Ask The Bellwether

What can I use to finish my spindle or wheel (or loom!)?

noreply@blogger.com (Amelia of Ask The Bellwether) — Wed, 15 May 2013 17:29:00 +0000

By Amelia © May 15, 2013

Over Mother's Day weekend, I took a trip to pick up a loom. A loom rescue, as it were, as its owner bought it not to weave on, but as furniture... a large butler (clothes horse) in the corner of a bedroom, basically.

When I got it home, it was clear that it needed a good wood cleaning, restoring, and waxing. That was also a terrific way to figure out what might be broken or missing. Here she is now:

Aaaah. All that appears to be missing from this 1936 Bergman loom is a dowel on the cloth beam, two dowels on the castle, and the nut on the warp brake pedal. The tie-ups need some work too, I am looking forward to a test warp to get that all sorted!

So, what did I use?

First, I used a furniture wipe to get the dust, bug dirts, and cobwebs off. Then, I used Howard's Restor-a-Finish to clean her up properly. I finished off with the Howard Feed-N-Wax, thicker than my lemon oils and thinner than my Howard Paste.

If I'm just re-waxing a good friend like my Jensen Tina II, I'm likely to use the Kotton Lemon Oil.

If it's bare wood like The Bellwether Spindle, I use a paste, like the Howard Paste or another favorite, Wood Beams from Goodies Unlimited

It's always a good idea to talk to the maker if you can before applying a finish, as they know what looks the best on their products. Also, if the wood has a polyurethane coating on it, it doesn't need any wood finish, just a dusting.

If you have a favorite wood finish, let me know - I love trying new things.

Can you make a living in the fiber arts?

noreply@blogger.com (Amelia of Ask The Bellwether) — Sat, 04 May 2013 07:26:00 +0000

By Amelia © May 4, 2013

I've recently returned from pinch-hitting for another teacher at John C. Campbell Folk School. It was a terrific week; using the course description, I put together a romp through yarn design, moving from singles to ply constructs to art yarns as the week progressed. I learned a lot about how much information workshop participants can absorb, and on just how much work I can do in a week. We all had a great time; the fiber was enjoyed, the company was great, and the meals were wonderful.

Our group became close-knit despite arriving from all over America, from Alaska to New Jersey and several points in between. We've exchanged emails, and one topic that came up was, 'can you make a living in the fiber arts?'

The math is simple: how much money do you need to live on -- make an accurate budget; determine how much income can you make from what you want to do. If you can make enough to live on, then you're golden.

The ladies know that making enough income is a tough thing. They knew I was in a idle period, no workshops for a month, when I got the call asking if I was available to fill in. What was I living on, then? Savings. I have to deal with living on variable income, which means even when the money seems to be rolling in, you have to set some aside for a dry spell.

The hardest part can be evaluating the income opportunity. In fiber arts, we have many choices: sell supplies, sell altered supplies (dyed, spun, kitted up), sell finished pieces, develop patterns, write, teach, process fiber, spin for others, knit for others, raise fiber animals, make fiber tools, organize events ... And likely more. Business plans can be useful in organizing your thoughts and determining cash flow potential. I did business plans before I started The Bellwether as a retail business, before I began my fiber mill, and even when I decided to shift my focus to teaching and writing.

Each business choice has expenses (materials, tools, storage/work space, website, bookkeeping, advertising, and more). Generally your income comes from the time you put in: you have to market your wares to get customers; you need to hone your skills to grow your business; you must create products or track inventory to have goods to sell, and so on. It also comes from making good choices, examining what produces income and what does not. The income has to cover the business expenses and your household budget.

Pricing is a big issue for fiber arts. The market sets some prices: you can cruise handspun on Etsy, looking at yardage, weight, and fiber to get a feel for handspun pricing; wholesale suppliers often set retail prices on their goods; and boutiques in your area may carry other fiber artists' products already to give you and idea on pricing handwoven goods or hand dyed yarns. Those are good to take into consideration given your cost of materials, tool and location costs, and the time it takes you to make the items you sell or run the business you want to create.

Especially with service or finished items, it is important to consider that time. If it takes 5 hours to weave, finish, and package a scarf, $30 in materials, and say $5 in overhead costs (tools and location, fees, etc.) and you can sell it for $60 retail then you get $25 for your 5 hours of time. That may seem great if you have a day job, but $5 an hour is a pretty low wage to live on. Consider what you can do: get more efficient at weaving, change the weave structure, yarn, or item to something that adds more value without slowing you down or costing more to produce.

Now, truth be told, I often just wing it and hope to get something to cover the next bill. But the further honest truth is that I adore what I do. Every day is like a vacation for me. I don't tire of it. Today was a perfect day: I fixed a skirt hem, threaded a bit more of my twill warp on my floor loom, swapped looms with a lovely lady who not only wanted my AVL Workshop Dobby Loom but had the Louet Magic Dobby loom I really wanted, researched for some fall classes, worked on a workshop proposal for an upcoming show, and now I'm writing this. Better than a day on any beach on the planet.

And that is where the magic is...loving what you do. It makes you willing to find new ways to approach it. I've done retail, wholesale, services, e-books, workshops, online workshops, worked for others in the fiber arts, and will keep trying new things and fitting them into "Ask The Bellwether" as needed to keep it a success. I've researched suppliers, publishers, on line marketplaces, and wool shows, and will continue to find new sources for materials and venues for what I do. I know I love learning, and I have been amazed at how much I enjoy teaching. My deepest love is writing, though my skills are home grown rather than college-honed. My spindles, wheels, looms, and tools call to me and I adore passing along their lessons to others in the spoken and written word.

There are many inspiring blogs out there to help motivate you to follow your dreams. I enjoy Wakeup Cloud, in part because Henri is himself discovering his own passion in what he does, and applying it directly in his blog. His enthusiasm is infectious!

And, as my partner Chris says, some people make the music and some people listen to it. He is a professional listener ... always in the audience, never in the band. Someone has to be! So if fiber arts are your hobby, I thank you for that. Without folks looking to simply enjoy the fiber arts, those of us who pursue it as a lifestyle would not have an audience. Thank you for listening to my music :-) it brings me great joy to make it, in all its woolly goodness!

~~~~

This article © 2013 Amelia Garripoli, Ask The Bellwether, posted at http://askthebellwether.com/blog.

~~~

The pictures are from the workshop: supplies, my necklace of textured yarns, and the circle of wheels in our classroom.

Really, a metal spinning wheel?

noreply@blogger.com (Amelia of Ask The Bellwether) — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 20:42:00 +0000

Dear Toni,

It was really great to see you and your amazing spindle and wheel collection when I was in Colorado last summer. Thanks for asking then about my Columbine wheel ( www.r-e-solutions.org/Columbine/about.html ). The bright yellow was a good choice for me -- very cheerful. There are several color options available, including a much more sedate forest green and a yummy plum. These are unique wheels, being made from metal rather than wood.

I'd compare it to a Louet for spinning feel, despite it being a double drive wheel. In my experience, most double drive wheels have fairly soft draw in. But then, most have cotton drive bands on wooden grooves. The Columbine has poly drive bands on metal grooves -- very much grippier (is that a word?) than the traditional cotton on wood. So, the draw in is very strong, like Louets' Irish tension tends to be.

Since I like Louets, I felt comfortable spinning it. I am tempted to try a hemp drive band to see if that softens the drive band -- but you know me. If it took me 6 months to write this to you, it could be another 6 before I try a different drive band material.

The bobbins are immense -- though not much wider than traditional bobbins, they are easily twice as long as Ashford's. So they hold a lot! I spun up a 4 ounce skein and even the full plied 4 ounces looked like not much on the bobbin. You can say the beauty of the yarn is from the skill of the spinner, but the wheel also had to contribute, as I spun a yarn outside of my default yarn, a plump, soft, squishy two-ply. As you can see from the skein-shot, it turned out really well -- I attribute that to the quality of the wheel as much as to the talent of my hands.

One thing I had to get used to -- you cannot lift the wheel by the bobbin/flyer, as the flyer's rod (the spindle) is resting in a bracket at the back, rather than being pushed into a holder. Sure, it's not wise to lift a wheel that way in general, so I'm happy to have to correct a bad habit. My other wheels will benefit.

I got my Columbine with the matching lazy kate. The bobbins are extra-tall, so I'm not sure if they would fit on my other kates. They do have a very wide center tube, so the rod diameter would not matter. But you would want a long kate rod (how long, you ask? ummm... I will follow up with that info). I am a plyer who likes to position her kate away from her wheel, so that works well for me. And I can "store" the kate on the wide treadle of the Columbine, so it is pretty easy to tote along with the wheel. There is also an option for an on-board kate, which would be appealing for bobbin storage at least, if you have a kate for plying on hand already.

My past experience with Columbines before this wheel was helping a lady with one get it to spin well. She needed to set and then refine the tension, it didn't take long to get it spinning well. It was enough to make me interested in the wheel, so when the maker had a booth near mine at Black Sheep Gathering, I trotted on over to see cost and if I could carry them to offer them to my spinning students.

Being me, I ended up taking one home. Nothing like a skein or threes' experience to tell me how a beginner would take to the wheel. It is a good beginner-and-grow-into wheel. I would feel comfortable teaching someone on it, and would know they could have an entire spinning career on just this wheel. There's a decent range of ratios, it's sturdy and travels in cars well, and bobbin size is a big plus. It has the modern amenity of sliders instead of hooks on the flyer -- the best improvement to wheels in the past several decades.

I continue to be a big fan of castle wheels in general, and would love to find a Louet S-90 like yours with its lovely painted wheel. My teaching herd (Louets, Spinolutions, Ashfords, a Babe and a Sequoia) is happy to welcome in the cheerful yellow Columbine.

