One of the things that I have been persistently ridiculed over is my search for ways to spin faster.
However, lets think about hand woven cloth form hand spun yarn. A garment weight cloth is 10 or 12 ounces per yard, and a traditional English bolt of cloth is 12 yards, or 144 oz or 9 pounds. If the yarn is 10s (5,600 ypp) then a bolt cloth will contain 90 hanks or ~50,000 yards.
With a wheel ratio of 1:12, a treadle rate of 90, you can spin about 150 yards (of 10s) per hour that comes to ~334 hours of spinning. With a faster wheel a spinning rate of 370 yards per hour is reasonable and it is only 135 hours or 3 hours a day for 7 weeks to spin the yarn for a bolt of cloth.
Spinning fast is better. This is why I want fast spindles. This is why I am willing to work a little harder to spin much faster.
Skeins? It is faster and easier for me to store yarn as cakes, bobbins, and cones. For knitting, I wash and block the yarn on reels, and put it up as center pull cakes. For weaving, I wash, block, and put the yarn on little bobbins that each hold an ounce of yarn. With 50 such bobbins, I can wind 2" of warp at a time. There is just no way in world to juggle 50 skeins of yarn while winding on to the loom.
However, lets think about hand woven cloth form hand spun yarn. A garment weight cloth is 10 or 12 ounces per yard, and a traditional English bolt of cloth is 12 yards, or 144 oz or 9 pounds. If the yarn is 10s (5,600 ypp) then a bolt cloth will contain 90 hanks or ~50,000 yards.
With a wheel ratio of 1:12, a treadle rate of 90, you can spin about 150 yards (of 10s) per hour that comes to ~334 hours of spinning. With a faster wheel a spinning rate of 370 yards per hour is reasonable and it is only 135 hours or 3 hours a day for 7 weeks to spin the yarn for a bolt of cloth.
Spinning fast is better. This is why I want fast spindles. This is why I am willing to work a little harder to spin much faster.
Skeins? It is faster and easier for me to store yarn as cakes, bobbins, and cones. For knitting, I wash and block the yarn on reels, and put it up as center pull cakes. For weaving, I wash, block, and put the yarn on little bobbins that each hold an ounce of yarn. With 50 such bobbins, I can wind 2" of warp at a time. There is just no way in world to juggle 50 skeins of yarn while winding on to the loom.
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