I was told that it was not possible to hand spin the  worsted spun, 5-ply sport weight yarns, called "gansey yarn".  I was told these yarns had never been hand spun.  It took me 9 months before I was hand spinning such yarns, but the process was so slow as to be impractical.  The yarns I was making were better than mill spun, but they were too expensive.  I had to work out how to make them less expensively.  The obvious solution was to spin faster.  Today, I spin much faster.  That means that my yarn is much less expensive.  I like better yarns that are less expensive.


The first step to spinning faster was to understand differential rotation speed (DRS) as discussed in Alden Amos and the Victorian authors. DRS allows the flyer/bobbin assembly to run at much higher speed, and it changed the nature of the drafting, allowing true worsted yarns to be produced much faster. Part of this step was learning different spinning techniques that allowed me to take advantage of DRS. This really was an effort. This development of other spinning techniques was perhaps the single most important aspect of the spinning faster process. 


The second step was to have Alden Amos make me faster flyers.  I considered having him make me a custom wheel, but the Ashford Traditional drive wheel actually produced more speed than the wheels Alden was making at the time.  That is, an engineering analysis selected the Ashford drive wheel over the Alden product.  It was not a capricious or sentimental decision.  Part of this step was the development of "gang whorls" so that as the effective diameter of the bobbin changed,  I could change whorls rather than stopping to wind off.  I had to design and fabricate the gang whorls. This facilitated the production of longer, continuous singles.


The third step was to make an accelerator for my Alden Amos/DRS/Ashford hybrid.  Again it was an engineering analysis.  It was not a capricious or sentimental decision.  The result was the accelerator/Alden Amos/DRS/Ashford hybrid with advanced drafting technique.


The net result is that my wheel spins woolen singles between 2 and 4 times faster than any  wheel on the market.  My wheel spins worsted singles between 3 and 10 times faster than any wheel on the market.  This was not an accident. It was attention to detail, and doing the engineering correctly.  It was understanding the technique so I could make the required tools.  It was understanding the tools, so I could develop the technique.


Since spinning/twist insertion is the single largest cost in spinning, my yarn is much less expensive than other hand spun. I (the knitter and weaver) is the customer for I (the spinner).  I (the knitter and weaver) like the lower cost of the faster spinning. I (the knitter and weaver) like the shorter delivery times for the faster spinning. All around, I like the faster project development and production cycles. 


This allows me to (inexpensively) dream-up, produce, and test yarns that are not made by mills and which I have never seen before.  I learned to make more flexible yarns.  I learned to make stronger yarns.  I learned to make more durable yarns, and so forth. I would never have had time for this experimentation if I had to spin as slowly as most spinners spin. Without DRS, you will never really understand sock yarn. 


I can plan an object, spin and test samples of a yarn that I have never before spun, and then spin and produce the object, all in a reasonable time frame. I (the knitter and weaver) know in advance what the cost of the yarn will be that I (the spinner) will produce for the project. 


I am a craftsman spinner with just one rather demanding client.  Myself.  If I spin better and faster, then I improve my product and lower my costs.  Then, I am happy.

A Silly Lie

My favorite singles have a grist of about 5,600 ypp which is about 75 wpi. I know that spun worsted, such singles will have a twist of ~9 twists per inch, and woolen spun singles will have about 12 twists per inch.  For more detail, see the formulas and tables in Alden Amos's Big Book of Handspinning, pg  383. AA formulas will get you to within 8% of the correct grist which is close enough for hand spinning and other online formulas will get you to within 2 or 3%.


Standard Ashford Traditional wheels have a ratio either 17. 5 (SD) or  14:1 (DD).  That means with a standard  SD traddy, one spins ~ 2 inches of  5,600 ypp worsted single per treadle stroke. 


Thus, if one is claiming to spin 360 inches per minute of such single, with a standard traddy, then one is claiming to treadle at 180 strokes per minute, or  3 strokes per second. Working on Ashford stock DD wheel one would have to treadle faster. I want video of that!


Back in my bike racing days, we did sometimes pedal at 140 strokes per minute, but we were trained racers and we did not do it for very long.  One does not treadle that fast while spinning fine singles.


Note that in fact,  DD DRS has less drive belt slip, and is thereby much more productive than Single Drive.


