gansey-Shelbyville-Times-Gazette

For the last 3 months, there has been a large plastic laundry basket of wool next to the spinning wheel. It would get refilled a couple of times per week as spinning progressed, so there was always at least a pound or two of wool in it.

Yesterday, there was an obsessive/compulsive spinning session, and the basket is empty.  My legs are sore from treadling long and fast, but the basket is empty. The spinning bobbin is full, all the blocking reels are full, and I need to make some more storage bobbins, but this project is spun.  12 pounds of wool into 36,000 yards of singles in about 200 hours.

That seems very slow, however, it includes climbing a learning curve on how to manage singles.  Previously, I had simply stored singles on bobbins, but I ran out of bobbins. So, I learned to wind the singles on niddy noddys and steam block them. This takes a more robust niddy noddy design. This gives some insight as to why the use of niddy noddys for measured lengths of yarn for sale was outlawed.. Yarn wound on a niddy noddy tends to be much tighter than yarn wound on a skeiner.  Steam it, and it gets really tight. Many modern niddy noddy modern designs are not suited for steam blocking - you will end up breaking the yarn as you try to remove the yarn from the niddy noddy. Thus, I had to make some better niddy noddys.  A well blocked, well  made skein wound up into a "pretzel", is stable - until it gets wet.  Then it needs to be re-blocked.  Small skeins of knitting yarn that get wet can be (sort of) blocked by hanging a small weight on them.  A hank of woolen singles that gets wet wants to be wound onto a blocking reel.

Even well blocked singles wound into a cake or ball need a core. Center pull balls/cakes of high twist singles are not stable over periods of  weeks.

Bobbins are to weavers like clamps are to wood workers - you never have enough. Today the bench was clear of  wool carding/combing stuff for the first time in weeks, and by late afternoon there was a big bin of bobbins in process.  There are a bunch of bobbins on both the cone rack and the bobbin rack with mill spun warp on them. tomorrow they will be emptied by plying those warp ends up into 5-ply gansey yarn. It is actually a very nice knitting yarn. In fact, these days, it is my favorite "mill spun" knitting yarn.  I need those bobbins.

Now to weave it.

I think about the problems of the fellows packing saddle bags of singles from the spinners to the weavers by horse train in the 13th century. They would have been out in the weather for days on end.  It would have been very hard to keep those hanks of singles dry.  If they did get wet, then winding off those skeins of fine high twist singles would have required great skill.  Those old timers still have their secrets.

 

  

One of my goals for December 2013, was to spin a total of 5,000 yards (1.8 lb.) of worsted warp within 5 consecutive  days.

I just could not get it together to do that. Several day's production were well over 1,200 yards, but I would get to the fifth day of spinning and I would get interrupted, so I never got over ~4,500 yards in 5 days.  It may not happen on this project as I have only a couple of  lb of warp left to spin.

On the other hand, this fall has not been a complete bust spinning wise.  The gray bin in the corner has ~12 lb/36,000 yards of  hand spun singles in it, all spun within the last 3 months. About half are worsted warp and the rest are woolen weft. It is all 2,800 ypp so it is low twist, and it was easy to spin.

Later in January, I am going to go do a show and tell to attempt to persuade a wheel maker to make a line of faster wheels for spinners that want more yarn for the time they spend spinning. Small changes in design would allow very fast wheels to be made/sold for the same price as slow wheels.

Abby says, "It is all about the yarn."  I say, "It is all about better, cheaper, faster yarn!"  I do not need the expense of a "mini-mill". I just want to run my spinning wheel at a reasonable speed.

Spinning singles, winding them on to a niddy noddy, and steam blocking them with a tea kettle on the niddy noddy works. Those hanks/skeins can be leased and stored, or packed off to the dyer. It is very low capital, and there are 10,000 yards of singles in the gray bin that prove that it works for singles intended for weaving.

However, a skeiner or yarn blocker with a steamer is faster.

There was a question about Alden's Fliers that I seem to have lost.

The flier sets I got from Alden had whorls with a DRS of  1.2 - which is about right for 1,600 ypp singles,  but the effective diameter of the bobbin changes quickly. And, I wanted to spin finer singles.

