Production spinning - as in making lots and lots of yarn, as consistently as possible, for a specific project - is a nice thing, but it's also a time-consuming task. So before you dive into a spinning project for a handwoven cloth or a hand-knitted sweater (and I'm not talking about a bulky baby sweater here), it is well worth investing some time and effort to make sure that you are not going to sink with your project half-way. So here are some things about production spinning that I find helpful - and maybe you will, too.

1. Have a solid idea of what you want.
   In case where you are spinning for a fabric reproduction, that is rather easy as it is predetermined by the original. When you are spinning for something else, though, you are free to decide what you want - lots of twist, and thus a resilient and hard yarn? or rather a softer yarn that might not be as durable? Single or plied? Thick or thin? You might want to do a few test runs to find out if the thing you are spinning really suits the thing you want to make with it later - you don't want to invest many, many spinning hours to sit on a lot of handspun that you can't use afterwards.
2. Get or make yourself a reference thingie.
   Once you have figured out what you want, make sure you'll be able to spin exactly that kind of yarn. Yes, that sounds like a Thank You Captain Obvious, but chances are that you might drift away from the yarn you make at the start. Changes in fitness level, concentration level, the amount of attention you pay, how tense and excited you are at the start versus a bit in - all these can affect the yarn you are spinning. Danger of drifting off what you planned is higher if the yarn you are aiming for is further away from your "mindless spinning standard yarn" - so you will want something to compare your current spinning to, allowing you to recalibrate in case of drifting. This something can be a spinning angle and thickness card like the one I use, or a sample piece of your test yarn stuck onto a card. Whatever you use, it should allow you to compare both the thickness and the amount of twist of your current yarn with your goal yarn. Use it periodically, for instance when you need to stop spinning anyway because you need to have a sip of tea, or change the hook on the spinning wheel flyer. Making these checks a habit will not lose you a lot of time, but might just save you a bad disappointment later.
3. Be consistent.
   Hand-spun yarns will always have irregularities; it's in the nature of the thing and cannot be avoided. Sometimes they are caused by the fibres, sometimes by a bit of inattention of the spinner, or a snag by the tool. They just do happen.
   However, you can try keeping them down as much as possible by having as much consistency as possible. Set up your workplace the same way, have the same good suitable lighting, the same position or seat, prep your fibre the same way - it will all help.
4. Prepare your fibre.
   Speaking of fibre prep, this is helpful even if you are working with industrially prepared fibre (just like I do for those projects, usually). Your batt or top will have sat for a while before you take it into your hands for spinning, and it might be compressed; if it was dyed after combing or carding, it will definitely be slightly felty. Even if you don't see any compression, though, it is a good idea to loosen up the fibres by pre-drafting them.
   For the pre-drafting, take the top or the strip of batt, grab the end and gently pull on the fibres until they start to move apart. Change your grip to the place where they moved, and repeat the procedure, working your way along your top or batt. This loosens up the compressed fibres and makes your drafting for spinning much smoother and easier.
   For better consistency, I use a diz for that (though I am generous and call everything with a hole that I use for drafting a diz). The diz also clearly indicates when I am nearing the end of the pre-drafted part of my top (I don't tear off pieces if I can avoid it) and have to pre-draft some more.
5. Watch yourself, and take breaks as necessary.
   This ties in with the drifting bit - spinning, especially if it is not your can-do-it-in-my-sleep yarn, takes concentration. After a while, this will result in less consistent drafting, more variation, slower speed or something else, or a combination of whatever you are prone to do when your attention gets worse. So keep an eye on your spinning efficiency, and take a break, or stop for the day when the symptoms get bad enough. (You get to decide yourself when that is. If you don't care about a bit more variation in the yarn and have to get it finished soon, you will obviously have a different break-off point than somebody trying to go for the perfect yarn and having lots of time to do that.)
6. Calculate for enough time.
   Speaking of breaks, and stops - make sure you have calculated for enough time for your spinning project. Spinning is not a fast thing, and you might not be able to spend several hours per day on it either, depending on the project, your other work or obligations, and your level of practice.
   Also - when calculating approximate work time needed, don't forget that you also have to get the yarn off the bobbins and set the twist. Skeining off a few hundred or even a few thousand metres of yarn is not done in split seconds!
7. Get (and make!) enough material.
   That should be obvious, but it is worth mentioning it - when you are buying your material, make sure you get enough. Especially if you are doing high-twist yarns, they will have more weight at the same thickness than low-twist, fluffy yarns... and running out of material just before the end is not only awkward, but also annoying.
   Speaking of which - when spinning specific amounts, go a little over as well to make sure you have a bit of spare in case there are more breaks that need to be fixed, or something else goes wrong. Yes, theoretically you could just spin up more when it is needed, but in practice... that is also really annoying. And if you are like me, you will want to be finished with that step at some point!

