Does the ball winder add twist to my yarn?

By Amelia


I had always assumed that twist was added, or taken away (depending on the input yarn) when you wound a ball on the ball winder. So, when another raveler asked me about that, I almost flippantly replied "yes". But then I thought, I ought to see which direction the twist is in.

And the best way to "see" twist is to use a flat ribbon -- Patsy Zawistoski uses this to graphically demonstrate why you roll the yarn onto the wraps-per-inch tool rather than winding it around it, in her video Spinning Wool: Basics and Beyond.

So, I hooked up a roll of ribbon to my ballwinder, and ...

There's no twist in those wraps! The ribbon is twisted through half a revolution from the bobbin it is on to where it reaches the ball winder, but there, there's no twist put in. You could have knocked me over with a feather!

Okay, so let's think about this. Why do so many teachers say the ball winder will affect the twist? Because it can. And no, I'm not contradicting myself.

Notice how I have the spool of ribbon on my Lazy Kate? I'm feeding the ribbon off the side of the spool, "side feed". This is crucial -- side feed ensures the ribbon comes off the spool without adding twist. Ditto our spinning wheel bobbins -- if you pull the yarn off the side, letting the bobbin rotate freely, you pull it off without adding twist.

But looks what happens when I pull the center of the ball of ribbon straight up:


There it is -- TWIST! It was as if a lightbulb was turned on -- I knew this -- the end-feed effect (is that what it's always called? I've no idea, I do this by the seat of my pants) -- when you pull the yarn up off the end, rather than from the side, you add twist -- one complete twist for each round of yarn you pull off (so it varies as the diameter of the ball changes, in terms of twist per length...).

What does this mean? If you wind a center-pull ball to ply from, consider that when you ply from it, if you ply from an end (or both ends -- we all do it, come on, admit it... ok, I do it, even if you don't!) you're adding twist to the yarn. Which direction? In my case, I wound the ball clockwise, and the strand is getting S twist (counterclockwise) as I pull it up from the center of the ball.

That means, if I'm plying from two center-pull balls, I'm taking twist out of my singles before I ply them (oops...) ... so if I am matching up to a sample from my singles, my yarn is going to end up slightly overplied. Honestly, the amount of twist removed isn't much -- but it's going to decrease over the length of the single, as the diameter of the core of the ball increases, so my wanna-be-perfect yarn is going to be that much less than perfectly consistent.

If I wind a skein into a center-pull ball and then re-wind it to loosen the ball, feeding from the center of the first ball, I'm changing the amount of twist in the yarn. Oops.

So if you wind into a center-pull ball, what can you do to avoid this extra twist? Push the ball from the ballwinder onto a sturdy core -- a TP tube, a paper towel core, or even some lengths of PVC pipe. Nancy's Knit Knacks sells a really tough cardboard core made for this, which has the benefit of fitting to the top of the Royal ball winder (like mine) and letting you slide the ball right onto it. Once you have it mounted, put that on your lazy kate and feed off the side, letting the ball rotate freely, so twist isn't put into the yarn as it's pulled from the ball.

There you go. Now, we both know :-)

~~
posted 31 March 2009 at http://askthebellwether.blogspot.com/

An idea for a project (or two)

By Amelia

I love seeing the projects unfold on others' blogs, though I've kept my posts mostly singular in nature so far.

So here are two (or three!) I am considering. It struck me recently in spinning up some lovely Mooi laceweight on my new Bee, that I didn't need to ply it with the seasilk fiber -- I could spin that laceweight too, and then weave the two fibers together in a color & weave design.

Then two new colors of Three Bags Full showed up, shocking pink Wool Gone Wild and speckled yellow Spoiled? Never! (coming to Rhyme Times Subscribers soon!) -- and I realized these two colors would do well in a similar treatment, one as warp and another as weft.

Then I realized I already had a project like this in my weaving stash ...

That multi teal/black is handspun bamboo singles, and the black perle cotton would look terrific with it!

So, I see three scarves in my future, playing with color and weave. Perhaps a crepe like the swatch in the picture with the bamboo, or a pretty little rosepath twill. Then there are the crazy twills I found with a quick peek into the Digital Archive on Weaving...

And I should be able to show you some new weaving tools as this project progresses ... stay tuned :)
~~
posted 28 March 2009 at http://askthebellwether.blogspot.com/

Supercarder or Duncan motorized drum carder?