Anyway, talk to Alden, and if possible get Alden to make your whorls.  Mine work, his are beautiful. Ashford whorls will be the wrong DRS.

I said that with DRS/DD. one could spin fines as fast as one could draft.

This is done by increasing the ratio between the drive wheel and the flyer/bobbin assembly. And this works up into the garment weight yarns (5,000 -15,000 ypp) but it falls apart at hosiery weights (22,400 ypp/  40s)
Yes, it still takes me a full 8 hours to spin a hank of  hosiery single.  And I would like to point out that at one time this was a very common product, and 8 hours work is a common pay unit.

I know there is a little contradiction between my thought of a 3 hour pay unit, and an 8 hour pay unit, but it does not bother me because we know that higher rates were paid for finer yarns.  It is a point that I can look over, while my critics make much of it. The unit of production could still be a hank, with higher rates for finer yarns.  A spinner could make still more money per day spinning finer yarns.

I do not really care whether this is historically accurate, I do care what the ratios of grist, twist, and total time of productivity tell me about spinning wheel design.  It tells me that if I get me wheel all tuned up, I should be able to spin a  hank of  hosiery single in 3 or 4 hours.  And, that is  a real lesson.   By not getting wound up in little contradictions, I can take useful lessons from history.

Here the lesson is that the problem is not in my drafting, but in the way my wheel is set up and tuned.
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A couple of hours later,

However, I  actually made such bobbins and flier whorls last year, during my "Fines Evolution", but at the time I was focused on "how fine" and not "how fast".  I just never did time trials to see how fast they would spin.  A time trial this morning, says that a hank of  hosiery single in 4 hours is a reasonable pace of production.   It says I can walk into any spinning guild meeting or fiber festival or Stitches and spin a 230 yard bobbin of worsted 40s  in 20 minutes, and that translates into a hank in under 4 hours.  Or, I can sit down with a couple of 1 oz batts and 140 minutes later I have 1600 yd of woolen singles.I promise that everyone that says this cannot be done is going to look like a fool. This not is not a "race pace".  This is not wild flailing. In fact, to spin this fast, I have to keep wasted motion to a minimum.  Yarn quality must be excellent or nothing works at that speed.  This morning's time trial was with 36 count Cotswold. The bobbins are for the AA#1 flier.  The AA#0 flier should be faster, but the bobbins/whorls I made for it actually have a lower ratio.   Someday, I will make more sets of higher speed bobbins for the #0  flier, but right now the wood turning work bench is my wool combing bench as I finish the warp.

A bit of engineering says that there is just no reason why spinners in Flanders could not have been running flier/bobbin assembles at ~2,500 rpm by 1550 CE. Yes, one must drop some modern assumptions such as the use of "leathers".    It turns out that wood-metal bearings actually have a lower coefficient of friction than leather-metal bearings.  The use of leathers is to reduce vibration and problems with alignment.

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A couple of weeks later

Is it easy to spin a hank in 4 hours?  No, it is is work, just like half a day of cutting stone for a  flying buttress on a Gothic cathedral , or half a day at the forge making fine armor, or half a day building a carriage.  It is not hard work like building stone fortifications or making hay.  It takes real skill, and the right tools.  The second advantage is that the combination of skill, good tools, and good fiber required to spin fast is also likely to produce a high quality thread.  If you spin a hank of thread per day, you will get very good at it, and spin a very high quality thread.  If you do not spin a hank of thread per day, you will not be as good a spinner as somebody who does spin a hank a day.  These days, I am spinning 2 hanks per day, and the quality is good.  
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This post was about my evolving  from taking  8 hours to spin a worsted hosiery single to doing the same spinning in 4 hours.  I had the tools.  I had the skill. I had the fiber. All I needed was the idea. I was bound up in the conventions of  "experienced spinners". It was like Bannerman and the 4-minute mile.  Everyone said it could not be done, so nobody did it.