Until we meet again (will I see you at Blacksheep Gathering? I'm teaching there this year!),
Amelia.

© February 28, 2013 by Ask The Bellwether, posted at http://askthebellwether.com/blog

Why is spinning right-handed?

noreply@blogger.com (Amelia of Ask The Bellwether) — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 09:50:00 +0000

By Amelia © December 31, 2012

One of the first things I tell spinners-in-training is that spinning is an ambidextrous sport. So, actually, it isn't truly a right-handed or a left-handed activity. Both hands are involved. And feet, on a treadle wheel.

That said, on a wheel, we do tend to say you are spinning right-handed if your right hand holds the fiber supply and your left hand is closer to the orifice. Most traditional wheels are set up with this assumption, putting the drive wheel to the right and the flyer to the left.

If you spin with the fiber supply in your left hand and right hand loser to the orifice, you may be surprised at how much more comfortable a "left hand" wheel can be. I was, when I visited Mr. Watson in Sydney, BC, and he pointed out my left-handedness at the wheel.

So how did this right-handed lady become a left-handed spinner? In part, it was due to my interest in spindles. They are typically taught with fiber in the left hand, right hand closer to the spindle. So, when I sat down to a wheel, I kept this configuration. Learning long draw on a charka definitely cemented it in: right hand turning te wheel, left hand single-handed lay managing fiber supply and drafting. What a marvelous feeling that remains!

New spinners can find this challenging. Especially strongly-handed people (right or left). So here are some suggestions to help strengthen your off hand:

switch your mouse on your computer to the other side, or start using your off-hand to move around on your tablet's screen. You need to be consistent with this...the hand has to learn a level of precision that seemed to come naturally to your primary hand. Give it a week to get better, and a month to feel natural.
pick a two-handed instrument to learn, or dust off your grade school band instrument: saxophone, flute, clarinet, guitar, piano, drums, ukulele ... All use both hands, and what fun you will have marching in the all-sax over-40s marching band in your town's next Fourth of July parade. What, your town doesn't have one? Them get it started, by all means.
learn to brush your teeth with your off hand (culture permitting). I injured my right hand in July while building my studio, so I took on this particular challenge unexpectedly. It took a while to get the off-hand to do a good job, and it took a few months for my right hand to stop grabbing the toothbrush. But four months in, I found they both did a fairly similar job.
learn to do something else with your off-hand. A good friend had hand surgery, so during the 2 month recovery, she learned to crochet left-handed. I remember several friends in high school showing up in the fall with a cast on their primary arm, and having to master writing with their off-hand during the school year.

Strengthening your off hand will benefit more than your spinning; my left hand is now much better at whisking cream, and my hands participate more equally when I weave.

So, dive in, spin, and marvel at how talented both of your hands are!

© December 31, 2012 by Ask The Bellwether, posted at http://askthebellwether.com/blog

How can I get more on my spindle?

noreply@blogger.com (Amelia of Ask The Bellwether) — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 17:11:00 +0000

By Amelia © October 9, 2012

Getting more yarn on your spindle requires great skill. Luckily, itis a skill we all possess: recognize natural beauty. A balancedspindle-full of yarn looks nice. It's naturally appealing in itstidiness, order, and symmetry.

Okay, I hear some of you groaning. You didn't like to tidy your room,and you still don't like housecleaning. But this isn't that. It'swinding yarn on the spindle, which is a celebration. Each time youwind on, you have created a new length of yarn.

For the past year, I have lived with wood stove heat. I like beingwarm, so I chop wood. I have a choice I can make -- I can throw thewood in an untidy pile that falls and expands when new wood hits it,or I can stack the wood in an organized wall that leans on itself andstays put. The organized pile looks better. Beauty of the woodpiletranslates to compactness, keeping more wood dry, and giving easyaccess to wood. With summer arriving July 5th here, we've workedthrough several cords of alder this spring, all chopped by me. I feelquite accomplished, taking my messy piles and putting them neatly inthe woodpile for use in keeping my family warm.

Similarly, as I work through a spinning project like themerino/yak/silk blend I spun up at Black Sheep Gathering, I feel quiteaccomplished as I get 1 ounce, 1.5 ounces, and then the full 2 ounceson my top-whorl spindle with no appreciable wobble.

How far can you take this? The most I've put on a spindle is 4 ouncesof singles and 4 ounces of plied yarn. I've seen flickr entries with 7ounces of singles on a spindle, and Andean womens' spindles seem quitea bit fuller than my 4-ouncers.

Practical advice to achieve beauty in your spindle-full:

Wind on tightly, maintaining tension between the newly formed yarn andthe yarn already on the spindle shaft. If you wind on in a closelyarranged series of rounds on the shaft, every once in a while switchover to an X-wind on to hold down the rounds and keep the rows fromcollapsing into each other. You can look for artistry in your cop likethe Turkish spindle windings that appear on flickr, or you can strivefor a balanced shape and surface of the yarn on the spindle withoutlaying bands of color on the spindle shaft.

I like to put 2 ounces on spindles as singles, and then ply thattogether into a 4-ounce spindle-full. If I'm spinning thinner, I mayput less on the spindle. Consider the final spindle weight. I spinfine yarn on a 1/2- ounce spindle, and I don't want it to get muchover an ounce in total weight, so I only put 1/2 ounce on it. I spinthicker yarns (DK singles and thicker) on a 1.5 -ounce spindle; afterthere's an ounce on it, it's 2.5 ounces, which starts to feel heavy.At 3.5 ounces it's heavy enough that I'm done, even if the spindleisn't wobbling.

You may be able to tolerate a heavier spindle - or you may want tostop at a lighter final weight. It's a matter of preference, part ofyour spinning personality.

Plying goes so quickly that I don't mind doubling two 2-ouncespindle-fulls of singles and piling on 4 ounces of plied yarn. It'ssatisfying to see how closely I can match the length of each half ofthe fiber, a bit like trying to see how few blows it takes to chop around into burnable logs for my woodstove. And it's really satisfyingto see that huge cop of yarn on the spindle!

~~~~
Yes, I have been posting less. That's because this past year has been full of studio building! It's done and workshops are underway. I post schedules to my email list (contact me to be added), on Ravelry's Spinning Workshops forum, and on Ask The Bellwether's Facebook page.
~~~~
© October 9, 2012 by Ask The Bellwether, posted at http://askthebellwether.com/blog

How do weavers find inspiration?

noreply@blogger.com (Amelia of Ask The Bellwether) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 17:26:00 +0000

By Amelia © January 18, 2012

With the new year, I am looking to re-inspire my fiber arts. Writing is always a joy, but life has kept me from pursuing activities as much as I would like. So a chance run-in with a local weaver and invitation to their guild meeting was too lucky to pass up.

And can you believe it, the topic was finding inspiration! A few of my fibery friends were there, and one handed me the feather you see above. The table was full of yarn, so finding colors was pretty easy. We chatted as we made "wraps", to sample color combinations and decide what colors were in our inspiration.

Wrapped samples like this are a common tool among weavers. They are a great way to sample colors and proportions. As I was winding mine to "match" my feather, it started working its way into my mind, firing off ideas of what to weave.

The feather and the colors reminded me of a color-and-weave I have not yet done, so I took the idea and worked with it, weaving a sample to see how it would look:

Plaid. Yes, not a 2/2 twill that would make it an authentic plaid, but symmetric stripes with border colors. I like it!

The fun part of the project was also the instant gratification -- one of the ladies cut matt board for us, so we can mount our inspiration and our sample weaving, frame it and have a new piece of art for our weaving corner. That is where mine will hang...

You can find inspiration in anything -- a rock, a feather, a picture, last year's calendar, furniture, the snow on the trees, a sunset. Look at it, explore its colors and textures, wrap or sample and wa-la! you will have made a new fabric that is all your own.

~~~~
© January 18, 2012 by Ask The Bellwether, posted at http://askthebellwether.com/blog

How do I use my new espinner?

noreply@blogger.com (Amelia of Ask The Bellwether) — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 15:22:00 +0000

By Amelia © December 27, 2011

Did the holidays bring you an espinner? Lucky you! Here are some tips to help you transfer your wheel skills to your newest toy/tool.

With espinners, start out slow and find what pace works best for you. It's a different mindset from a treadle wheel, in that the motor speed is constant once it is set. With a treadle wheel, you can change speed with each push of a treadle. So your hands need to learn to move in a regular rhythm that matches the espinner's speed.

I tend to set the speed on my HansenCrafts espinner based on how fine I am spinning. I set it slower for thicker yarns and faster for finer yarns. Which wool breed it is isn't usually my focus, beyond realizing how thick or thin that breed likes to be spun. And when I am starting with a new to me wool, I start out slow and increase a little bit at a time until I find a speed that works for my hands, the fiber, and the yarn I want to produce.

When I am spinning fibers other than wool, I look at how slippery they are, and adjust accordingly. If it is more slippery, I use a slower speed to start until my hands have control of the fiber.

And with all fibers, I bring forward a philosophy I use on my treadle wheel as well... Only set e scotch tension brake just tight enough to draw fiber onto the bobbin. Tis is even more important with an espinner, because it's not your feet getting tired pushing against that break -- it's the motor working against it. Light tension ensures you get the most effort out of your motor.

Are you curious about but don't have one yet? HansenCrafts has a great page listing their competition here: http://hansencrafts.com/hansencrafts/misc_stuff/spinning_wheels_competitors.htm

Ravelry has both an electric spinners group and a HansenCrafts group, full of information about espinners.

~~~~

The one shown here is an early HansenCrafts espinner. I've since upgraded it to have a WooLee Winder and am looking forward to the new manual flyer HansenCrafts are developing.

