I've had a beyond wonderful time up in Scandinavia - but I can't tell you anything specific about the details of the project part at this time, as the team wants to have good, solid results from their tests before anything gets written about it on the internet. So for now, you're stuck with the abstract available on the CTR website... and the short video there. The team, by the way, was a group of utterly wonderful people, and it was pure pleasure to work together with them.

What I can tell you, too, is that learned a few interesting things about my spinning - for instance, that I move very little apart from what is necessary, and that I can actually spin decent yarn with a very small, very light spindle. The moment this small spindle clicked for me was a total delight, and I spent the rest of the day, and a good bit of the next one, marvelling about how workable it was. Mind you - I don't think I will become best friends with tiny spindles now, but we will be able to develop a good working relationship. Plus it made me reconsider park-and-draft as a production technique, something I had only seen as a method to use while learning and before progressing to "proper" spinning.

I've also learned that Swedish cinnamon rolls are the originals, with a different dough than the Danish ones; that the Danes are utterly incredibly good at making marshmallow puffs; that Scandinavia is so much more of paying with card and not cash than Germany; that both Copenhagen and Lund are very bicycle-friendly; that public transport there is, compared to Germany, quite affordable and very good; that there is a really nice bouldering gym in Copenhagen; and that bringing a tiny immersion heater and a few bags of tea along with my trusty thermos mug (that travels with me about anywhere) makes a huge difference to my comfort levels in the evenings, sitting on my own in a hotel room somewhere.

Did I say back to the usual stuff yesterday? Well, this year is starting off with exciting things only; for one thing, getting the Bernuthsfeld stuff to a close. (There's just a few more patches to decide upon and to sew in, and the shirt to make. I've already cut most of it, and the rest will be done once I get confirmation on the measurements so it will actually fit the figurine. Nothing worse than sewing something and then finding out it won't go onto the body it is supposed to dress!)

But wait, there's more!

When I was at NESAT last year, Eva Andersson Strand gave a presentation about one of the current projects at the CTR, called "Capturing our intangible past". You can read a bit of an introduction on the CTR website.

One of the aims is to get a better idea of craft knowledge and how to capture it. If you've ever tried to learn a craft skill from a description in a book, you will know that this can be rather difficult - and the motion capture might be helpful in isolating relevant motions without having too much data. If this works, it might also be a good method to record practical knowledge. There's still more, though - plans are to combine the motion capture with an EEG to get an idea of brain activity while doing the craft.

The research group is currently focusing on spinning as a craft, and you can imagine my delight on being asked if I'd like to participate in their study. So I'll be travelling to Lund later this month, to get lots of recording bitsies stuck onto me and to do some spinning. I'm beyond excited, and still can't believe something this cool is coming my way!

 

What about these small spindle wheels with crank drive, though? They did get a mention already. Usually, the really small ones are winding wheels to wind bobbins or pirns for weaving, and are not really suitable for spinning. That does not mean they cannot be used for spinning at all - they can, and I know of a few people who have used them for just that, and there are even a few old illustrations showing them used as spinning wheels - though these might not be the really small ones, but medium-sized wheels.

[caption id="attachment_3350" align="alignnone" width="1775"] Detail from: Tobit en Anna met het geitje, Symon Novelanus, 1560 - 1590; etching, h 213mm × w 180mm. Rijksmuseum NL, see the original file here.


In my opinion, centre-crank-driven wheels are not really suited for production spinning due to the stop-and-start procedure already mentioned in depth. On old illustrations, these smaller spindle-equipped wheels are often found in the context of weaving workshops - there might also be some spinning shown in these pictures, but the presence of looms makes it pretty clear to me that we have winding wheels in action here.

Small wheels, centre-crank-driven and equipped with a flyer, however, are a different beast altogether, and they were definitely used for spinning, as lots and lots of pictures show.

[caption id="attachment_3351" align="alignnone" width="862"] Detail of Arbeidzaamheid, Crispijn van de Passe (I), 1589 - 1611, engraving, h 211mm × w 144mm. Rijksmuseum NL, see the original file here.