By Amelia

I have a PG Supercarder -- its one plus over the other electric carders is that it has 3 drums rather than the usual 2, so the wool is really well-carded in just one pass. Also the teeth on the cloth are at an angle so you can easily take off roving rather than a whole batt (though for overall speed, the batt's the way to go). I don't have a problem with the drive stuff not being covered, but I do keep my children away from the machine and a box over it, power switch locked with a padlock, when it's not in use.

If you are carding a medium wool generally, you may be satisfied with just 2 drums on the carder; the Patrick Green FanciCard is very similar to the SuperCarder, with just 2 drums, basically, so that's a less expensive option.

I considered recently whether a double-wide Duncan or similar wider-model drum carder like the Strauch double-wide would be better, but decided against the "widening" of my drum carder since it would have 1 less drum and be a little less effective at carding. Since I'm mostly carding medium-fine fibers on mine, I decided to stick with the SuperCarder.

Also, upon researching, I found the wider drum didn't give larger batts -- because the diameter of the drum was smaller than that of the SuperCarder. So, it's the overall surface area that matters, and the Duncan doublewide's surface area produced a batt about the same weight as the SuperCarder's.

If you're interested in processing rates -- I could get about 2-4 ounces onto the SuperCarder/into one batt at a time, and could do about 2-3 batts an hour, 4 if the fiber was really well teased open beforehand and low VM (so not much picking through to do as I was carding). I honestly think it would be difficult to use the tabletop motorized carders as a way to process fiber for sale in a sustainable manner, unless you are carding high-end fibers that have larger margins/retail value or processing the fiber to sell to support your own hobby needs. But I did talk to a lady once who said she was regularly carding over a pound an hour on hers.

