Cotton drafting and spinning

Cotton will draft freely with almost no twist. Cotton has a staple length between 5/8 and 1 1/2 inches. The appropriate size yarns will be fine yarns. The fat and skinny yarn limits. On the coarse end of cotton it does not go bulky... When you do this you lose your strength. It is hard to get enough twist on the fiber to fiber ratio.

One of the tools used to spin cotton is a charka. It is a drive wheel that spins a spindle. Similar to a drop spindle you need to wind the yarn on yourself.

Cotton joins. Scary to me. To do a join lay the yarn on top of the fiber on top and let it go and give a little bit of pull.

I tried spinning some cotton that I had found in my stash... What a disaster. Then I got some cotton cards and made a rolag. What a difference... So much easier. Still not easy.

I find that if I separate the drafting and then add the additional twist, as Stephanie suggested it works better. Remember to pinch off the top of the yarn when you are adding the twist. I found I did better with one of my small spindles as opposed to my tahkli . Of course I had to do joins..and they were not as bad as I expected. I think it will be a while before I feel ok to do this on a wheel. The nice thing about using a spindle is that you can take it as slow as you need to.

If you seem to be having a really rough go of it. It might have something to do with your cotton. I have two types and one is easier to spin than the other. The one is smoother and flatter than the other. The fluffy more disheveled cotton is easier to spin and make into a rolag.

 

Here are some pictures.. These are of my easier to spin cotton.

 

Rolags are at the top

 

My cotton cards

 

Cashmere and Yak

Yippee, I found a little cashmere and yak. The staple lengths are sooo short. I had to spin the spindle really fast to get a sample spin.(still way easier than cotton). I found the yak slightly easier to do a sample than the cashmere. I think if I prepared either in rolag form they would be better. When find some hand cards I will give that a try.

Here is the cashmere:

Spindle sample

 

Here is the yak

 

Spindle sample:

 

Knitting and spinning updated

 

Knitting

I have a bunch of ruffle yarn that I ordered before Christmas. Some of it I made into scarves but not most. I tried to knit another scarf yesterday and I realized why... I hate knitting with this stuff... I am always untwisting it or looking for another hole. It might be faster but when you dislike doing it, the whole process slows down.

 

Spinning

I have been searching for the Unspun cotton I know I had sitting around and I still have not found it. But I did find a couple of ounces of a yak and silk blend. It is sooooo soft and a lovely grey color. I don't think it was really expensive...in fact I think it was less than 5$ an ounce and maybe less than 4$ an ounce. One time it is cheaper to spin the yarn than buy it. I have found yak blend yarns costing well over 30$ a skein and they do not have as much softness as this.

I have been spinning some lovely merino. I am going to make my first three ply. I know it needs more twist in the singles than a two ply. Once I have three bobbins I will do a sample and I figure I can always add more twist by running the singles through my wheel again.

 

Spinning cotton

Today I am studying cotton spinning and processing. I really like the video by Stephanie Gaustad, Spinning Cotton. She starts with the topic of processing cotton for spinning.

As she says wool and cotton are nowhere near alike. Cotton is so adhesive to itself that it almost drafts itself. The drafting and the adding twist are very separate tasks. They need to be broken down into two separate stages. Cotton is easily compressed so do not hold it tightly. Cotton wants to be spun thinly.

Cotton is a seed fiber. It is the fiber that covers the seed. There are two basic types of cotton seed, hairy and slick. Stephanie covers removing the seeds in her video. Roller gin - slick seeded cotton. Eli Whitney's cotton gin for hairy seeded cotton. Hairy seeded cotton was probably what you read about in your US history.

Willowing cotton is one way to process after de-seeding. You take two sticks and, use them to hold the cotton and shake it over a screen to remove the lint from the cotton.

Stephanie cards her cotton on cotton hand cards and rolls them into rolags or punis. Then these are spun long draw.

I also have another DVD on spinning cotton... When I watch it I will compare the techniques and update his blog page.

Video knitting classes

I love to watch knitting tv shows. Unfortunately there are not a lot of knitting shows on TV here. I try to get my crafting videos from an online forum called craftsy. I love craftsy. I have taken several of there courses and they were all great. My favorites were the drop spindle one and the Entrelac courses. The drop spindle class was one of the reasons I got into spinning...and I have tons of posts about that. The Entrelac course is awesome... Gwen Bortner is terrific she does help Entrelac become your mindless knitting.

Craftsy also has a lot of free classes, currently I have been listening to class on micro torching ...it is very cool and it makes me want to start jewelry making.

I also love to watch craft DVDs. Most of mine are from Interweave. I do love the privately published ones. Jacey Boggs has one titled Sit and Spin, even non spinners will enjoy this DVD. It is fabulous. I like that the artist gets a little more of the money from the sale of private ones. I try to support my favorite artists...in little ways..buying a knitting pattern or kit from them...books, DVDs. These folks are not getting rich in fiber arts. I hear you are lucky if you get a dollar a book from book sales...who knew. When I first started knitting.. I thought the writers of the books could retire off the sales..I have learned that this is not the case.

This is the cowl I knitted in the craftsy class..... It was so much fun. Maybe it is time for another.

 

Rescuing a drum carder

I must admit I was a little hesitant about rescuing this drum carder. When I tried to rescue a rigid heddle loom last year from craigslist it was a complete bust. The price on this was low enough that even if I had to replace the carding cloth(which is very expensive) the carder still would have been a lot cheaper than buying a new one. ( estimating the cost of carding cloth replacement at 200$) brand new carder cost at least 500$ and many are a lot more.

Here is what I did:

I took it apart and cleaned it up. Took the chain off and cleaned it with a cloth. When I put it back together I added some oil. I used a vacuum cleaner on the drums. I would really love to put them in some soapy water but I am worried it will ruin them. I did spray them with bug spray...when I first got it I was worried about critters. When putting it back together I researched how far apart the swift(big drum) and licker(little drum) should be...the responses I got were it depends on the fiber, generally the width will fall between a width equal to a sheet of paper or equal to a credit credit card.

Enough of that... Here is the cleaned up drum carder:

I love it! . The carding cloth is in good enough shape for my needs... Some tines are bent but it seems to work ok for blending.

Here is what it looked like when I bought it. It was sitting outside and very dirty.

 

Spinning undercoats

The third DVD in Judith MacKenzie's spinning luxury fiber is on spinning undercoats. These include bison, yak, cashmere, qiviut(musk ox). It is interesting that you only get about one ounce of cashmere from a cashmere goat. For some reason I find that kind of sad. I think of all the goats needed to produce one sweater... How we treat this fiber. It does not get the respect it deserves. Most of these spinning fibers cost at least 10$ an ounce in 2014 money...( yak you can get cheaper). Qiviut is even more expensive. Other than yak I doubt I will spin these...it is hard to justify this expense. Maybe when I am a much improved spinner..even then who knows. I think musk ox are so cute but 30$ an ounce for spinning fiber. They say qiviut is extremely warm. I do not need that warmth here. It was interesting to hear about spinning this fiber. Most of it is very short in staple length so carding it into a rolag is a good idea. From there you can spin woolen or a semi woolen..or semi worsted.

I think I might have a little yak fiber somewhere. I will try it out and report back.

Now I am watching her plying DVD!

Happy Spinning