First of all, spinning thick and consistent is quite difficult to do! If you want thick, consistent, and lofty, this is potentially one of the most technically challenging yarns to produce reliably as a single-ply yarn. If you take millspun commercial yarns which appear to be this, and deconstruct them carefully, you can often discover […]

February has been an incredibly long month. I know, it’s not even over! But yet, it’s lasted a good 8 years. It has only been, for instance, about 5 weeks since I had my wisdom teeth out, and 6 weeks since the dental implant went in; yet those seem like they were years ago. And […]

The question of how to price handspun yarn is coming up again on the various spinning mailing lists, so I’m taking an opportunity to repost my standard thoughts on pricing methodologies here. The question of pricing, and discussing it, is a challenging one in some respects. There are numerous philosophies, and there are people who […]

Step 1 is the drive ratios. What this refers to is the difference in size between the drive wheel and the driven object — the whorl, which in turn will be moving the spindle (on a spindle wheel such as a charkha or great wheel), the bobbin or flyer (on a single drive wheel), or […]

I mentioned chullu knitting on the spin-list, and was asked for a little more information. Here’s my reply, and a repost of something from 2005 about learning to do it, with pictures.

First, the short answers… 1. Do you teach fiber arts? I’m just gearing up to do so, actually. Stay tuned to this blog for more information about that, or you can drop me an email! 2. Are you related to Ed Franquemont? Did he teach you to weave and spin and stuff? Yes, Ed was […]

Well, I finally managed to snap a few photos of the autoknitter swatch of that Crown Jewels colourway yarn: It’s really a challenge to catch a picture that shows both the colours true, and the sheen that the yarn has — it’s just plain the wrong time of year for good natural light. So these […]

Yesterday, it snowed about 7 inches, which is the most snow young Edward has ever seen in his life. Unfortunately it’s also pretty cold; it was about 18 degrees at the warmest point in the day today, which is fortunately when I… but I’m getting ahead of myself. I went out to shovel a few […]

I’ve been asked, what do the sock batts spin up like? Here’s an example using one batt of the Crown Jewels Luxury Sock Blend (superwash merino and tussah silk). Top: the batts. Middle: the single. Bottom: the 2-ply sock yarn after washing. This is a 2-ply yarn; the skein came to 145 yards, and weighs […]

Googling around for something or other, I ran across this link: FRANQUEMONT, Chris, The Chinchero Center for Traditional Culture, Cultural Survival 6.4, October 1982. I’d just like to say that typing in a reference and putting a link in it also gave me a moment of torturous flashback to years of parsing those with Perl, […]