© December 27, 2011 by Ask The Bellwether, posted at http://askthebellwether.com/blog

How do I copy a sweater yarn?

noreply@blogger.com (Amelia of Ask The Bellwether) — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 01:21:00 +0000

By Amelia © November 8, 2011

I had this comment posted recently:

Just found your blog and hope it's not defunct. I'm a beginning spinner and a wannabe weaver, and I have a question about spinning. I would like to duplicate the weight and structure of Jamieson & Smith jumper-weight yarn to knit a Fair Isle Sweater. I have some of the yarn, so I can figure out TPI, etc., but I was planning on using a Shetlend fleece (being washed now in my bathtub) with app. 4" staple length and thought that combing it was the best way to process it. Is this (worsted style) the best way to try to duplicate J&S or would carding be better? BTW, my husband is laughing at me for deciding my first real objective (as opposed to just spinning yarn with no objective in mind) in spinning involves processing fleece, spinning it and dyeing it to knit a FI sweater. It probably will take me a long time to finish, as I've never knitted a FI sweater, either. But I have many steps before I get to the knitting. Thanks for your help!

There's noing like a question to motivate! It's been a busy summer...running into fall... Of self discovery and personal growth. Coming along nicely, with plans for teaching in 2012 forming (look for email news if you are on my teaching email list, or contact me to be added).

To focus on the question: the best way to determine what works is to sample. I have been copying Paternayan tapestry yarn, and though you'd expect it to be worsted prepared and spun, I get closer to the yards per pound with carded fiber spun woolen. YPP is a good measurement to take because it varies based on fiber prep and spinning style... Combed fiber spins into a denser fiber generally, and worsted style spinning also spins into a denser yarn. So for lighter yarn (more YPP for the same weight of fiber) use carded fiber and woolen spinning.

From what I've seen of J&S lace weight yarn, I would guess that carding might be better than combing, if their jumper-weight looks similar.

The main motivation to copying YPP is that your knit fabric will then have a similar drape, having about the same density. If you'd rather have a lighter sweater, woolen prep and spin; for a heavier one, worsted prep and spin. That said, parts of a sweater see a lot of wear, and worsted prep and spun does wear better (less pilling, typically) than woolen prep... So you might want to not only sample spinning, but also knitting. Let a small knit square live on your keychain for a while to see how it likes being dragged in and out of your purse.

In any case, have fun spinning! There's nothing like calking a big project and working your way through it.

~~~~

© November 8, 2011 by Ask The Bellwether, posted at http://askthebellwether.com/blog

When Do You Do Spring Cleaning?

noreply@blogger.com (Amelia of Ask The Bellwether) — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 10:56:00 +0000

By Amelia © April 5, 2011

A philosophy I find worth embracing is that you need to remove the things in your life that are blocking you when you want to make room for new things to happen. And in the spirit of that, I've been working on a rather thorough spring cleaning of tools lately.

From

I'm pleased to say the first three items went quickly at the Whidbey Spin-In, giving me the energy to return home and pull together the next 19. These are a significant step for me in reducing how much is around me, so I am free to focus on the weaving I love -- my rigid heddles, my mechanical-dobby equipped Baby Wolf, and my ever intriguing Bergman Counter-marche loom.

It's not always easy to decide what needs to go. Tapestry weaving, for example -- there is a lot I could do there, plenty of ideas that sprang to mind as I worked through a sampler and learned how to bubble and tie butterflies. But I know my heart is in functional cloth, for home textiles and clothing. So I use that knowledge of myself to create a space and a set of tools that enable it. The tapestry looms need to go to an artist making tapestries -- gorgeous works of art that enrich all of us with their vision.

And there are plenty of other spaces to tackle -- the bookshelves, the fiber cubbies, perhaps even the spindle racks (yikes! not those!) But I know, too, that focus comes in baby steps. Today was huge -- taking the pictures, researching second-hand pricing on the items, getting them posted on my website, ravelry, and weavolution. So now I will let myself enjoy the progress, not worry about the work remaining.

As Scarlett liked to say, "Tomorrow is another day!" and thank goodness for that.

~~~~
© April 5, 2011 by Ask The Bellwether, posted at http://askthebellwether.com/blog

Are you playing with a full deck?

noreply@blogger.com (Amelia of Ask The Bellwether) — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 04:41:00 +0000

By Amelia © March 29, 2011

Yes, the title of this post is a little tongue-in-cheek. But there have been a lot of decks of cards in my life lately, concretely and figuratively. Much shuffling. There has been the juggle of retail, writing, and teaching fiber arts; a temp job that has gone on for a while; and big changes coming at home.

The fan of cards above is a 4-decker. Yep, I've been bitten by Hand-and-Foot, a really fun card game. You may know it by another name, I was googling for the finer points to teach it to my daughter, and found some variants are called Canasta. That made me laugh - my older friends play Canasta. It is a nice way to while away time and have pleasant conversation with friends - a new friend taught me. I look forward to more pleasant conversations over the decks.

The knitting? That's a swatch for my Learn to Knit More class - my new knitters were keen to continue learning techniques, so we are pursuing fun topics in the "More": knitting in the round, lace, cables, and short rows. That, added on to their basic vocabulary from Learn to Knit should send them well on their way into knitter-dom.

In my fiber life, card decks also play a hand. I've been playing with stripes in weaving lately -- how to design them, what rules there might be, that sort of thing. Color theory plays a role, and patterns like Fibonnaci. But randomness can also be fun, as you see in the scarves here.

The blue one has no neighbors the same -- completely random to the human eye, rather than striped. It works because it's monochromatic, all in the blue family. The red one has stripes of random widths. Now, I admit, when I did this, I was mainly working with leftovers -- stripe width was dictated by how much yarn I had left over.

Decks of cards are a great way to randomize stripe width. Take a deck, turn over a card. Discard 2's, Aces, Jacks, Queens, and Kings. If it's a 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, or 10, do that many lengths of your color. Then turn over another card. The number on the card dictates the stripe width. We tossed 2's because it takes 3 ends to make a clear stripe, and face cards because, well, 10 is wide enough for my scarves. Wa-la, random stripes.

You shuffled, right? If you want truly random -- shuffle 7 times. Whew!

There are other number randomizer or pattern methods out there, another I ran across was using your phone number. Pick the colors you don't like to be the zeros (grin!)

When I turn 52 ... that's still a bit of a ways away ... I am going to have a "full deck" party :-) because I will have one, in years!

So, what do the changes mean? You may see shifts in my focus, changes at The Bellwether, and, I expect, plenty of me! Teaching and writing are very important to me, so I am putting together a path that includes those activities while I meet my responsibilities. Sharing with you the techniques and ideas that excite my fiber-life is always a pleasure - I surely appreciate the kind remarks on the blog, feedback from my students in workshops and my virtual students, who purchase the e-tutorials. Our audience grew a little bit this month as well, with the acceptance of my e-tutorials by PatternFish. More of them will appear there until they are all available; The Bellwether will still also provide them.

I know I don't often put my actual face on things but changes are afoot, and you may get more than my usual logo sheep or Facebook/Ravelry teapot in future. Hello, world! This is me (grin).

Happy spinning, weaving, dyeing, knitting, and shuffling!

~~~~
© March 29, 2011 by Ask The Bellwether, posted at http://askthebellwether.com/blog

Five Tips For Spinning a Consistent Yarn

noreply@blogger.com (Amelia of Ask The Bellwether) — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 08:24:00 +0000

By Amelia © February 25, 2011

Wow! Madrona Fiber Arts Festival was a hoot! But more on that at the end...

Last summer, I was contacted by a tapestry weaver about spinning some "3 ply yarn" for her. In fact, the yarn she wanted mimiced in handspun was Paternayan's, which has 3 strands or fingering-weight 2-ply loosely twisted together. And, her plan was to separate them to color-blend (tapestry weaving is so cool!)

There was to be 10 pounds of fiber to be spun, from local sheep, locally dyed and milled at Taylored Fibers. 10 pounds. That didn't quite hit home until I (a) injured my foot in July, leaving me only e-spinning as a wheel choice and (b) got a temp job 4 days a week in September, which is still steaming along with a somewhat indefinite future.

Now, this 10 pounds isn't like the normal production run you might do for a sweater: not all the same color, to be spun up and bobbin-swapped as needed to make the singles come out consistently. Not at all. This is 8 ounces of each color -- and we decided to do them 4 ounces at a time, so she would have each color as quickly as possible, with the second half coming later.

So, I have to spin 4 ounces, ply it, repeat until done. How can it hope to remain consistent?

Here are my tips:

1. Keep your sample card handy. Mine has actual Paternayan's (the source yarn to base everything on!) wound around it to see the twist angle in the ply, split into its singles and wound around it to see the diameter of the single, and fluffed out to see the fiber in the single.

Every time I start a new color, and at random points as I spin that color, I compare back to that source yarn. At least once per ounce during the singles, and at the start of plying to make sure I have my rhythm right.

2. Focus. I don't drift off into conversations -- this fiber doesn't come with me to spin-ins, though the plying might, it's not as hard to get right. All spun at home. I've lost the thread of Stargate Atlantis entirely since I am paying more attention to the yarn than to the plot.

3. Use the same speed and tension each time. On my e-spinner, I set the dial the same; on my treadle wheel, I use the same ratio. And, I always back the brake band's tension off to soft-as-will-draw-on as I start each bobbin, since as the bobbin fills, the brake tension gets tightened bit-by-bit. Forget that, and the fiber yanks onto the flyer faster than I can say "boo!"

4. Use the same spinning style each time. If you start out spinning worsted, spin it all worsted. If you start out spinning with double-drafting, spin it all that way. Whichever method you pick, stick with it. This yarn, I spin with double-drafting. It's production spinning, and that's my fastest way to get the yardage on the wheel.

For plying, I have been using The Gentle Art of Plying as my plying method, but recently re-learned Alden Amos' plying method (see my youTube video embedded here; it is described in his Big Book of Handspinning).

Amos' plying method is continuous, always moving toward the wheel, which was gentler on my e-spinner and let it spin for longer before heating up the motor. I could do the whole 4-plus ounces in one sitting. It takes me about an hour to ply 4 ounces (400 yards) at 1200 rpm, close to top speed, on my e-spinner. [ For the techs out there .. that works out to 5 twists per inch. About right, for the ply twist for this yarn. ]

5. Measure and adjust. Not only do I work to stay on-task during the four ounces, but once it's done, I skein it up with a yardage meter (since I'm paid by the yard, it does double-duty). That tells me if I stayed in the target range. I should get about 100 yards an ounce. If it's too short, then it was too thick or too dense (spinning style - worsted is denser than woolen, or too much twist compacting it). If it's too long, then it was too thin or too airy (not enough twist will pouf out more in the plying). I make a note of the ones noticeably outside the target (over 10% off), and let the weaver know if a color might be a little thinner or thicker than the others, so she can compensate in the weaving.

More than anything else, that sample card and staying on-task keep the yarn within bounds. The medium wool that I'm spinning -- some Border Leicester, some Jacob, some Romney -- all feels about the same, and all will spin into a slightly finer yarn than my target if my goal were fine spinning.

Now, if all your fiber is the same color, you can spin a whole bunch of bobbins-full of singles, and then randomly pick from the singles to ply. That way, you can ply early singles by later singles or totally randomize, so your yarn diameter varies either as little as possible, or as randomly as possible. But I didn't have that option in this spinning journey. If you want to hear about spinning for a sweater's worth of fiber, Amy King has a great article on Knitty, Spin me a sweater!

I just sent off the most recent 2 pounds to the tapestry weaver, shown here, bringing the total to 6 pounds, and got 2 more pounds to spin. All in all, it will be about a full year's journey to complete the 10 pounds. I have all sorts of luscious fibers lined up to treat myself with when my hands want a break from the medium wool. Pygora, Alpaca, Silk, and my own precious Llama -- all for laceweight. I'm thinking, though, I might want to dive into the stash for some wool/silk blend to spin into a thick single and tame with rough finishing, for a total change of pace. Or not -- 4-ply sock yarns are also on my spinning want-to's.