We do not need folks telling us what we cannot do.  If you are a good spinner, sit down and spin with us. We can share ideas, and everyone can come away spinning better. If you just want to say that nobody can spin that fast or that fine, you will be embarrassed.

I am ever so tired of people telling me that I cannot possibly spin as well as I do.  I spin this well because I understand the math and physics of my spinning wheel, so I can design better tools. I spin this well because I do build the tools that I design.  I spin this well because I put in the effort to get really good at fiber preparation.   I spin this well because I practice.  The gray bin in the corner of the family room has 26 miles of my hand spun in it.  That is for one spinning project.  One of my gansey sweaters has 6.5 miles of singles in it.  Compare that to the 2.3 miles of single in a 2-ply worsted weight sweater.  And, gansey singles have more than twice the twist so that gansey yarn  has 6 times the twist of  2-ply worsted yarn.  One result is that the gansey yarn is denser, warmer, and more durable. (Lofty yarn is only warm if it has a wind break layer on either side it.  Otherwise, the flow of air advects heat right through it.   In a hand spun world that means you need to spin yarn for two layers of woven cloth plus the yarn for the knitting.  It is easier to just spin gansey yarn in the first place. ) The other result is that a spinner that making 5-ply gansey yarn gets a lot more practice spinning.

I am in this for the yarn.  I want better yarn.  That means hand spun.

From the start, I wanted my yarn fast.  I was in this for the yarn, not as a way to pass time.  I was willing to put in the time that the chore of spinning demanded, but I did not want to put any extra time into spinning.

I came to spinning knowing how construction professionals worked. They had good tools, they knew how to use them, and they worked rapidly with no wasted motions. They did the job, and then they went on to the next job.  Spinners on the other hand seemed intent on slowing the work process.  Spindles were designed with large whorls so they spin slowly.  Spinning wheels were designed to spin slowly.

Spinners are in denial.  They say, "No, my wheel is fast."  However, they do not stop an think that flyer/bobbin speed is limited by power transfer through the drive band and Scotch Tension systems brake the flyer/bobbin assembly, and thereby reduce the over-all rate of twist insertion.  Then, they have double drive systems that inherently require drive band slippage.  If there is slippage, then the flyer/bobbin assembly is not going as fast as it would without slippage.  For the last 50 years, spinners have been favoring wheels that had SLOW built into them, and wheel makers built what the market demanded.

Spinners say, "These are traditional designs!"  Ok, traditional designs for what?  Linen! The long fibers of flax need a slower speed, and there were a lot of old linen wheels around.  People assumed that a spinning wheel was a spinning wheel, and used old linen wheels as the design prototype for wool wheels.  So what is the difference between the design of a good linen wheel and a good wool wheel?  The linen wheel wants less speed, and the wool wheel wants more speed.  Scotch Tension systems are a logical engineering choice for a wheel designed for linen. They are less logical for a wool wheel. They are not at all logical for spinning cotton.

A traditional wheel design for woolen spinning is Irish Tension. There is no additional braking to slow the flyer/bobbin assembly.  There is no drive band slippage to slow the the flyer/bobbin assembly. The mechanism is simple to make and inexpensive. If you wan to spin medium woolens (30,000 yd/lb and less), bobbin lead is a very good and traditional approach. It is simple and easy to set up. And yet, I remember the feeling of rebellion, when I first tried IT.  Everyone was telling me that most spinners were much happier with ST.  And, yes, IT with the big Ashford flyer does have a very strange feel to it. The sudden increase in take-up at higher speed is very disconcerting for the beginner who is not forewarned.   The beginner (with a big flyer) says WTF, and abandons the concept. The beginner with a small flier feels no take-up and says, WTF and abandons the concept. The ST friction brake provides a steady take-up pressure as speed increases that is easy for the beginner.  While the IT takeup is a cube function that is small at lower speeds, and then increases very rapidly at high speed.   With the big Ashford  fliers, IT does produce excessive take-up pull when one tries to spin fast (more than ~800 rpm).  However, a small flier such as AA's #1 flier produces very reasonable take-up tensions at speeds in the range of 1,800 - 2,200 rpm. On the other hand take-up at speeds less than 1,500 rpm is negligible. At slow speed, one can spin very fragile yarns or make pig tails. For conventional yarns, one either spins fast or it does not work. The AA #0 flier running in IT generates reasonable take-up at speeds in the range of  2,400 - 3,200 rpm.