In final, I'm very happy with my SuperCarder. I think the Duncan and Strauch double-wide models are fairly comparable to it, but as they have just two drums, you may find the SuperCarder gives you a smoother batt the first time through. It's harder to test-drive a drum carder than a spinning wheel, though if you can, that's a terrific way to find out what's the right carder for you.

~~~
Interested on more posts about drum carding? See these...
How do I card a smooth batt?
How do you take roving off a drum carder?
What are a doffer brush and a burnishing tool used for?
When do I use oils in carding?
What's the difference between roving and top?
What's the difference between batts and roving?
I washed the fleece, now what?
To Drumcard, to Handcard, or to Comb?

For Drum Carding eye-candy, see my flickr set Get Batty.

~~
posted 23 March 2009 at http://askthebellwether.blogspot.com/

How can I fit more yarn on my bobbin?

By Amelia

Wheeeee! As you all know, I'm having too much fun with my new Bee wheel :)

There's nothing like having an open threading for being able to interrupt a plying job in progress to head off to my LYS to teach some new spinners (they all 'graduated' today -- three more spinners in the world, yay!)


As I mentioned in my review of the Bee, it does have travel-sized bobbins (ummm ... that's a euphemism for small, folks!) Not too tiny, probably a hair more volume than Ashford's standard bobbins, but definitely smaller than Majacraft's very healthy bobbins. I got 2.7 ounces of 2-ply light worsted weight on a Bee bobbin: it came to 152 yards, which is 900 yards per pound if you think about it that way. That's the black/brown/white skein in the middle of that upper shot. In today's test, I got 3.95 ounces of 2-ply laceweight on a Bee bobbin -- that came to a hefty 570 yards, so about 2300 yards per pound. That's the blue skein in the upper shot. The other one? didn't fill a bobbin -- 2 ply of even finer yarn, 2 ounces, 418 yards, so, 3344 yards per pound. Wow, I impress myself :-)

I used all my methods for maximizing bobbin contents in filling these, so it's worth sharing them with you. Be your bobbins large or small, these can help maximize your yardage on your bobbins.

• Don't let the tension get sloppy -- keep a reasonably strong draw-in when plying especially. This packs the yarn on the bobbin.
  
• Change pegs or hooks, or move your slider, fairly often. Don't let the hills that build up have landslides -- a sloppily built bobbin wastes room. I get into a routine with mine, up one side and down the other, to build up a bobbin smoothly.
  
• If you have pegs or hooks on both sides, then use both sides. Having them on both sides of the orifice usually means they are offset from side to side, so you can build more hills, and pack yarn onto the bobbin better. If you have them only on one side, consider adding them, offset, on the other side. If you have a slider, move it often, for more complete coverage.
  
• A 2-ply yarn takes up more space than twice its length in singles. So if your goal is to spin singles and then ply onto another bobbin, two full bobbins of singles will fill more than 2 bobbins in 2-ply yarn -- consider not filling the singles bobbins to avoid this, if you don't want the partial bobbin. And if you fill a bobbin and then ply from a center-pull ball, consider not filling the bobbin with singles. How much more space? Ummm, I'll let you figure that out. I'm sure there's math involved, but I just go by "feel", leaving say half-a-finger of visible core on my singles bobbins.
  
• Or heck, just spin singles, for maximum length skeins :-) I'm not sure which "wastes" more space, a 2-ply or a 3-ply, packed well onto a bobbin. I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader ... do let me know in the comments though, I love learning new things!
  
• Spin finer -- the finer your yarn, the more yardage (and weight) you can fit on. I got 2.7 ounces of thick yarn, but 3.9 ounces of fine onto the Bee's bobbin.
  
• As your bobbin starts getting full, change pegs, hooks, or slider position even more often.
  
• As the yarn starts (barely) rubbing against the flyer arms, if you want to stuff more onto it still, squeeze the yarn on the bobbin with your hands, to pack it in a bit more.
  
• Increasing the tension on the bobbin can help draw yarn in as the bobbin's contents are rubbing against the flyer arm, but eventually even this will max out. At that point either you are done, or you can force the bobbin to wind the yarn onto itself as you ply each new length. I didn't force-wind on the Bee bobbins, as I wanted them to be a fair showing of stuffing bobbins, and manual winding just seemed like stretching the point a bit. But I have done that, as shown in the thumbnail, on another wheel when trying to finish off a plying job.
  
• If there is a fair amount of air between the outer diameter of the bobbin and the flyer arms, you can continue filling the bobbin beyond its diameter. However, this can be dangerous near the ends as the yarn may collapse over the edge of the bobbin -- eeek. I've been known to add spacers cut from milk bottles (yogurt lids would work well, too) to make sure my bobbin contents didn't collapse over the ends -- sure, I was using regular bobbins on my plying flyer on my Majacraft, and it wasn't pretty, but it worked!
  
• Now I admit, changing hooks/pegs/slider position often can be a drag ... but the fullest bobbins I get are with my WooLee Winder, which isn't called a "level wind system" for nothing. It evenly winds up and down along the bobbin, maximizing yardage on the bobbin. It's like constantly altering the hook used, infinitely along the length -- the outer limit of packing as much yarn on as can be done. So, on wheels with WooLee Winder options, that's another possibility.