~~~~

So, how fun was Madrona? Wow. Franklin Habit's class on photography was eye-opening. I had a terrific time teaching a dozen or so folks the basics of spindling in the rotunda, did some stash enhancement to my silk weaving yarn at the Habu Textiles booth, picked up some lovely pencil roving from Crown Mountain Farms for learn to spin kits, and got to catch up with a variety of friends from hither and yon, including meeting several face to face for the first time. Syne, Sarah, Tasha, Anne-Marie, and many others -- however fleeting our hello's may have been, I always treasure meeting friends. And new friends, too -- Taryn, John, Selah, Judith W - how cool to meet you!

If you didn't get to take one of my classes, there are e-books for all three of them on my website; Spinning Self-Striping Socks and the Mitts of Experience has always been fun to teach (see the review by kayak on ravelry for some hints why), and I'm pleased to announce two brand-new e-books for the other two classes, Power Spinning and the All That Yarn Scarf, and Silk on Spindles and the Lacey Vertical Rib Scarf. I hope you enjoy them!

If you'd like to be on an email list for email announcements of upcoming workshops, let me know -- there are some fun ones coming up in March with Sheep & Socks as the theme.

~~~~
I ran across a great quote on You, Simplified worth repeating:

Absorb what is useful, discard what is useless, and add what is uniquely your own ~Bruce Lee.

How cool is that. Exactly. I hope you, dear reader, use my blog exactly that way: learn the useful, forget the useless, and add your own ideas into the mix.

~~~~
© February 25, 2011 by Ask The Bellwether, posted at http://askthebellwether.com/blog

Where does 'tabby' come from?

noreply@blogger.com (Amelia of Ask The Bellwether) — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 00:33:00 +0000

By Amelia © January 16, 2011

In the last offering of Weave Now: Basic Rigid Heddle Weaving, a question came up that put me to researching: Where does the term 'Tabby' come from?

I felt that it was likely it had a non-English root, given it sounds nothing like "Plain Weave", which is what tabby basically is. In fact, it comes from an Arabic place name where a striped silk cloth was woven.

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary,

The English word tabby is from the French tabis, "a rich, watered silk (originally striped)," which is from Middle French atabis (14c.), which is from the Arabic attabiya, from Attabiy, a neighborhood of Baghdad where the cloth originated. The neighborhood was named for prince 'Attab of the Omayyad dynasty (661-750 AD).

The same term applied to tabby cats is due to their stripey appearance -- the original tabby cloth had a striped or rippled appearance.

In today's weaving lingo, tabby is usually used more specifically, to be the plain weave ground a fancier pattern is tied down with. Overshot weaving often says 'alternate with tabby' -- you weave a row of overshot with its long floats, a row of tabby to lock it in place, and so on through the overshot pattern.

But with the amazing breadth of historical information on websites like the online weaving archive and the past issues of Weaver's Craft and Handwoven floating around online sale lists, you will often still see tabby used to mean basic plain weave.

So it's no surprise that the term tabby creeps into my speech when I teach Weave Now: Introduction to Rigid Heddle Weaving. I have a new session starting up this week, January 16th, 2011, online (signups are on Weavolution), with classes on Wednesdays via webcam. I also have a local class at Peninsula Community College starting in February, on Tuesday evenings (sign up by calling the college, 360-452-9277, Course C-AE 053, item N145).

Let's Weave!

~~~~

© January 16, 2011 by Ask The Bellwether, posted at http://askthebellwether.com/blog

Which fiber preparation should I use?

noreply@blogger.com (Amelia of Ask The Bellwether) — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 03:33:00 +0000

By Amelia © December 21, 2010

There has been a loooong silence here -- in part because I am working through a large commission job, 10 pounds of Romney roving, spun to 1600 ypp 2-ply (think fingering weight 2-ply), for a tapestry weaver using all local product and preparation. Yep, local sheep, local mill, local spinner (that's me!) Very cool, but not very "Ask The Bellwether"-able unless you want notes on how to spin consistently through that much fiber -- and maybe, you do. I'll have to work on that one.

The picture at the top the post is one of the recent bobbin-fulls.

So, while I work on that, here's some information I recently posted in the Hansen Crafts group on Ravelry to aid another spinner. Perhaps you will find it useful as well.

How you plan to use the fiber can influence the prep used as much as the type of fiber.

One guideline is to comb all fleeces with staple over 3 inches and card all fleeces with staple under 3 inches -- I’ve heard that many times, but to be honest I don’t pay much attention to it. Some of the reasoning is that it’s hard to handcard longer fibers, and hard to comb shorter fibers. But hard never stopped me. More reasoning is that longer staple fibers are very well suited to worsted preparations, which combing is, and shorter staple fibers are very well suited to woolen preparations, which combing is.

If I want the smoothest possible yarn, I know I need to either comb or flick-prep the locks, to keep all the fibers perfectly aligned. That said, I also know I can hand-card but roll the carded fiber to keep fibers aligned rather than the standard rolag-roll that puts them all in a spiral. And, my drum carder can help keep fibers pretty much aligned if I feed them all in lock-straight -- so it’s a very productive 80%-right solution.

If I want the airiest possible yarn, I know I need to handcard or drum card the fibers, or spin from a picked cloud. These preps can randomize the direction of the fiber -- spinning from the fold will do something similar, as the fold introduces the desire for the yarn to open-up and push its elbows out in the yarn. Drumcarding, I’d feed the locks in sideways similarly to get lots of air and direction in the fibers in the batt.

I’ve noticed different mills produce fairly different rovings; my local mill with Patrick Green equipment produces a truly random roving -- that's the mill that prepared the roving spun into yarn shown at the top of this post; while roving from Zeilinger’s is much more organized, almost sliver (not top, since different lengths of fiber are included in it).

Oh, and -- my Merino (and Cormo -mmmmm Cormo!) fleeces go to Morro Fleece Works. I can’t say enough good things about how nicely the Morro mill processes fine wools.

~~~~~

Related posts:
What fiber preparations are there?
Where can I get my fleece processed?

~~~~
© December 21, 2010 by Ask The Bellwether, posted at http://askthebellwether.com/blog

Trying something new ...

noreply@blogger.com (Amelia of Ask The Bellwether) — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 00:35:00 +0000

By Amelia © October 18, 2010

After weaving about 10 scarves ... and more each time a gift is needed, happily! ... I've tried something new .. things to sew out of strips or squares.

First I made a neat tote, and more recently I've learned to sew the fun drawstring-purse shown here. My practice one is sewn from a spare bandana ... the next will be from handwoven. I may even experiment with double weave to get a wider length of fabric; or sew up two strips into wider piece.

Do you weave yet? If not, I have an online class at weavolution.com starting this Wednesday, October 20, 2010, Weave Now: Basic Rigid Heddle Weaving. We'll start with some basic planning and tool discussion, and in 5 sessions will cover warping, weaving, and finishing a scarf.

A new session of this class is starting in January 2011 ... sign up here: http://weavolution.com/node/16121.

And if you already weave on a rigid heddle but are interested to try out some two-heddle methods, there's a Weavolution.com class for you, too, on November 7, 2010 Two Heddle Twill. We'll warp our heddles for a 1/2 twill and weave some bookmarks or keyfobs.

I have new classes coming in January 2011 as well .. check the Cyber Fiber class list here: http://weavolution.com/classes and my own calendar, of all classes local, online, and at conferences, here: http://www.thebellwether.com/calendar.html .

That's not all -- Claudia, founder and admin for Weavolution has arranged all sorts of fun classes with a bevy of great weaving teachers. The full list is here.