This, my dear readers, is the current status of the spinning spree:


Well, actually, that is not true. That was the status before I spent a good hour and a half getting the yarn onto the skeiner and setting the twist. This is the actual current status of the spinning spree:


2260 metres of yarn, about 0.5 mm in diameter, with a twist angle of about 45°. That is approximately two thirds of what I need of this yarn.

Tomorrow, I'll take it off and see how much it weighs - and then it will sit and wait for its companions. One more skein (though smaller than this one) for the first warp to be done, and then the same in the other direction... and that will do for the first (and largest) batch of spinning.

Whee.

I've been spinning some more (obviously), but the bobbin is still not full. Which is partly due to the fact that I can't spin for a solid whole day - for one thing, there are some other work tasks to be done. Apart from that, though, and even more important: There's a limit to holding up the concentration necessary to do the yarn properly, so I have to take breaks between spinning sessions, and there's an overall limit to how many sessions I can fit into a day. This is different from day to day, depending on how fit I am and how nicely it goes, but inevitably, at one point, there's just too much variation for my taste coming in, and that means it is time to stop for the day.

Here's the current status of the bobbin:


Oh, and here is a closeup picture of the yarn on the bobbin... lying nicely and neatly side-by-side. Though the wool looks really homogenously white in the top, there's an amazing amount of pigmented fibres when you look closely at the yarn:


Speaking of pigmented fibres - I'm done with about a third, probably a little more, of the first batch of yarn (which, incidentally, is also the largest one). Next batch will be the same thickness, but the other twist direction and a little less hard-spun than the current one, and with pigmented fibres. They are already sitting here, having arrived today, and I'm really looking forward to having them run through my fingers. Soon. Soon...

This, here, is what two and a half hours' worth of spinning looks like on the bobbin:

[caption id="attachment_2795" align="alignnone" width="640"] The thread is about 0.5 mm in diameter and has a twist angle of about 45° - at least that is what I'm aiming for...


Not very impressive, right? However, this means there is a lot of space on the bobbin for yarn - which is good, because it means I can spin a really large batch at once and thus have a very long continuous thread, nice for warping.

I'm already curious to find out how many metres will fit onto that bobbin if I fill it up... and I'm pretty sure I will be able to fill it up, as a good 3 kilometres of this yarn have to be spun.

Sarah Goslee, together with a friend, is proposing a new study group about archaeological textiles in the Complex Weaver's group. That does sound interesting - I've read a few of the newsletters from the Medieval Textiles group, but being no proper weaver myself, I never joined or participated. The new group will have a much broader focus, and I will definitely keep an eye on its development.

It's all still in the planning stages, but you can read more about it on her blog.

There's two things I like to moan and groan about when chatting fabrics - number one: you just can't get the yarns anymore (or the guys to weave these yarns), and number two: there's a lot of modern fabrics that have no proper selvedges anymore.

And that's to do with the looms. Thing is - if you want to sell cheap fabrics, you need to have a loom that is fast, and work with materials that don't have a life of their own. Which means limp yarns, not spun as tightly old-fashioned hand-spun ones, in
a loom that is really, really fast... and these things will not give you proper selvedges.