DD DRS allow a different and faster drafting technique and is thereby much, much more productive than SD.  IF you adjust whorl diameters, the DD DRS at a ratio of 14:1 will produce yarn much faster than the SD system with a ratio of 17.5:1.


Better flyers will increase the speed of an Ashford Traditional, and allow them to run at ~2,000 rpm or just under 400 yards per hour of 5,600 worsted single. (e.g., a sustained treadle cadence of ~120 strokes per minute with limited drive belt slip.  At that cadence, a couple of hours is a very long day's spinning!)  Anyone that claims more is not telling the truth.


With a better flyer and an accelerator, an Ashford Traditional will spin 5,600 ypp worsted single at a more than 560 yards per hour.  That is the truth.  With the accelerator, I can spin 560 yards of  5,600 worsted single with a treadle cadence of ~90 per minute.  For an old cyclist, that is a reasonable cadence that can be sustained all day. Yes, it needs to be a double treadle wheel or the required force tweaks the wheel out of alignment in a few days. So both legs need to be going 90.  If there is chafing, use lots of powder or get some of the anti-chafe goo that the runners and bikers use.


There are other wheels out there with ratios that should produce bobbin speeds high enough to spin 500 yards of 5,600 ypp single per hour, but the spinners that own such wheels report being disappointed with the productivity of those wheels. (Feynman tells us there is belt slip.)   I have spun on samples of some of those wheels and they certainly did not come close to the productivity of DRS flier/bobbin assemblies driven by a accelerator. 

The Old Ones

Scientists find the oldest-ever hand bone to resemble a modern human’s

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of-science/wp/2015/08/18/scientists-find-the-oldest-ever-hand-bone-to-resemble-a-modern-humans/

In a study published Tuesday in Nature Communications, researchers report the discovery of a bone that they believe to be part of the left little finger of an ancient hominin species, pushing the earliest "modern" hand back by around 400,000 years. In the hominin's habitat -- Tanzania, some 1.84 million years ago -- other hominins like  Paranthropus boisei and H. habilis would have been dwarfed by the modern(ish)-looking man.  Based on his hand, anyway.

[Scientists discover a new human ancestor that roamed with ‘Lucy’]

If the bone is proportional to a modern-human-like body, the man in question would have been around 5 feet 9 inches, compared to H. habilis, who stood just over 3 feet tall.

The anthropology that we learned back then was WRONG.  

Everyone needs to keep learning, and keep thinking. We need to keep questioning everything.

Out of Lyme

I seem to have found a Lyme Literate MD (LLMD), and massive doses of  Doxycycline seem  to be bringing me out of the debilitating fatigue and brain fog of Lyme Disease.  However, the physical therapy to repair the ravages of LD suck the time out of the week, and there are gigantic uncompleted task lists.  My productivity over the last 5 or 6 years has not been as high as it was in other periods of my life.

I expect LD imposed physical limitations on me, starting about 5 or 6 years ago. This was about the time I started spinning, so that I did more planning and analysis, rather than stupidly rushing in and trying to make a great wheel do what only a DD wheel could physically do.  Looking back, with or without Lyme Disease, working out the mechanical details of differential rotation controlled flier/bobbin systems was a nice piece of work.

And, if like Holin, I had wasted 28 years spinning on a GW rather than using a faster, lower effort, technology, I would be furious with myself.  Imagine, spinning for 30 years on a GW and still not being able to produce a hank of worsted spun gansy yarn in one day, and then have a fellow that had been spinning for only 5 years learn to use a DD wheel to easily spin a hank of gansey yarn in one day, even when he is disabled by Lyme Disease.  I mean after 30 years of spinning, one might use a GW for aesthetic reasons, but after 30 years of spinning, and still not understanding that a DD wheel can be much faster than a GW; Oh, my! It would be so humiliating.

Nevertheless, time devoted to physical therapy seems to have peaked, and with brain fog clearing I seem to be able to get more stuff done. I have referred to myself as a "fat old man, with palsy".  Much of that was due to Borrelia.  These days, I feel 15 years younger.