~~~~

For the local people, I am offering two holiday classes at A Dropped Stitch in Sequim, Washington: On October 30, 2010, Weave a Scarf in a Day. On November 6, 2010, Braid a Wool Chair Pad. See The Bellwether's Calendar for details.

If you have a class you'd like to see me offer, let me know. I teach locally, at area guilds and shows, and now ... something new! ... online, at Weavolution.com.

~~~~
Edited December 1, 2010 to add news of upcoming classes ...

© October 18, 2010 by Ask The Bellwether, posted at http://askthebellwether.com/blog

Slow Wool ...

noreply@blogger.com (Amelia of Ask The Bellwether) — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 00:00:00 +0000

By Amelia © October 16, 2010

The slow cloth movement has been getting a bit of press lately -- enough to come across my radar screen. It's an interesting idea about handmade goods and a contemplative approach to making textiles. So when I ran across a new-to-me fleece washing method that starts out with "leave the wool to soak 2-3 days" calling it "slow wool" just seemed appropriate.

You may have read about the fermented suint washing method that has you leave your wool in water for 2-3 weeks. I have, and have read peoples' follow-up complaints about the odor on various forums (Ravelry and Spin-List, if memory serves me). I'm pretty sure here in Washington state it would be darn nasty stuff, not only from fermentation but that horrid red algae that shows up anywhere that stays wet longer than a day in my bathroom. Bleh! So I never tried the fermentated suint method.

This past summer, though, at a "fleece to dye for" weekend class by Judith Mackenzie, she introduced us to her fleece washing method. Like all things Judith, it's a gentle method; so though she doesn't name it, besides calling it "slow wool", it could also be called "gentle washing".

You start with a large tub -- I had a large plastic tote the llamas aren't currently using, so I used that. You want it to hold 15-30 gallons of water. Fill the tub with water from the hose. If you have time, let it sit around for a day to warm up (in the right season) or to release any chlorine additives it may have (mine does). If your water has deposits in it -- do your sinks or tubs get a ring in them? then you have deposits -- you should find an alternative source, be it rain water, a neighbor's well water, or lots of bottle watered, because your water needs to be just plain old water.

Put your raw wool in. I'm still playing with ratios of wool-to-water; early in my fiber days, I read 1:100, wool-to-water (by weight?) but admit I always put more wool than that in my baths. I find that my tub, with 15 gallons, does best with under 3 pounds of wool in it. So large fleeces may need to be broken into batches.

If you want to help it along, put a few squirts of pH-neutral dish soap in it. Get one with no enzymes or antibacterial additives, that says it is "good at cutting grease". Be careful of using wool scours with this method, as some are very basic, and with our 2-3 day soak, they could damage the wool. Your more typical 20-minute soak in hot water with such wool scours won't damage wool.

You can do some gentle stirring to help distribute the dish soap if desired, but no rough agitation.

Let it soak for 2-3 days. There's no need to cover the bucket -- though I did put a few sticks of lumber over mine to dissuade the neighbor's new puppy from exploring, as he's explored other recent outdoor fiber experiments. The water will get quite dark. Lift out the wool. I lifted mine out in the morning, and let mine hang as shown in the picture above until evening, so that most of the water dripped out. If your washing machine is a top-opening one, and you can turn off the water supply, you can spin out the dirty water -- wipe out the inside of your machine when you are done.

Now, using an indoor tub or large sink -- or my buckets-in-the-shower approach, fill the tub/sink/bucket with your hottest tap water. Put the spun or squeezed-out wool in the bucket to soak for 10-15 minutes. Do not agitate it. This is the first rinse. Repeat the rinses until the water is clear. Here are 3 buckets showing the progress of a rinsing. This one was easy -- a covered fleece, quite clean. My own sheeps' fleeces take about 6-8 rinses.

Once you have it rinsed clear, squeeze out the water, use your washing machine as above to spin out the water, and lay the fleece out to dry in a sunny spot out of the path of wind or pets.

Clean fleece!

You can re-use the soaking bath if you like; I've reused mine for 3-4 fleeces in a row. Then I realized I had lovely semi-clear water at the end of my rinsing sessions, so now I reuse a soak bath for 2 fleeces, but rejuvenate it a bit like sourdough starter with the last couple rinse baths.

Why does this work? Sheep produce suint, a natural cleaning agent. We call it sheep sweat, but really it's pushing the dirt out, away from their skin, toward the tips. By putting the fleece in water, we're letting the suint do its job, pushing the dirt off the fiber.

One thing I've noticed is that fleece washed this way seems to retain a bit more moisture. It's not greasy -- though I still want to wait 6 months to see if fleece washed this way retains any tackiness, my hands don't feel oily after handling a fleece washed this way. I like the feeling, so I'm hoping this does pass the no-tackiness test.

My observations on this is that it seems to work best with medium to coarse wools; a very fine merino would likely still need the application of heat to release its grease. And the dirtier the fleece, the harder it is to rinse it clean; my own Soay fleeces are quite stubborn, while show-grade fleeces from my stash rinse crystal clear in 3 rinses.

So, I won't abandon my past water-boiling-to-get-sinks-over-160 F fleece washing methods entirely, but it's nice to have this option for those gorgeous Leicester, Romney, and Corriedale fleeces that tempt me at fleece sales.

This does take a fair bit of water, which is reusable, with some planning and spare buckets. And outdoor space, or room for the soaking. The soak water didn't stink in the outdoors, but I don't know how it might fair in tight quarters. The wool didn't stink up my bathroom during its rinsings, and when done, smelled of nothing in particular, no sheepiness.

So far I've washed Romney, Shetland, Corriedale, Llama, and Soay fiber using this method. There's quite a bit more Soay to work through, more Llama, Manx Loghtan (from the UK), and Icelandic fleece. At two fleeces a week, I might be done by Christmas -- but with far less effort on my part than my boiling-water-in-the-sink washing. This is a Good Thing.

~~~~

Past posts related to washing fleece:

Where can I get my fleece processed?
What do you look for in a fleece?
How do I know what sheep breed to look for?
How do you skirt a fleece?
How do I wash raw fleece?
How much weight will Shetland fleece lose in washing?
I washed the fleece, now what?

... And be sure to see the Fiber topic for a whole host of ideas on preparing washed fleece for spinning and information about specific fiber types.

~~~~

© October 16, 2010 by Ask The Bellwether, posted at http://askthebellwether.com/blog

How do I finish my skein?

noreply@blogger.com (Amelia of Ask The Bellwether) — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 04:37:00 +0000

By Amelia © October 12, 2010

I find myself once again with a nice group of local learning-to-spinners, this time in Port Angeles actually on the college campus. Very fun! We had our first class last week, and I left them with notes on how to finish a skein. On reviewing my blog, I found these weren't clearly spelled out in any of the posts, though I've gone on about the variety of finishing we do on our skeins before, so here are my basic skein washing notes for your edification.

"The skein isn't done until it's washed" ... sometimes we call this wash setting the twist, but really what it is doing is waking up any dormant twist in the single so that the plying twist can balance against it.

You start with an already spun and plied skein, with suitable ties on the skein (at least 3 for an arm-wound skein, more for longer skeins).

1. Open up (as in, untwist) your rolled-up and twisted-on-itself skein.

2. Fill a sink with warm water and a squirt of dish soap, shampoo, or
wool wash (i.e. Eucalan, SOAK or similar; NOT Woolite)

3. Place your skein in the sink. You can hold it under until it stays
submerged if you like, but don't move it around.

4. Let it soak 10-20 minutes.

5. Lift out the skein and squeeze the soapy water out of it.

6. Empty the sink.

7. Fill the sink with just water, the same temperature as before.

8. Place your skein in the sink. You can hold it under until it stays
submerged if you like, but don't move it around.

9. Let it rinse-soak for 10-20 minutes.

10. Lift out the skein and squeeze the water out of it. Empty the sink.

11. Roll the skein up in a towel and press down on the rolled-up
skein-and-towel to get more water out

12. Unroll the towel-and-skein and hang the skein over a rail
somewhere (like your shower) to dry

There you have it.

The skeins above were from a variety of spinning experiments, both mine and my daughter's.

I would note that I don't mix dyed skeins in my finishing baths -- one red skein once leached onto an undyed white, leading to an unfortunate pinkness that dogged that skein until I found a nice forest green for it. Pink really wasn't its color!

It's a lovely skein of CVM wool, and is listed in By Our Hands on Etsy and TheBellwether.com.

~~~~

Past posts discussing finishing a skein:

When do you set the twist?