Is there something you do, to pack more yarn onto your bobbins? Please post it in the comments -- I'd love to learn some new ways to get maximum yardage on my bobbins!
~~
posted 17 March 2009 at http://askthebellwether.blogspot.com/

Of Pickup Sticks and Weaving Drafts

By Amelia

Wow! I honestly didn't realize how much I had bitten off when I said part three of these posts on applying weaving drafts to the rigid heddle loom would be using pickup sticks for more complex patterns. Luckily for both of us, the other evening as I was falling asleep, a golden nugget popped into my head. But I leap ahead ....

ETA: You might want to start with How can I use weaving drafts on my rigid heddle loom if you landed on this post first ... for the introduction to this topic. And part 2, What can you weave with 2 heddles... may be useful background too.

My basic premise in looking at a weaving draft is whether or not it has something that looks like plain weave floating through it -- 1/3/1/3/1/2/4/2/4/2 for example has these repeating pairs that tell me there might be some possibility there for the rigid heddle loom.

Because the local study group (Warped Weavers, fun name, eh, for a fun group of very talented ladies) is studying Handwoven Laces by Donna Muller, my thoughts have been of those.

David Xenakis did Huck on the Rigid Heddle in Huck Lace: The Best of Weaver's, and I'd already done my Bronson Spot experimenting on a four harness loom, so that left Swedish Lace.

Swedish Lace is interesting; I read either in Muller or in Marguerite Porter Davison's A Handweaver's Pattern Book that the traditional form uses just one form on the front, be it just warp floats or just weft floats. Though Muller explores mixing the floats so that the font and reverse of the fabric are siblings, if not identical.

The main issue with the mixed form and the rigid heddle loom is that it has two plain weave strands next to each other and uses one shaft for one base thread and a different shaft for the other -- possibly doable, but more than I wanted to bite off. If you try to mimic the warp & weft floats being side by side without changing from the default threading, they get a little mis-aligned, off by one strand. At least, they did for me, so I abandoned that experiment.

Tradition is good, right? So the scarf I've just finished for you uses the traditional approach, and in this case, warp floats on the face of the fabric.

Now, to figure out pick up sticks for weaving drafts, it helps to have not only the threading, tie-up, and treadling as I showed you in the first of this series, but also the missing fourth part -- the draw down. This section shows how the warp and weft will interact, so you can see warp floats and weft floats.

Here is a very simple Swedish Lace draft (only one block of the lace, imagine it repeating to the left many times) with the draw down filled in:

Now, we need to talk about pickup sticks. You could thread a pickup stick through in front of the heddle, turn it on its side, throw the shot through, and then remove the stick. But that sure sounds slow, doesn't it?

I'll offer you instead the style used more often today. Betty Linn Davenport teaches this method in her book Textures and Patterns for the Rigid Heddle Loom.

To decide which threads you want to pick up, you need to decide if you have warp floats or weft floats. As you can see in my draw-down, I have warp floats, the purple bands that are vertical. And if I look in the threading pattern, I see that one "plain weave" throw is split between harnesses 2 and 3 -- two in harness 2, one in harness 3. The two strands in harness 2 are my warp floats.

So, I push the heddle down, and thread a pickup stick across behind the heddle, under 2, over 1, under 2, over 1, across. The stick goes under the warp float threads, and over the ones that won't float on top. I'm going to say this another way too, which will be more important later: the warp threads above the pickup stick, are the ones that we want to have be over the weft yarn.

The theory behind this is that the pickup stick can only be used to manipulate the warp threads in the slots -- the warp threads in the holes have restricted movement. So you lower the heddle and choose from the mobile, slot warp threads.

My apologies -- these pictures are based on a slightly different experiment, separating each Swedish Lace motif by a square of plain weave (sigh). Also, my pickup stick is a spare shuttle -- creative reuse at its finest.

Then, when I weave, I can leave the pickup stick at the very back of my loom (in neutral, out of play, at rest -- pick your favorite term) as shown in the picture above, and lift the heddle up and down for regular plain weave. When I want a Swedish Lace motif, I can get the right threads to move up and down, matching the treadling, like so:

• Lift the heddle and move the pickup stick up to be just behind it (there's no need to turn it on its edge). This is shown in the picture at the start of this blog post. Throw a shot.
  
• Move the pickup stick to neutral, and lower the heddle. Throw a shot.
  
• Lift the heddle and move the pickup stick just behind it. Throw a shot.
  
• Move the pickup stick to neutral, and lower the heddle. Throw a shot.
  
• Lift the heddle (leave the pickup stick in neutral this time). Throw a shot.
  
• Move the pickup stick to neutral, and lower the heddle. Throw a shot.