LD produces a brain fog, so one fails to index the knitting journal and thus picks up Mary Thomas, rather than the knitting journal as one sits down to knit Eastern Cross Stitch. In the drawing in MT illustrating ECS, the needles are at an obtuse angle. That approach requires pointy needles and brute force.  If the angle between the needles is acute, ECS is easier. She would defend the drawing saying it depicts continental style knitting. I say, if you want to knit tight using continental knitting, you will ruin your wrists.  And, ECS is about knitting socks and hose that need to be knit tight.
Due consideration of prototypes tells me that ECS is not the traditional Jersey stitch. On the other hand, it is a very good stitch for socks.

In my world, most knitting is intended for destruction and discard.  Initial swatches will be tested to failure, and discarded. Prototypes are tested to failure, and discarded.  Objects are worn, repaired, worn some more, and ultimately discarded.  Objects that show great virtue will have replica swatches knit, which are kept and used in planning future objects.  However, I expect a knit object to last a few years, and in that time I study and learn. I know the effort to knit and test swatches and prototypes will result in better objects in the future, so the effort does not bother me.  I expect every object to be better than the object that it replaces. The socks that I knit today are much, much better than the socks that prompted Bob to offer me $200 for a pair of  hiking socks.  That is the way it should be.

I make and test: new tools, new yarns, and techniques.  None of the needle makers understand my knitting needle needs as well as I do. All of my needles have been adapted to my techniques and yarns.  My knitting sheaths have been adapted to my needles, my knitting techniques, and my yarns.  My yarns are adapted to my needles and my knitting technique.  It is a system and it works.

Needles and  yarns designed to generic standards and common techniques will not work together as well as my integrated system, and they will not produce objects of  similar virtues.

I demand extraordinary virtues from my knit objects.  The virtues that I demand may not be the virtues that you desire, and you may even disdain the virtues that I demand, but people who touch and feel my objects admit that I push knitting much farther than anyone else.  People either love or hate my knitting.  Nobody is indifferent to it.

PS  Everyone should just assume that each and every future post in this blog asks Holin, " How long does it take you to spin a hank of 560 yards of sport weight, worsted spun 5-ply yarn?"  When she is able to say, "less than a day", I will post her response so all of her students can ask for a demo.

Eastern Cross Stitch

Somebody asked about Eastern Cross Stitch, but that sample does not seem to photograph well, so I dug through my swatches for on one of gansey yarn knit on 3.75 needles.

Pix includes pages from Mary Thomas's Knitting Book

At that gauge, the knitting is easy enough.  Knit tight, ECS is much harder.  I did have a very good technique for doing it with blunt needles, but I seem to have forgotten the method and am back to doing ECS by brute force with pointy needles.  I need to re-un-vent the technique, and document it better.

The question to test is: " ECS provides cushion and ventilation which are good for socks. Do the virtues of ECS make it worthwhile for other objects considering the extra effort of production?  Or,  are there much easier ways to produce the fabric? We know that in old times ECS was much favored.  Was it much favored for all objects or just socks?  Why was it much favored?

You can see that I have been going round and round on this for some time.  Picking it up and dropping it in fits and starts.

Nice

There are  people who say I should be "nicer".

Should an elementary school teacher be nicer to students that do not do their homework and lie about it?  No, there are consequences for ignorance and deceit.

Students that do not do their arithmetic homework,  do not become competent in math, and are cheated by merchants.  In society, deceit is punished under the law. The  elementary school teacher  merely tries to instill a respect for the consequences of ignorance and deceit.

I do not know about your freshman professor in your major, but mine were absolutely cruel in their demands.  They set a standard for rigor in thinking and diligence in effort that has served me well.  Not too long ago, a fellow wanted to show me how to prove the formula for the volume of a sphere.  Forty-five years after taking  calculus, off the top of my head, I could show him another 5  equally valid techniques for deriving the formula for the volume of a sphere.  The moral of the story is that there is very rarely a single path to the truth.  Every truth will be supported by several lines of evidence, and contradicted by no good evidence. Having followed one line of good evidence, one can look back and find other lines of evidence.

I like honest searches for the truth.  I like good questions. Good questions are always the most important part of doing one's homework.  Feynman like to teach lower level students, because " They have the good questions."