How do you make a good looking 2-ply yarn?

~~~~

© October 12, 2010 by Ask The Bellwether, posted at http://askthebellwether.com/blog

Can you spin without extra tools?

noreply@blogger.com (Amelia of Ask The Bellwether) — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 22:45:00 +0000

By Amelia © August 14, 2010

It's been a fun summer here between teaching classes for the local community college (spinning and felting! what fun!) and a one-on-one spinning class at the local yarn store.

My one-on-one student had an interesting goal. She has sheep, the processed roving from their shearing last year, and she found a second-hand wheel with just one bobbin. Her goal was to learn to spin yarn for knitting without making any further purchases (just the lessons). She even used her own fiber in the classes. Yes, before the other teachers out there shake their heads, I did tell her it might not do; but it turned out to be some fairly nice Shetland roving (similar to the one pictured here), locally processed, and it spun as well as my usual teaching fibers, so we used it.

One of the things we worked on was a process flow ... what steps were needed to create plied yarn? Today was graduation day -- my now-former student is happy with her skill level and her yarn. Here is how she goes about it ...

1) Fill a bobbin with singles.

2) Wind the singles off onto a toilet-paper core or paper-towel core. Tuck the end in so that twist doesn't get released from the end of the single.

3) Repeat steps 1 & 2 so you have 2 cores full of singles.

4) Place each filled core in a large bowl (pasta, mixing, or otherwise) or even a bucket.

5) Take the outside end from each of the singles to start plying.

6) Ply until the bobbin is full; break the ends off, wrap them back around their own core, and tuck their ends in (see #2 for why).

7) Skein off the bobbin onto your leg-niddy (remember, no new tools!); tie in 3 places, twist up and set aside.

8) Repeat 5 & 6. If one of the singles' ends before the other, consider plying what remains with a hand-ply method. Or, save it to add on to the shorter end of the next pair of single-full cores.

9) Repeat 7 (skein up the bobbin-full).

10) Open up the skeins; soak-wash and rinse the skeins, squeeze out the water and hang to dry.

Whew! So the only extra things we used, in the end, were the cardboard cores that would otherwise have been recycled, and the bowls from her kitchen cabinets. Mission accomplished.

And the single-bobbin wheel? It's a charming Saxony Rick Reeves wheel with an engraved rose on the bench, in excellent condition, though with only the one bobbin. It did require a little catch-up maintenance, which my repair kit mostly addressed the first day. What a lucky find!

So -- yes, you can learn to spin with a second-hand wheel with only one bobbin. Despite my love of tools, tools, tools, we can usually find basic substitutes around the house, or do the same task with a body part (the leg-niddy) or just a bit slower (hand-winding balls versus the ubiquitous Royal ball winder).

Her approach reminded me that the main requirement of learning to spin is some level of dedication -- new spinners may not even realize they are providing that, they are so smitten by the fiber and mesmerized by spindle or wheel. It's that little bit of practice every day that turns you into a spinner. Like knitting, swimming, and even reading, there are things your body and brain need to learn how to do which only comes with applied practice.

So, spinners new and continuing, spin on, and spin happy :)

~~~~

© August 14, 2010 by Ask The Bellwether, posted at http://askthebellwether.com/blog

I'm learning to spin, what books should I read?

noreply@blogger.com (Amelia of Ask The Bellwether) — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 01:47:00 +0000

By Amelia © July 20, 2010

I had the great good fortune this summer to add a title to my name I have always wanted: college professor. Cool! No, I don't have a doctorate. So perhaps it's not an accurate title. But, I am now teaching continuing education/community education classes for our local community college, Peninsula College.

The first class was Hand Spinning Yarn. The class learned to spin on spindles, skein and finish yarn, scour fleece, hand card, drum card, spin on wheels, hand comb, and the use of handspun in knitting, crochet, and weaving. One of the questions they asked was for some recommended reading, so they could continue with their studies as they continued developing their skills once our sessions ended.

This is an excerpt from the email I sent them ...

Here is a list of suggested reading (or viewing) for learning to spin.

For spindling, here are my three favorites:

Productive Spindling, by me (Amelia Garripoli).

Respect the Spindle, by Abby Franquemont.

Spindle Spinning: From Novice to Expert, by Connie Delaney.

There are some useful videos on www.joyofhandspinning.com and www.icanspin.com, as well as Abby's two part tutorial on youtube.com

For wheel spinning, my two favorite learn to spin books are:

Hands on Spinning, by Lee Raven -- this also has an excellent description of hand carding.

Start Spinning, by Maggie Casey -- a more recent book, very well written.

And for those who prefer videos, my favorite is Patsy Zawistoski's
Spinning Wool - Basics & Beyond.

For drum carding, my two favorites are:

The Ashford Book of Carding, by Jo Reeve, though specific to their
equipment, it is generally applicable.

Color in Spinning, by Deb Menz covers far more with dyeing, blending,
and creating colorways on drum carders and more.

For combing, which we'll cover in our fourth class, my two favorites are:
Combs Combs Combs by Susan McFarland, though out of print is worth the material.

Hand Woolcombing and Spinning, by Peter Teal, though not an introductory text, is the most thorough discussion on the topic of
worsted spinning.

Once you've had fun learning to spin and are ready to explore more,
books on yarn construction may appeal to you.

Essentials of Yarn Design for Handspinners, by Mabel Ross goes out of print quickly, and is a bit dry, but my favorite on the topic of yarn design.

Spinning Designer Yarns, by Diane Varney discusses a variety of yarn
constructions as well as dyeing handspun yarn.

Spin Control, by Amy King steps through a variety of styles of spinning and methods of yarn construction.

A great second-step to your spinning is also wheel control, for that I can recommend The Intentional Spinner by Judith MacKenzie McCuin as well as her DVD-set Popular Wheel Mechanics.

If you want a thorough discussion of all things spinning in one tome, The Alden Amos Big Book of Handspinning will bury you in footnotes while discussing everything from fiber preparations to the style of groove on your wheel's flyer. Though at first I found his book overwhelming, I now find myself turning to it to look for good discussions on many of the "why"s of spinning.

(end of excerpt)

I'm having a lot of fun in my new role, the wet-felted scarf class was a real hoot too. The fall semester will include Needlefelt Art, Etsy/Artfire Online Selling, Yarn Dyeing, and a repeat of Hand Spinning Yarn, in addition to workshops being offered at the North Olympic Fiber Arts Festival 2010, the first weekend of October: Plying New Yarns, Spinning Wheel Mechanics, and Making a Braided Rug. If any of them are of interest to you, the best way to register is by calling 1.877.452.9277, after September 1.

~~~~

As I write this post, two of the books on the list above are out of print (Mabel Ross' Designing Yarn for Hand Spinners, and Susan McFarland's Combs Combs Combs). For help locating copies, see this post:
Where Can I Find Out-of-Print Fiber Art Books?

Also, if there's an out of print book you would really enjoy having, besides looking for it second-hand, consider contacting the publisher -- how else are they going to realize they should consider reprinting it?

~~~~

© July 20, 2010 by Ask The Bellwether, posted at http://askthebellwether.com/blog

How do you spin a cloud?

noreply@blogger.com (Amelia of Ask The Bellwether) — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 05:02:00 +0000

By Amelia © July 6, 2010

In my spinner's e-tutorial, Spinning Slippery Fibers, I discuss spinning a variety of fibers (superwash merino, kid mohair, alpaca, silk, bamboo, angora, and cashmere), mostly working with prepared top or sliver forms.

There are many other different preparations of fiber out there beyond prepared top and sliver. I've listed many of those on this blog before. One I haven't talked about much is the "cloud" -- this is a typical small mill preparation for cashmere, pygora, and llama that is just scoured and de-haired, but not carded further. It is typically a light, airy mass of fiber without much organization.

In this year's Tour de Fleece, a companion spin-along to the Tour de France bicycle race being hosted on Ravelry, I'm spinning up 8 ounces of type C pygora cloud on my Hansen mini-Spinner -- that's my "station" in the photo; the first 2 oz. on the kate, the second 2 oz. underway. I'll ply them as the half-way point, and then tackle the next 4 ounces.

Clouds can be spun by tugging off a small chunk, starting to draft out from a point (any point) on the cloud, and drafting from there. It's a random preparation, not completely organized, so you may find yourself spinning folded fibers into your yarn alongside straight fibers.

Pygora is a fairly slippery fiber, so my grip on it is tighter than on wool. That may be why I found the tufts matting in my hand. I checked the clouds in their packet, and found that they were not matted at all, so realized that the matting was likely from the warmth in my own hand. Next time, I tugged off a smaller tuft to spin -- it all spun up without any matting. Clearly, the time the fiber spent clutched in my toasty palm was the culprit. I'm happily spinning away now with my matt-free tufts of cloud. Sure, I do joins more often, but that is easier than unmatting the fiber.

This tuft-spinning is working quite nicely, as the pygora has a nice staple length, about 2.5 inches. If it were a very short fiber, like camel down, yak, or some cashmere, I might prefer to card the cloud into punis and spin from those. The post How do you spin short Guanaco fiber? talks about handling shorter staple cloud preparations.

~~~~

Other posts you may be interested in:

Where can I get my fleece processed?

Does roving have a direction?

~~~~

© July 6, 2010 by Ask The Bellwether, posted at http://askthebellwether.com/blog

What I did at the Northwest Spinner's Conference ...

noreply@blogger.com (Amelia of Ask The Bellwether) — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 03:49:00 +0000

By Amelia © June 12, 2010

The Northwest Regional Spinner's Conference was held at the Pinelow Retreat by Deer Lake in eastern Washington this year -- a quiet, peaceful place to have a conference. Yes, we had a little rain; and cell-phone reception required a patch of sky; but then again, there was WiFi, and good eats.

In the evenings, I spun two different yarns ... on my bottom-whorl spindle, I was using Andean speed-plying. On my SpinOlution Hopper, I spun an auto-wrapped single.

As with all things, the speed-plying improved as I worked my way through. If you learn this technique in a class, give it a spindle-full afterwards -- you will find the motions coming more naturally, and may find it a more efficient, effective way to ply. I certainly did!

Speed-plying requires a pre-wound plying ball, and a bottom-whorl or mid-whorl spindle. You set the spindle twirling by rolling the top part of the shaft between the flats of your hands. There's a YouTube video of Abby Franquemont performing this here, and the technique is included in my book, Productive Spindling. Since twist enters it quickly, you want the pre-wound ball so you can feed more yarn into the twist once the spindle is twirling.