This gives me one complete Swedish Lace block across my weaving. If I want multiple blocks, I can continue repeating these six shots. The sixth shot is very important, as it ties down the warp floats.

Now, the really cool thing about pickup sticks and motifs like this is that you can build complex shapes by simple shifts of the pickup stick. For example, if I want a diamond of Swedish Lace, I can start with just a pair of warps picked up to start, do my six rows, then add two more pairs on either side (always separated by one not-picked-up warp thread, to provide the tie-down needed for the weft), and keep repeating this -- six rows, expand the pickup, until I'm ready to start decreasing for the back of my diamond.


On a harness loom, this takes planning and foresight -- each Swedish Lace motif would have to go through its own pair of harnesses so you could choose to lift just one motif at the point of the diamond, and then lift more ... so you see, you can mimic very complex weaving on this very simple loom.

The pattern I did, a trapezoid at the end of the scarf, would have taken a 12 harness loom. There is no 12 harness loom in my house (yet!) so this is pretty cool!

But wait, you say, what about weft floats?

You would still lower the heddle to pick the floats out of the yarns in the holes. And now I'm going to repeat something I said would be important later -- now is later! Once again, the warp threads above the pickup stick, are the ones that we want to have be over the weft yarn. So you pick up the warp threads that will be over the weft when it is otherwise floating.

If we reverse our Swedish Lace Motif to get the other side as the top pattern this is the draft:

So now you see what I want to thread is the reverse of what I threaded last time: the pickup stick goes over 2 strands, under 1, and so on across.

Because I'm doing weft floats now, my heddling is different as well:

• heddle in neutral, bring the pickup up to the heddle and turn it on its side. Throw the shot between the threads lifted by the pickup stick and the other warp threads.
  
• heddle up, pickup back to neutral, throw shot
  
• heddle in neutral, bring the pickup up to the heddle and turn it on its side. Throw the shot between the threads lifted by the pickup stick and the other warp threads.
  
• heddle up, throw shot (pickup in neutral)
  
• heddle down, throw shot (pickup in neutral)

In fact, I can show you what this looks like in fabric, since it is the reverse face of my scarf. (Sorry for the low quality photo ... I'll try again once it's pressed.)


Now, if I wanted to combine the two motifs, I would find them off by one warp thread, as the two tie-ups, used in combination, need a more complex threading. I haven't decided to tackle that whale, but if you do, I'd love to hear what you learn.

Oh, and this is my golden nugget:

If you want warp floats, then the pickup stick is pushed up to the heddle on the up-heddle shot. If you want weft floats, then instead of pushing the heddle down, you turn the pickup stick on its side and make the shot between its raised threads and all hole threads and non-picked-up slot threads. Look at the draw down to see where the floats are.

The easiest patterns have only warp floats or only weft floats -- for a mix, you may find you have to pick one as the permanent pickup stick, and the other as a pickup stick that is put in when needed but then removed to let the other pickup stick be used. That may still be a reasonable thing to do, for interesting weaves like waffle weave, with several rows of warp floats and single rows of weft floats.

Now, I'm off to re-read Davenport to see how much of the theory she goes into. I find I get more out of my books after I've spent some loom time exploring their techniques.

Next up on rigid heddle loom posts will be an answer to Dorothy's question, How do you do floating selvedges on a rigid heddle loom? Oh, and an emailer asked me about online rigid heddle resources -- I've listed a few in my other posts, but if you have some you like, let me know, I'll be sure they're in that post :)

~~

posted 15 March 2009 at http://askthebellwether.blogspot.com/

And then there was life before the Bee ...

By Amelia

We've all been waiting ... when SpinOlution came out with the Mach 1 in 2008, they said there was a travel wheel in the planning stages. Well folks, it's here! It's The Bee! Or should I say, it's the bee's knees! The Paulies have delivered!

How do I describe this to you? My own personal goal was to stack it up to my primary workhorse wheel, the Majacraft Alpaca Wheel. But a more fair-minded comparison might be to the Journey Wheel, a travel wheel like the Bee. And, a comparison to its own big brother, the Mach 1, seems in order too.

First, let me give you the road test ... my Bee arrived very well packed in a foam-fitting (that's not a typo) box. It had a bobbin on the flyer already, so all I had to do was take it out of the box, lower the foot rest, lift the flyer arm, and everything was ready to go -- talk about easy.

Okay, so there was no leader on the bobbin. I quickly removed the bobbin by squeezing the flyer arms and pulling the orifice cross-piece off, then the bobbin (plz ignore the yarn on the bobbin in the picture -- I was so excited, I forgot to snap an empty one!). I tied a long loop of gold perle cotton -- it was on hand -- folded it in half and put it through one hole and back through another at the back of the bobbin, then looped it through itself to hitch it onto the bobbin. Woot! That stays on like a charm, no matter which way I spin.

(oh yeah ... click any picture for bigger, and see the whole set over on my flickr)