Back when weaving was done with a shuttle, and where it is still done in this manner, you pass the shuttle through the shed, change sheds and pass the shuttle back. The thread, thus, makes a U-turn around the outermost thread(s) of your fabric. Adding in an extra thread or two to strengthen the selvedge was a well-known and quite commonly used thing, and having good selvedges that run straight and are even are a sign of good quality weaving.

If you want a fabric that meets all the criteria of a historical fabric, you have to have a good old-fashioned selvedge like that. Which also explains why I'm always happy to get something like this:


That is a proper, nice selvedge; a little bit stronger than the rest of the fabric but not too different in weave or density, and there's no plastic strengthening thread added to it. You can join two of these selvedges with overcast stitch just like it was done back in the Middle Ages and be happy.

The next best thing, and a type of selvedge more commonly found in modern fabrics, is looking like this:


It's still a proper selvedge, though not as nice and sturdy, and quite wide if you don't want to have the change in weave type show on the surface. There's also often a messy-looking area between the weave proper and the selvedge, also nicely showing in this specimen here. I wouldn't join two of these with overcast stitch if the join will be visible later.

Now let's go a bit more modern, yes? Proper selvedges require shuttle looms. These old-fashioned shuttle looms are slow, and modern industry likes its stuff to be faster - time is money and so on. So there's another type of fabric edge which really can't be termed "selvedge" any more... this one.


These are done with help of jets or projectiles, requiring cut threads as the weft. These weft threads, if fine enough, can be even carried by an air jet or a water jet. The result? A very, very fast loom (these are the fastest type today) but no selvedge whatsoever. The edges are, basically, cut edges with a little fringe and maybe some stabiliser thread along the edge. If you wanted to use the selvedge for extra strength somewhere... you're out of luck with this fabric type. If you wanted it to show somewhere... same thing applies. If you were planning to cut down on your sewing and hemming time with use of the selvedge, you just got a nasty surprise. You will have to treat every edge of this fabric like a cut edge, because that is what it is.

And then there's another little nasty surprise if you are looking for pure wool fabric in narrow widths. One of the two edges is a perfectly fine, normal selvedge, usually not reinforced by a double thread or anything.


The other edge, however... is not a proper selvedge. In fact, it's more like one of the cut-thread edges, only with a fold in the thread instead of the cut. The edge is held together by a fine, tiny crochet chain, usually done with a very fine thread made from man-made fibre.




It's not very obvious, and won't be visible or noticeable to most people, but it's not acceptable in case you want to have an as-authentic-as-possible equipment. If you remove the chain, you also remove the structural integrity of that edge.


If you want to have a pure wool band without that chain, though, you can take a sufficient length of the weft thread, a needle with a blunt tip and a large enough eye, remove the crochet chain and thread the extra thread through each of the edge loops. It might be advisable to remove the outermost warp thread for that, and to stock up on enough chocolate and motivation-enhancing drinks before.

Fun. Right? Thank goodness there are still some old-fashioned shuttle looms running!

Here are, finally, the long-promised pictures from the last big project - clothing for the newly opened museum at Burg Grünwald, Munich area.

I have not been there yet and have not been able to find photos, but as the museum only re-opened at Easter after extensive work on the castle and a redesign of the exhibition, that is not quite unexpected.

So you are getting the piccies I took before sending off the garments... with kind permission of my (very patient, and very lovely) models.
Let's start close to earth...


Obviously a lady has to wear more than just stockings - here is the red dress with its yellow silk neckband, and the barbe-and-fillet in the Manesse style.


Another closeup of the buttons on the dress. I just like closeups of these guys.
 

And a closeup of the seam fixing the yellow silk of the neck opening decoration. This cost me a lot more nerves than I had anticipated - but it turned out nice in the end!


Here are both models, completely dressed with the exception of the man's overgarment, which was not finished at that time.

And finally, a few more closeups of the man's purple tunic:



... and one of his hood:



There. It did happen. Picture proven.