MG: twinkling aspirations

a post of many links...

i'm enamored with quite a few Twinkle's Big City sweaters and have been perusing Ravelry for examples and yarn substitutions. lovely substitutes: double-stranded cascade lana grande; cascade magnum; rowan big wool (shopping tunic, hoodie). and Reunasilmukka has a post on the topic with swatches and everything.

Mouse asked about quill heads for non-Lendrums, so i googled about and ended up with lots of quill-wheel eyecandy. Japanese charkhas (note Majacraft is coming out with a quill head very soon), Penguin wheel, Dragonfly Farms charkhas, and two sideways-treadle quill wheels: one owned by Hello Yarn and the Rio Grande (i love love love this one).

...linkorama over.

MG: quill head

this quill head attachment turns my lovely little lendrum into a spindle-led wheel; it can now spin as a kin to great wheels (video of great wheel spinning) and charkhas. spinning on a quill means no orifices and the yarn is free to be as thick/kinky/textured/full of baubles as one wishes--lovely example here. the quill head also provides some high/fast ratios--6, 25, 37 to 1 versus the default flyer's 6, 8, 10 to 1. the high ratios are good for anything requiring lots of twist, like the short fibers of cotton. spindle-led wheels are also good for fragile, twist-consuming yarns because there is no uptake. the yarn is not wound by the wheel, so the tension is completely in the twist and the spinner's hands.

the first time i spun on my quill head was a disaster. the yarn kept THUMP-THUMP-THUMPing very loudly against the tip of the quill; i couldn't find a smooth motion to transition from spinning to winding; my collar bone learned the sharpness of that pointy quill (just a small, barely there, no-damage bump but added to the mounting frustration). it felt like a completely different beast, and i had no clue what i was doing. i tried various angles but didn't even know what i was aiming for, what the correct way looked like. i gave up very quickly and put away the attachment.

then i went to Maryland Sheep and Wool where i asked every wheelwright of spindle-led wheels to show me how to work their wheels, touched those wheels, and spun on them (incidentally falling in love with a beautiful great wheel, and i also kinda want a Bosworth charkha, hee). i came home and made friends right away with drafting against the quill head, leaving only one thing to work out.

winding on a spindle wheel has to include a bit of unwinding first since the drafting angle is different than the winding angle. on hand-driven wheels, this is an easy, small counterclockwise turn of the drive-wheel, but on a treadle wheel, it can be quite a trick. i read online (link i have doesn't seem to work anymore) about a quick flicking motion without stopping the wheel from a Rachel Brown spinning video, but i couldn't manage anything of the sort. i'm not great with very quick motions, so i practiced changing directions with my treadle. it's working surprisingly well. i can now spin in the opposite direction for one treadle then go back to spinning in the original direction pretty seamlessly. a spindle-full later (seen above), i'm quite happy.

MG: uninspired

once upon a time, there was a little footlet. it was an innocent little red footlet. some stressed perfectionist came along and ruthlessly frogged said footlet despite nice comments and kind testimonies of lovely people on its behalf.


but then little red footlet re-emerged, phoenix-like, out of crumpled, frogged yarn to henceforth be known as fawkes. (as you can see, evil mastermind--clawed paws and all--approve)

this is my third sock in contiguous projects. i'm restless for something big, but knitting ennui has seized me. feeling uninspired. fawkes stalled; i swatched linen for a warm-weather cardigan, and the swatch lingers unwashed and unmeasured...

spinning continues unabated, thanks in part to lovely new fibers to play with.


books who improved my cotton longdraw: The Ashford Book of Spinning (scroll down). a nice book of basic terminology, materials, and techniques. wools, carding, wheel parts, fine versus bulky, wpi, twist angles, plying, dyeing. includes photos for short backward draft; short forward draft; medium draft (what Simmons calls point-of-contact?); and long draft.

Paula Simmons' Spinning and Weaving with Wool. a lovely book with abundant information. carder porn, wheel porn, spindle spinning, wheel spinning, Great Wheel spinning, weaving, even building your own wheel and loom. sections on fine spinning, heavy spinning, overtwists, consistency, and speed. includes photos for short draw; long draw (found this one a little vague); unsupported long draw; and point-of-contact long draw.

some things i learned:
a) over-the-fold is not so much a drafting mechanism as a fiber position in contrast with spinning from the tips. over-the-fold is often done longdraw, but spinners also spin shortdraw from the fold. other fun things in this category are rolags and punis.
b) i'm usually an over-the-fold, point-of-contact, longdraw spinner.
c) shortdraw can be done backwards (fiber-supply hand drafts) as well as forwards (front hand drafts, i.e. inchworm).
d) there are many many variations on the longdraw.
e) Simmons' point-of-contact hand position was particularly helpful. i realized--for me--longdraw from the tips works best with the back of my hand (towards the pinky) as the pulling force, while the thumb and index finger (and sometimes middle finger) press gently on the fiber supply. the opposite is true for over-the-fold.

i now know the wherefores of Lendrum quill heads. i covet one, for cotton spinning... and maybe plying. i've also been spinning shetland (mmm... shetland). made a sample card this time; it really helps!

larger version here