I had 4 ounces of singles, half spun each on Majacraft bobbins, ready for the Bee's arrival. So, I loaded them up on the on-board Kate for plying. That Kate is very well designed. Why do I say that? Because it puts the bobbins at an angle. That lets them brake themselves, so you don't get bobbin over-run when you are plying. Note ... Bees come with 3 bobbins, standard. I like 5, so I ordered 2 extra. I was really pleased to see the 3-bobbin on-board Kate :-)

Here you see my spinner's-eye view of the Bee during plying:


Now, when you start spinning on any wheel, you need to check the tension. The Bee uses a Scotch Tension system that may be unique to this wheel; I've not seen this style on other wheels, though it has some similarities to the Journey Wheel. It is unique in that it is the wheel's spindle (metal rod between the flyer arms) that the brake pushes on. The wheel's spindle does *not* rotate with the flyer as it does on most other wheels (also excepting the Journey Wheel). Instead, it rotates independently, spinning the bobbin as it does so.

As you can see in the photo just above and to the right (I hope!), the bobbin has a hex-shaped indentation to "key" it onto the wheel's spindle. The black knob at the back of the wheel is the scotch tension adjustment. As with any scotch tension, you can make large movements initially (full or half rotations) but to find the sweet spot, you make very minor adjustments of the knob -- quarter or even just a tiny fraction of the knob.

At the final just-can't-stuff-any-more-on stage, I weighed the full bobbin (empty it's 3.2 ounces) -- it had 2.7 ounces of DK-to-light-worsted (about 12-14 wraps per inch) 2-ply on it. As you can see, I was spinning until the yarn was rubbing up against the flyer arms, braking the bobbin so no more would wind on.

So, cool -- it plied like a champ. Yes, I used 35:1, its highest ratio for that! And I even built up a head of steam, treadling fairly quickly and plying zippity-zap! Get 'er done, that's my mantra for plying.

Once I'd done that, I took a break and took a look at the ratios and the treadling. You can change from the high-range (15:1 to 35:1) to the low-range (5:1 to 12:1) by changing the drive band in the front ... on the left we have the "high" setting, on the right we have the "low" setting:
  
I think you could also set it up in a mid range, but I haven't played with that yet.

On the low range, using the three flyer grooves, I get 5:1, 7.5:1, and 12:1 ratios (approximately). I also get a silky-smooth treadling, even lighter, if that is at all imagineable, than the Mach 1's treadling. Way smoother than the smoothest wheel I have ever treadled (and folks, I've also treadled a Watson Marie -- talk about smooth! I thought that was the end-all ... the Bee at least matches, and possibly outdoes it, in these lower ratios. Wowzer.)

So, as with the Mach 1, in the lowest three ratios, you can treadle with one foot. One toe, possibly. Not sure if a dippy bird would do it, but that's pretty extreme.

Switching it over to the high range is done by moving the lower drive band. I moved the band on the accelerator (right-most) wheel first, since it was going to a smaller diameter groove, and then on the drive (left-most) wheel, holding it in place with a finger as I rotated the drive wheel by hand to "walk" the band into that groove. (I'm open for advice, if you have a better way to move drive bands, holler! I do it this way on all my wheels.)

Treadling at the higher range is a heavier task -- you are pushing a much more concentrated area on the accelerator wheel with that small diameter pulley. I found it treadled just about the same as my Majacraft Alpaca Wheel with its accelerator head in place -- a different drive head from the one that comes with the wheel, to give your Majacraft higher ratios.

I was very pleased with the results of the plying at 35:1, though, so I'm not at all disappointed by the treadle's seemingly heavier "weight" at that high range.

I'll also report that in the high range, you do need to treadle with both feet -- with one foot I wasn't able to keep it going easily (I could, but didn't enjoy it).

That lead me to pull out a fiber I've been saving for a while -- MOOI by Louet. This is Bison, Cashmere, and Bamboo. Shiny, soft, and ultra-fine. Bison has a supremely short staple length, Cashmere pretty much does too; in this blend, the Bamboo was left with a fairly decent staple, not cut up into bison-staple-length pieces. My little yarn sample is a laceweight 2-ply, which I planned to mimic. It had 4.5 twists per inch in the 2-ply, so I knew I'd want about 9 twists per inch in the single; and super-fine, I'd guess 40 wraps per inch -- but I was just doing visual comparisons rather than writing down numbers.

So, I started over with an empty bobbin, and proceeded to spin clockwise, still at 35:1, with my MOOI fiber blend (natural colors). As with all laceweight, I adjusted the draw-in to as low as it would go but still draw in, and then I threaded the yarn back-and-forth across the flyer arms to reduce the drag on the yarn in my hands even further.

That worked very well, as it always does. I was pleased to note that the flyer pegs on the Bee kept the yarn above the core of the bobbin, so it wasn't actually rubbing on the stored yarn, as it does on my other wheels. That is a big plus :-)

I was happily long-drawing and drafting out a foot or more of thread at a time, getting twist into it, and feeding it onto the bobbin, until bedtime last night. I think I did about 1/2 ounce of the 2 ounces I have, which I've split to spin onto two bobbins and ply onto a third. Aaaah, lace spinning.