The auto-wrapping was interesting, because I started with the method described in Intertwined, but adapted it for my thread. The silver metallic thread I was using had a tendency to jump up and leave stiff loops hanging off the yarn if I left the cone sitting untended to wrap the yarn; it really needed some light tensioning to make the thread behave a bit more calmly. So, I moved the thread a little closer to me to be under my hand, and let the thread lay across my palm. I didn't put any pressure on it, just let it feed up and wrap around the newly drafted single as I was spinning and drafting. All-in-all, it was a nice result with just enough freedom of movement of the thread for wrapping to vary along the length.

Both the plying and the autowrapping came much easier toward the end of the four ounces involved in each. A great reminder that part of gaining skill is practice!

~~~~

Spinning in the evenings wasn't my only activity. I also had a "full load" of classes to teach; three of them you can purchase as e-tutorials at askthebellwether.com:

Exotic Fiber Spindling -- featherweight and Akha spindles with lovely exotic fibers: alpaca, cashmere, camel, yak, and more.
Core Spinning -- we delved into ways to make balanced core-spun yarn as well as exploring different core materials. The picture here is from the Medallion Scarf pattern in the e-tutorial, using the core yarn as garter stitch medallions at each end of the scarf.
Spinning Slippery Fibers -- a wheel (and spindle) spinning class looking at the common needs of slippery fibers: superwash, mohair, alpaca, silk, bamboo, angora, cashmere, and others.

These were great fun to teach, and I look forward to feedback and questions from both my in-class students and folks who give the e-booklets a spin!

~~~~

How can I do Sock Machine Selvedges?

noreply@blogger.com (Amelia of Ask The Bellwether) — Thu, 27 May 2010 23:15:00 +0000

By Amelia © May 27, 2010

A question from a reader of this blog ...

My question is: I have recently purchased a Legare 47 and need to know if it is only possible to make a selvedge "cast-on" at top of sock in 1 x 1 rib, or can it be done with 3 x 1 or others? For me it has only worked using the 72 cylinder and doing 1 x 1 rib. Won't work with 54 cylinder. Any ideas?

Thanks for asking ... it's nice to do a sock machine post, as I was recently knitting on mine and even playing with selvedges. I'm going to assume you have a 72-slot cylinder, a 54-slot cylinder, and a 36-slot ribber. This gives you a few options...

First one ... if you want to do a 3/1 top edge, you could put a needle in every cylinder slot, without the ribber on yet, and use an e-wrap to make a selvedge. You wrap every needle from where you would start to knit with an "e" of the yarn you plan to knit with (pull along tail through so you can get all the way around with it), counterclockwise around the cylinder, in the same order the needles will knit. Then, knit one row. This makes a selvedge that won't unravel. At this point you can put the ribber in and transfer stitches from cylinder needles (removing them!!) and onto ribber needles as you like.

I admit, this selvedge is fiddly -- the number of times I have dropped a stitch in that first ribber row, I hesitate to count. I've been very pleased in the reliability of my NZAK to not drop ribber stitches, so I can use this selvedge when I want to. It has the virtue of working no matter what ribbing I want -- 3/1, 2/1, 1/1, or mock rib.

Second one ... a mock rib hemmed selvedge. For this, you leave out every n-th needle. For a 3/1 mock rib, it's every 4th needle. And, you just start knitting with your real yarn once you have your waste yarn knitting cleanly. Once you have 10-40 rows (how many defines the depth of your hemmed top), you pick up the first knit row's stitches and put them around the needles with the current row, so the first row is knit into the next round of knitting.

Third one ... there's a great selvedge you can do with a 36-slot ribber and 54-slot cylinder. If you use only every other slot in the ribber, you can set up for a 2/1 ribbing. Once this knits cleanly with the waste yarn, attach your sock yarn and continue like so:

Knit one row with the sock yarn.
Lift the first cylinder needle of each pair all the way around (well, as around as you can ... just be sure to continue with this step as you start the next one...).
Knit two complete rows with that first-of-each-pair needle not knitting. Yes, this puts a bar of yarn in front of it each time.
Now lower the out-of-work needles, carefully, so their latches are open and above the bars, and knit the next round.

Whew! This is actually a fairly easy selvedge, and my favorite for 52-cylinder socks and mittens.

You mentioned the 1/1 ribbing; you could, if you want a 3/1 sock on the 72, use 1/1 ribbing just for 3-4 rows and then convert over to 3/1 ribbing for the rest of the leg.

There have been other selvedges I've played with -- e-wrap on cylinder needles, then starting ribbing needles by picking up the bar from the row below (not easy!); and a variety of sewn selvedges after taking the sock off the machine -- but I'm going to guess you're looking for a cranked selvedge, not a hand-done selvedge. So go ahead, experiment -- try out a variety of selvedges, knit short tubes, and see if they hold or let stitches run.

I've been happiest with 1/1, 2/1, and mock rib hemmed-top socks, all of them pretty deep -- I'll do 25 rows of ribbing, and 40 rows before hanging the hem of a mock rib. I used to only do 5-10 rows, but it doesn't make a deep enough ribbing to hold the sock up well. 3/1 topped socks haven't stayed up that well for me, so I don't tend to use it at the top edge of a sock.

The socks up at the top have a 1/1 top, 3/1 leg and foot; they are tiny ... knit on my NZAK's compound cylinder :-).

~~~~

How do you unwind from an odd-shaped spindle?

noreply@blogger.com (Amelia of Ask The Bellwether) — Thu, 20 May 2010 23:03:00 +0000

By Amelia © May 20, 2010

Although round whorls are most common, these days a spindle whorl can have any shape at all -- square, triangle, even an irregular shape. If you usually put the spindle in a bowl, a round whorl will roll easily on the sides. But a spindle whorl that's square will not unwind as smoothly.

So, how do I deal with that? It depends on my mood ... I might slide the cop onto a straw and unwind from that, or put the spindle in a spindle kate to unwind from it. I have some "real" ones but I've also been known to cut key-holes on two sides of a shoe-box and use that. Keyholes are round holes about an inch or so from the top edge of the shoe-box with lines cut up to the top of the box. I can squeeze the spindle in by pushing down, and the lines stay closed while the spindle rides in the round holes below them -- if they fail, a bit of masking tape will hold them shut, and is easy to cut or remove once I'm done.

I've also been known to slide the first spindle-full off onto a straw and then put that cop and the second spindle-full, still on the spindle, on my bed to wind together into a plying ball.

When I'm winding off of the spindle after plying, I'll usually skein off by holding the spindle like a lollipop and rotating it in my fingers as I wind it around the niddy-noddy or body-noddy.

For an authentic Andean experience, you'd stick the bottom pointy end of your bottom whorl spindle in the ground or between your toes or feet, and then pull the yarn off the end. This does change the twist a little bit, like pulling up from the center of a center-pull ball, but unless your yarn is on the border of too loose to be yarn, the difference will be minor. Still, if you do not want to affect your amount of twist, you'll want to use one of the other methods above.

~~~

This post inspired by a question on the Spindlers Yahoo List.

Related articles:
Can you spin a sheep?
How do you wind a plying ball?
Does the ball-winder add twist?
How do you wind yarn on a niddy-noddy?
10 things I learned on my summer vacation
What is Andean spindling?

For more spindle-specific posts, see the Spindles topic.

For even more spindle management tips for top-whorl, bottom-whorl, and Turkish spindles, see my book, Productive Spindling.

~~~~
© May 20, 2010 by Ask The Bellwether, posted at http://askthebellwether.com/blog

Balancing creativity...

noreply@blogger.com (Amelia of Ask The Bellwether) — Sat, 08 May 2010 05:41:00 +0000

By Amelia © May 7, 2010

Every so often, I lapse into a "meta" phase of considering my direction and environment. A step back really helps me evaluate, improve, and re-energize my goals.

Henry of Wake Up Cloud recently helped with that, asking what the biggest blocker was in pursuing my dreams.

My current goal is to explore weaving and find what I like most about it, as I continue to explore the ins and outs of spinning.

Having been spinning for 9 years now, and mastering a variety of skills to the point of teaching and selling handspun, I enjoy the activity and continue to find ways to expand my skills. I would say it's only in the last few years that I've finally developed a rhythm for consistent singles. My forays into fine spinning have been developing to new lengths (pun intended!); that aligns nicely with my desire to weave fine threads.

Weaving is a fascinating art as well. The perfectionism of weaving fabric provides a nice balance to the more care-free nature of spinning. I have, of course, thrown my handspun on the loom in a variety of ways (perhaps not quite as care-free as WeaveZine's silly string method...) and luckily had success with that. I know my future weaving will involve handspun.

As with all fascinations, these interests of mine can overwhelm the day-to-day living of raising a family and caring for pets, flock, and home. My current meta-goal, then, is finding a balance -- keeping family and all content while continuing my fiber explorations.

Sometimes it means teaching my children a bit more cooking and cleaning so they can help out on the family side. They're used to mom teaching them things, being spinners themselves and exploring needle-arts, felting, dyeing and weaving alongside mom. Since we all enjoy that, it's perhaps no surprise that they are happy to learn cooking and take great pride in the meals they've prepared.

Sometimes it means taking personal time -- this weekend, for example, I'm attending a workshop by Anne Field on Collapse Weave. A few years back, I might not have let myself go away for 3 days; but now I know the family will do well and even benefit from the time without mom at the tiller.

I know I'm not the first artisan to go down this path ... I recently read Anita Luvera Mayer's books and was struck how, in the forwards, she grew as a person. In her first book, she notes how family needs and wants kept her from the loom for many years. In her second, she mentions the difficulty of leaving them to go to shows and workshops. And in the third, she celebrates the growth of herself and her family to function both together and apart. I plan to continue reading her books, "I don't do guilt anymore" really sounds like it will be a fun read from a woman who has definitely arrived.