For the expert with a flyer that has a low aerodynamic cross section,  that low take-up at low speed and high take-up at high speed is a very powerful tool.  The expert can adjust take-up by altering the bobbin rpm by treadling slower or faster. The take-up adjust is precise over a wide range, fast, and does not require the hands to leave the yarn.  All of which  is important when yarn is running through your fingers at 10 yards per minute. However, the spinner much be prepared spin fast, and know that slowing down will stop take-up before the bobbin stops.  This is a set of skills that have fallen out of spinning lore.

Now look at the literature.  Do the experienced spinners warn the beginners? Why not?

What if one wants to spin worsted fines (30,000 to 48,000 ypp)? Fines require some 20+ tpi. Scotch Tension systems will get you there, but it is clumsy and very, very slow.  IT is faster, but it gets very delicate as the flyer is pulled by a fresh yarn of only 20 fibers.  Modern double drive with slippage is a fraction better than ST. Differential Rotation Speed Double Drive is the best engineering design for spinning yarns in this class, but one must prepare and fabricate a specific engineering design for the grist. This is worthwhile if you plan on spinning many miles of a particular grist. Then, these yarns can be spun as fast as they can be drafted, and well prepared fiber can be drafted very fast.  Traditionally, hand spinners did spin fines as a commercial product.  Here, "commercial product" means the yarns were spun by hand rapidly.  Differential Rotation Speed Double Drive has no equal for hand spinning worsted fines.

I spin yarn as I need it. I benchmark how fast I spin, so that I can evolve and improve my spinning.  I do not care how fast you spin, but I do care how fast I spin. I want to make sure that I am spinning at a reasonable rate.  If others are mired in myth and cannot believe what I do, that is not my problem.

My problem is to make the yarn that I need, in the time that I have.

I started spinning because I wanted better gansey yarn.  So, I spun worsted, and I spun as fast as I could.  i wondered how fast other spinners could spin but never got very good numbers.

I got to the point where half a day's spinning was ~560 yards of 5,600 ypp - a worsted hank. That made the math easy. This made me think that a "hank" was a unit of work for a professional spinner. It was likely the minimum amount of work for which a spinner would be paid. It was an easy half-day's work,a nd an expert spinner could do 3 or 4 per day. I still think of a worsted hank as between 3 and 4 hours work depending on the grist, twist, and fiber prep.

If we look at AA's calculation on how fast a spinner can spin, he gets 300 inch/ minute for spinning woolen on a great wheel and he indicates that is for an active spinner.  Extending that out it is 3.2 hours to spin the 1600 yards that was woolen hank.  Add in the 15 minutes per hour for winding and steaming and we have just under 4 hours to spin a woolen hank on an average great wheel. Is that fast!?

I have been spinning the woolen weft (2,800 ypp) using Irish Tension and AA's #0 flier  mounted on the DT Traddy, and a woolen hank takes me ~3 hours, wound and steamed.  That makes it a nice unit of work, with an expert spinner being able to do 4 in a very long day.  A #0  spinning bobbin holds 230 yards of yarn at this grist, so a woolen  hank is 7 bobbins worth, and I fill a bobbin in ~20 minutes.  Is that a problem?  Do I want a bigger bobbin?  Well a bigger bobbin would need a bigger flyer, and that would be slower. (A new generation of graphite fliers may change this.)  I like the small and fast.  For weft, I leave the yarn in skeins of 230 yards, and 7 of those skeins makes it look like I have done something useful. The weft bin has about 3 kilo of skeins in it, and I have some more to do. So, I am up the experience curve, and I am motivated to work fast.

Yes, a hank (worsted or woolen) is an easy half-day's work, for a good spinner.  No, you are not going to get there on most modern commercial wheels, but there are a couple of dozen hand spinners that spin at this rate on a routine basis.