I also set the ratios down to the low range, at the high end, to experience spinning this fiber with the silky-soft treadling available there. That was pretty dreamy despite me treadling like the Tasmanian devil after a quad espresso to get all the twist into that super-fine single as fast as I could long-draw it (grin).

I will experiment with the second bobbin, I think, by trying another lace-spinning technique -- start with a half-full bobbin (half-full of _anything_, even pipe insulation will do it). That also decreases the pull of the yarn from your hand, though it is likely to raise the "level" of the surface above the pegs. I will be able to compare which is more effective, lacing the pegs as I did above, or using a thicker core.

A question that comes up about wheels, which I haven't mentioned yet, is how loud they are, or what sort of noise they have. The Bee qualifies as a TV wheel in my house -- that means it's quiet enough to spin in front of the television. At the smallest flyer groove, the drive band makes a whirring noise that goes away when it is in the larger grooves; the flyer itself has a very light noise. Where the footman meets the drive wheel, there is a light tick of the bearing against the guide in the footman; yours may not have this tick, actually. I have not tried the Mach 1 solution to this, which is to paint the side walls of the footman's groove with fingernail polish, nor have I asked the Pauly's if they recommend this -- so please check before you try this.

All-in-all, I'm quite pleased with the Bee; in thinking about it in comparison to the Majacraft and the Journey Wheel, I think it stacks up well against those two wheels. And it is different enough from the Mach 1 that they both have their place in the spinning universe.

Now, if this all makes you want a Bee -- yes, I do sell them. I'd welcome your custom! I ship overseas, and I am happy to provide layaway. SpinOlution has a vendor in most states, so if you want to try-it-and-buy-it, find one local to you, or attending a show in your area. These should be readily available at most of the SpinOlution retailers by April, 2009.

Oh and those comparisons ... stay tuned :-) but now I need to go and spin the rest of that MOOI ...

~~
The technical specifications for the Bee are available here or here.

Don't want to take my word for it? Pre-testing of the Bee has a thread on the Ravelry SpinOlution group, and an as-they-arrive thread has started up as well. We're all having fun with our Bees :-) go and check it out!
~~
22 Mar 09 update: I've uploaded a short video of plying on the Bee using the built-in Kate, to help the left-sided plyers out there see how this spinner plies with the Bee's right-side Kate: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUw-Yre_L5Y
~~
posted 11 March 2009 at http://askthebellwether.blogspot.com/

What Travel Wheels Are There?

By Amelia

I sit here today waiting for the UPS man to show up ... because the new SpinOlution Bee is slated to arrive today or tomorrow, and I can hardly wait!

The topic of travel wheels comes up a fair bit in the spinning community. We like to go to spin-ins, so a semi-portable wheel helps there. I was pleasantly surprised how portable my Majacraft Alpaca wheel was -- it folds over and in doing so, presents a handle for picking it up! Sure, it's about 16 pounds, but that's actually close to the Lendrum's weight; the soft wood used in its construction is more of an issue, as each trip leaves its own memento (= dent!) in my wheel. Click on the photo to see a note on where the handle pops up.

That didn't stop me from loving my Pocket Wheel, though. And as my years as a spinner progress, I love trying out the "new things" to see how they stack up, and if they are better than what I have already.

Here is the list of travel wheels I've compiled -- if you know of another, I'd love to hear of it! Links are generally to the makers' websites, where available.

These are the "really small" ones:

• Pocket Wheel (Doug Dodd/Jon McCoy) (To see Doug's original website (note, he no longer makes the wheel, so please use the new website for inquiries!), try google's cached version)
  
• Hitchhiker (Merlin Tree)
  
• Louet Hatbox (not being made, show up second hand sometimes)
  
• SpinAway Holiday Wheel (just announced/released at Rhinebeck 2008 - search ravelry's forums for SpinAway, Holiday, or Mary Oates for more details)
  
• The Bee by SpinOlution (coming March 2009 - mine'll be here soon!!)
  
• rumors of Schacht’s travel-wheel-to-be (... release date unknown ...)

And then there are other not-quite-as-small wheels but they fold or are relatively small and are considered travel wheels. What do you think? how do they stack up to the list above?

• Lendrum Folding Wheel
  
• Ashford Joy (see Joy ST/DT)
  
• Kromski Sonata
  
• Louet Victoria (maybe this should be in the list above?)
  
• Journey Wheel
  
• Majacraft Little Gem
  
• Babe’s Pinkie Wheel (lightweight, non-folding)
  
• Louet S-45 (non-folding, small)
  
• Wee Robin
  
• Van Eaton Fold N' Tote (no longer being made, maker retired)
  
• Ettrick Wind Wheel (page down to see this model)