~~~~

Similar posts:

Simplicity and Craft

How Can I be more Productive?

~~~~~~~

© May 7, 2010 by Ask The Bellwether, posted at http://askthebellwether.com/blog

Where can I find out of print fiber art books?

noreply@blogger.com (Amelia of Ask The Bellwether) — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 01:50:00 +0000

By Amelia © April 27, 2010

A very nice commenter recently pointed out to me that I should check abebooks.com for an out of print book I am currently in search of. That's a great place to check, definitely on my list.

When I'm looking for an older book, the first place I check is typically Amazon.com. Why? Because that tells me fairly quickly if the book is still in print, and if it might be available at a reasonable price used.

However, Amazon.com's prices on second-hand books are not set by Amazon, or necessarily by market demand. I noticed this myself in getting my own book, Productive Spindling, to be sold by Amazon (they carry inventory in their warehouses -- that was certainly a feeling of arrival, alongside finding US and Canadian distributors for the book; I'm still in search of Australian and European distributors ... but I digress, so the parenthetical remark stops here!). A few months after the book got listed, a vendor is offering the book "used" for over $35 dollars ... wow! This, despite the fact that it's available, in stock, for $18.00 there, on my website, on Unicorn Crafts, and at a wide variety of Local Yarn Stores across the US and Canada.

So, if an out of print books is offered at over retail on Amazon.com, or simply not available there, I don't give up. There are some other places I check:

abebooks.com (not abebooks on eBay, a different entity AFAIK)
alibris.com
overstock.com (someday I'll get lucky!)
the publisher's website, like interweave.com -- some publishers also sell directly to the retail market. In fact, call them -- they may have damaged copies you can get at a discount. I got Color In Spinning half off that way, a few years back.
unicornbooks.com -- they distribute craft books from a variety of publishers (including Productive Spindling), and also sell retail.
half.com -- a surprising number of books show up here, or used to -- I know they were purchased by eBay a while back, and haven't really shopped there much lately.
eBay.com -- it may be in an eBay store, or in an auction; check "completed listings" to see if it's been listed recently, that can be encouraging (or let you know just how much it goes for).
bn.com -- Barnes & Noble has a fair number of books, I recently found Margaret Stove's Creating Original Hand-knitted Lace" there at a reasonable price, it isn't even available on Amazon.com, and high (over-) priced elsewhere.
my new favorite "local" haunt is powells.com -- the store in Portland is h.u.g.e and the website shares the wide-ranging wares. There, I found an out of print copy of Marian Powell's Shadow Weave book (sorry, my fellow workshop participants must have gobbled up the other 3 copies, as they now list it as sold out).
There's also kbbspin.org ... and my other favorite used wheel and used loom hangouts. Sometimes books show up there, so it's handy to check, just in case.
and then, if my favorite haunts don't turn it up, I will type in the author & title to google.com. Now, shopping via google is a less controlled proposition than going to a known website like amazon.com -- you have no idea if the vendors there are reliable, fly-by-night, or even in the same country. So do your homework, and check up on them. However, this did turn up a very reasonably priced copy ($8.50 as I write this) of Xenakis' 3-heddle instruction book at Montana Looms. And a fresh google of it today shows it as also available at yarn.com for $8.95 ... both websites are businesses I know, so I can do my shopping there safely.

Now, my story doesn't end there. If none of those find the book, I may still call a few local area yarn stores ... this was how I found a retail-price copy of Muller's Handwoven Laces, pricey on Amazon, eBay and other places second-hand. So I got a new, shop copy at regular retail. Yay!

If there has still been no joy on the search, I'll go back to the ones that offer notification ... Alibris, Abebooks, eBay, Powell's Books ... and set up notification, so if they should get a copy, I will get an email message about it. Sometimes, patience wins the day.

That said, some books I would love to have, I will continue to borrow from my local library or the spinning guild's library, as they are being updated and reprinted. So the high-price used copies out there aren't worth it for me -- I am looking forward to the new edition's arrival. This includes Anne Field's Spinning Beyond The Basics and Helen Bress' The Weaving Book.

Which reminds me ... many fiber and weaving guilds maintain local libraries of their own, with books that may never appear in your public library. Some guilds cover quite large areas: NwRSA has a lending library by mail for members in its large area, and Complex Weavers similarly has a members' library-by-mail. And, my local weaving buddies have bookshelves with books and magazines back to the 70s -- so there are many fine resources open to me.

Sometimes, a wonderful book may show up available electronically -- Peter Collingwood's Rug Weaving tome is free-for-the-downloading at handweaving.net. The nice thing (for buyers) about books like that is that it keeps the print copies within the range of buying, when they show up -- second-hand copies of this book are useful, as it is quite thick. But $40-$60 is much more accessible than the over $100 books this size are often found for when out of print.

My current book search, as mentioned earlier, remains unfulfilled. The book? I have a copy on loan from a weaving buddy. It is Erica de Ruiter's Weaving on 3 Shafts. I've done my usual searches, and now need to go back and set up notifications. Some day I will have this book, and will be able to scribble my marginalia directly on it, as I work my way through this book stuffed with interesting ideas.

I'd be interested to hear of your favorite book haunts and search methods, too. Thanks for reading!

~~~~

That stack of books at the top are books that talk about spindling, from my shelves -- some purchased new, some second-hand, some searched for high-and-low to buy at a reasonable price. They appear in Productive Spindling, in the Spindler's Bibliography -- also available here on Ask The Bellwether. Someday my weaving may have a similar focus and depth on a particular topic, right now it's still pretty wide-ranging though I see a definite interest in twills developing (happy grin).

© April 27, 2010 by Ask The Bellwether, posted at http://askthebellwether.com/blog

How do I choose a speed setting on my e-spinner?

noreply@blogger.com (Amelia of Ask The Bellwether) — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 01:41:00 +0000

By Amelia © April 20, 2010

The explosion of interest in e-spinning, sparked in part by the cute-and-amazing Hansen miniSpinner, is generating many interesting conversations over on Ravelry, on the electric spinners group and the recently formed HansenCrafts MiniSpinner group.

I've been contemplating for a while how you would approach explaining electric spinners and their use, both to non-spinners learning to spin on one, and to wheel spinners who have their built-in rhythm of treadle and draft. So, here are some thoughts on the topic of choosing a speed setting on your e-spinner.

I like to think of the speed dial on the e-spinner (and all the ones I've spun on -- Fricke, Ashford, Butterfly, and Hansen) as a clockface. Your particular maker's e-spinner may turn through the whole face, may only turn from 7 o'clock to 5 o'clock, or may have an even shorter "range" on its clock face -- so be sure to consult any documentation that came with it, and don't push the knob further than it is capable of going. My "times" here will refer to the Hansen miniSpinner -- you may find some variation in your own.

So, let's say you're spinning along, and stop to check out your yarn.

If there’s not enough twist in your singles, then increase the speed; that’s the fastest (no pun intended!) way to get more twist in them. Another thing that can help is minimizing the scotch tension -- I usually set mine so that any less would have me at no draw-in at all. That lets you hang on to the single a little longer before it is drawn onto the bobbin, so more twist can get in your yarn. I did a post about testing singles for underspun-ness a while back, if it’s helpful to add more, it’s here. The third alternative is to hold on to your new yarn for a beat or two before allowing it to be drawn onto the bobbin -- this adds more twist, as you aren't drafting, and twist is still going in to the yarn.

If there's too much twist in your singles, then decrease the speed. This will put twist in more slowly. You can also increase the scotch tension, so the bobbin pulls the yarn onto it more aggressively. If you are a relatively new spinner, it is likely that you are not drafting very quickly. Over time, you will find your drafting speed increases, and the amount of twist in them decreasing -- refer to the previous paragraph on how to handle that.

A great book about controlling twist is Judith MacKenzie McCuin’s The Intentional Spinner -- she covers a wide range of manual wheel information for speed control. What she says about scotch tension we can carry through unchanged. But where she talks about pulleys and changing ratios, we can adjust our engine’s speed. If JMM tells me to use a smaller pulley/higher ratio, I will move my dial clockwise a bit more. If JMM tells me to use a larger pulley/lower ratio, I will move my dial counter-clockwise a bit more.

I usually adjust my Hansen miniSpinner speed dial “by the hour”. I use 9:00 for low twist fat singles, 12:00 for moderate twist “default” singles, and 3:00 for high twist cobweb (very, very fine) singles. I’ll use 10, 11, 1, and 2 for points in-between, and may make finer adjustments to suit my drafting speed at that moment. Now, that’s me, and every spinner has their own pace -- so your settings may vary. Also, I know the Woolee Winder has more drag than the hook/slider flyers, so models of the same e-spinner with hook/slider flyers have a higher top speed than the Woolee Winder models.

I usually adjust my scotch tension brake “by the minute”, that is, I make very small adjustments to it to increase or decrease tension -- a tiny little nudge on it can make a huge difference when I’m trying to get down to that almost-nil draw-in, and only a tiny nudge is needed, typically, to maintain draw-in once the bobbin is 3/4 full.

~~~~

And, a few months in, how am I enjoying my miniSpinner? Quite a bit! It's helped me increase my treadling speed, I can ply super-duper quick, and I've finally created the perfect (for me!) 3-ply sock yarn. And did I mention that it's quiet? Lovely for spinning in the evenings during the family chat in the sitting room. Next up: the perfect 4-ply sock yarn :-) and a whole bunch of laceweight pygora, since the first 6 ounces was a total blast!

The singles on the bobbin in the opening shot were part of a skein I sent to Humanity Handspun -- and it sold :-) I'm a huge fan of what Tina's doing with HH, raising money for a good cause and supporting fiber artists at the same time. So you're likely to see more of my yarn in their online store in the near future.

~~~~

© April 20, 2010 by Ask The Bellwether, posted at http://askthebellwether.com/blog