Folks at advanced levels tend to forget about the unspoken assumptions of the field. The questions of beginners force us to reconsider and justify all assumptions.  Good questions lead to "Pure Wisdom".

However, if people want me to be nice to them, they must do their homework.  My bio professor demanded written questions on every lecture - along with the answer we had found or -- a list of at least 100 journal papers where we had looked for the answer.  I thought he was a nice guy.

GW 2

These days, I do not keep a great wheel.  I do have 2 motor driven spindles and 2 spindles that fit onto my treadle wheel.  None of these are as impressive to look at as a GW, but they are faster. And, they all allow me more use of both hands for drafting true worsted.

The motor driven spindles are easy to pause or stop, but hard to reverse.  Therefore, I had to learn how to wind-on with the spindle going in the same direction as when spinning.  It can be done, the answer is "out there", and I have no interest in teaching driven spindle technique.

If one does not have to reverse the spindle, then one does not have to stop, or pause the spindle, and the spindle can rotate continuously in the same direction.  One CAN spin a entire hank of single on a great wheel without ever reversing the wheel to wind on.  This can be much faster/easier than reversing rotation to wind-on depending on the inertia of the rotating system.

Nevertheless, the spindle must be slowed at various points in the spinning/drafting/wind-on process. Even though the spindle/wheel always rotates in the same direction, the slowdown/speedup cycle wastes energy. And, the wind-on cycle slows production of yarn. 

A spindle on my treadle wheel can insert twist many times faster than the flyer/bobbin assembly,  but the DD flyer bobbin assembly will spin and wind-on much more yarn in a minute or an hour or a day.  One of the motor driven spindles can insert twist many times faster than either spindle on my treadle wheel, but net production of single is not much different. Net production of spun yarn by a spindle is limited by the nature of its cycle, rather than by its peak speed.

A DRS flyer/bobbin assembly is the fastest hand spinning device for most natural fibers. Ring spinning can be faster for silk, but that is a specialized application.  Yes, those old double drive spinning wheels were the fastest way to spin.  They used the two loops of the drive band to synchronize the rotation of the bobbin and flyer to insert just the right amount of twist as the yarn was wound in at just the correct rate for the inserted twist. They did not have the drive band slip that is built into modern double drive wheels.  The result is that a double drive wheel without drive band slip that can produce singles much faster than a great wheel.  This is a truth that you have heard before.  It is just that all  modern DD wheels do have drive band slip and thus, spin more slowly than a GW.   In fact, a DRS flyer/bobbin assembly can produce true worsted spun yarn 5 times faster than a great wheel.  Every sock knitter should think about that.

And, since DRS is faster, sock yarns of more and finer (true worsted spun)  plies are possible.  These are very nice yarns that are simply out of reach of even the best spinners using a GW.  The use of DRS opens up spinning true worsted 5-ply gansey or even 10-ply Aran yarns.  And, it makes spinning true worsted warp for the loom much more feasible.

 On the other hand, a DRS flyer/bobbin assembly requires real skill to setup and maintain. I have seen two old DRS double drive wheels where the original DRS ratios had been "repaired", and the wheel converted to  modern standards.   As a result of the repairs, they could spin lower grist yarns, but could only do so --- slowly. These had been true collector's items and the owners were very proud of how fast they could spin -- if they only know how fast those wheels had been originally designed to spin, they would have been agast!   The difference between these wheels as designed and these wheels as "repaired" was only millimeters, and yet it made a huge difference in their performance. If one can teach the basics of using a GW in a 4-day workshop, then I would say that one could teach the basics of using DRS in a 4-week workshop.

Yes, Holin, my old Ashford can spin/ply a 500 yd hank of sport weight, worsted spun, 5-ply (gansey yarn) in an easy day.  How long does it take your GW?  In less than 14 hours, I can spin/ply a 500 yd hank of  worsted spun, 3x2-ply cabled, 1,600 ypp "sock yarn".  How long does that take your GW?  Shall we set up a demonstration in front of a judge and jury?  I want spinners like Judith MacKenzie and Stephenie Gaustad who know, and appreciate,  worsted spun yarns involved.

I have only been spinning for 6 years. (And, I was sick with Lyme Disease for much of that time!)  How long have you been spinning?  What will I be spinning when I have spun as long as you have been spinning?