Then there are the 'borderline' wheels, like my Majacraft, the Jensen Tina II, the Louet S-10 and cousins, the Ashford Traveller (thanks Minerva!), the Fidelis and cousins (thanks Anon!), the Schacht Ladybug -- all of which are well under 20 pounds and fit in a car seat pretty nicely. One thing to consider in picking a travel wheel, is how you intend to travel. I generally travel with a wheel by car. For suitcase travel, I stick with my spindles -- more room for fiber that way :) I've tried quite a few of these; to be more clear, I currently own a Pocket Wheel and a Journey Wheel, and have in the past owned a Lendrum, a Little Gem, and a Louet S-45. I've also borrowed a Hitchhiker and a Joy from friends, and gotten to treadle on a Hatbox, a Sonata and a Victoria at spin-ins. With so many choices, why am I excited about the Bee? First off, the Mach 1, SpinOlution's flagship wheel, has super-easy treadling, and I expect the same of the Bee, or close too it. Second, the Bee has seven ratios from 5:1 to 35:1 ... all on the wheel as it comes out of the box! That is amazing on a travel wheel. I believe the S-45 has the highest out-of-the-box ratio of my list above, at 20:1. I have high hopes of the combination -- easy treadling and high ratios -- that could supplant my Majacraft Alpaca wheel in the "workhorse" category, as its accelerated head gives me about 32:1, but with a fairly effort-full treadle. I have fiber and plying jobs at the ready ... stay tuned for more news of the Bee as soon as it buzzes on in! ~~ For related posts on specific wheels, see the topic Wheels, or see: What is a Pocket Wheel? (comparison with Hitchhiker) Would you recommend an Ashford Joy? Spin-off, on their new on-line community, have a copy of their very useful article (did I mention it was useful?) on currently manufactured spinning wheels, downloadable (click on "Download", not the Adobe PDF icon...) from here. You do have to make an account to get to that page, but that's free, and you needn't be a subscriber. ~~ posted 9 March 2009 at http://askthebellwether.blogspot.com/. Last updated March 10, 2010: links updated for Pocket Wheel and SpinAway.

Yarn Story: Surprise!

By Amelia

This is a yarn story I have been wanting to tell you since I started the series! It's a bit of a different kettle of fish, as it's mostly about (a) dyeing and (b) enjoying unexpected results.

The yarn you see here started out as natural white Blue Faced Leicester (BFL) Wool and Alpaca Top -- undyed, as supplied by Ashland Bay Trading (a wholesale supplier to wool shops). It is lovely and yummy, with the nice soft BFL wool and dreamy smooth alpaca fiber.

I took a hank of the undyed top to a dye workshop to play with. I stepped up to this dye workshop with a series of expectations -- I know, that meant it was bound to work out as a surprise from the get-go! We were hand-painting roving using acid dyes -- Cushings and Jacquards.

I didn't want my colors to bleed into each other too closely, and I wanted fairly quick color changes. My colors were black, mahogany, and gold. I wet my roving with synthrapol-laced warm water, but squeezed it out as dry as I could, to more closely control the bleeding of colors into one another.

That worked out okay.

Because I wanted quick color changes, I put two inch bands of color along my roving -- two inches of black, two of gold, two of mahogany. Fairly randomly, but none longer.

We steam set the color into our roving, and I let it cook further on my dashboard on the trip home (this was a summer spinning retreat...though I am writing this during the long, cold winter of '09).

Before I came to spinning this skein, I spun up some of the undyed BFL/Alpaca top. That was an exercise in long-draw spinning, which was quite exciting. The yarn turned out nicely, not as close to machine-perfect as my default supported-draw spinning, but a fairly regular yarn with a nice amount of twist for knitting, crochet, or weaving. The yarn has a gorgeous shine to it. I call it Pure Snow though it would look lovely dyed, be the color solid, semi-solid, or hand-painted.

Given how well Pure Snow turned out, I developed a supported long draw spinning style to return to my regular consistency while maintaining airiness in the yarn. Night Deer was spun with that in mind, with a moderate twist to show off the sheen of the fibers well.

But as I spun it ... the black disappeared! And the colors melded into new combinations ... not the clear gold and mahogany at all. Green was showing up -- where did that come from? It was a.total.surprise!

In reviewing what I did, I realized something. I painted two inch lengths of color. But the staple length of this luscious blend was actually 5 to 6 inches. Oooooh! light bulb moment! I succeeded in painting each fiber several different colors -- creating a palette that couldn't help but blend colors into new combinations as I spun.

Being me, I then promptly scoured the online dye forums -- dyehappy on Yahoo, Love to Dye and Colour By Hand on Ravelry to see if anyone considered staple length when dyeing fibers. Zilch. I even posted an inquiry -- there wasn't much interest (no responder said they knew this already, and no-one said "wow! what a revelation!")

I've no idea if this is a really clever observation, or if I was a very foolish dyer originally. It's definitely something to consider -- no matter how you plan your dye lengths, when space-dyeing wool top, you will be putting two colors on at least some of the fibers. So a clean color break isn't entirely possibly, no matter how much control you have over the drafting.


~~~
Color is a fascinating topic. You may also be interested in these related posts:
How do you use Cushings dyes?
How can I match up color blocks when spinning space-dyed roving?
Do you ply space-dyed roving?
How can I preserve color in a 2-ply?
How can I preserve color in my space-dyed roving?

I am teaching several yarn dyeing classes this summer at Heels Over Toes, the CSMSA 2009 Conference in June in Tacoma -- you needn't knit on a sock machine to attend!

~~
posted 5 March 2009 at http://askthebellwether.blogspot.com/