The game-changer here is the flyer, though, as it eliminates the need to stop and start the drive wheel by conveniently twisting and winding the spun yarn at the same time. So once you've brought your wheel up to convenient speed, you can happily crank on to keep that speed and spin with your free hand.

[caption id="attachment_3349" align="alignnone" width="925"] Old Woman Spinning, Nicolaes Maes, 1650 - 1660; oil on canvas, h 63cm × w 55cm × d 9cm.
Rijksmuseum NL, see the original file here.


So - centre-crank driven wheel with spindle - winding wheel, centre-crank driven wheel with flyer - spinning wheel; though this is not a Great Wheel, then, obviously.

Also obviously, turning the crank requires one hand, leaving only one hand free for drafting. This means these wheels are always shown with an attached or accompanying distaff to hold the fibre and provide some resistance for drafting. Since the speed that you can build up turning the crank on the small wheel and the ratio between the wheel and the flyer pulley is not going to be very high, these wheels will not give you a yarn with particularly high twist, and the bobbins do not look large enough to accommodate sensible quantities of really thick yarn, which would be nicely stable with relatively little twist. So my personal opinion is that these spinning tools were predominantly used for flax/hemp/nettle, long fibres that do not need a large amount of twist and that can be drafted quite easily with one hand only.

Now that you know my thoughts on what is important on a spindle wheel for spinning, you might want to check out what other people think, or get some more information about these wheels, and a few other perspectives on them

As usual, there's some stuff to be found on the Internets. One very nice article with pictures of different kinds of spindle bearings on Great Wheels is the one Lee Juvan wrote for Knitty. She also lists some literature in that piece, including literature for tips on how to spin with this drafting style. Another collection of spindle wheel heads can be found here, including a nice example of a Minor's Head. Another several examples are in the collection of Old Sturbridge Village Museum.

If you want to buy an antique (or even a modern) Great Wheel for your spinning, I'd strongly recommend to take a look at the wheel and try before you buy. This, obviously, might not be possible in all cases - the wheel might need some tender loving care, or work being done, before it will spin, or it might be too far away for you to travel before buying. In this case, you'll have to depend on the seller's description plus photographs and your own judgement - and in the end, hope that you are lucky and get what you are looking for. Blind-buying spinning wheels of any kind is not something I'd recommend, but if you have to, don't hesitate to ask for detail pictures of crucial bits, or specific questions about the wheel and its parts.

If you are looking into building one of these beasts yourself, there's one whole issue about Great Wheels in the Spinning Wheel Sleuth, a newsletter just about spinning wheels - it's the October 2014 issue. You can also check out the articles on this blog tagged "building a Whool Wheel", and feel free to ask questions in the comments - I'll try to be as helpful as possible.

Whether you are planning to do the building yourself or have a woodworker/spinning wheel maker do it for you, previous experience with ordering tools from craftspeople has taught me this: Make sure the person building the thing really, really understands what are the important bits, how the thing works, and how it is going to be used. If you have not spun on a Great Wheel before, I'd advise you to try and get that experience before you get one yourself, whatever way you will use to get it. Having a personal experience and understanding how the process works will help you explain to your crafter what to watch out for.

When planning out the wheel, make sure you pay attention to where the wheel hub will be, height-wise, compared to you as the spinner - you want it at a place where you can comfortably keep the wheel in motion without bending down or stretching up. Make sure the bench construction carrying the wheel is sturdy enough to support the wheel without wobbling. Alignment of the wheel and spindle, as well as appropriate weight for the wheel (as light as possible would be my advice) are the other key points.

Make a list beforehand of the things that are important for you. Make drawings. Then make sure the important things are all duly understood, and incorporated into the design. Communication with crafters can be difficult if they have no understanding on how this wheel works, and chances are high that your normal woodworker, or even your normal modern-ish flyer spinning wheel maker, will not know how Great Wheels tick, and what to look out for. So be prepared - maybe even bring a video showing how spinning is done on such a wheel.

Happy hunting, building or commissioning your wheel!

Occasionally, I get questions about spindle wheels in my mail, usually from people on the hunt for one, and sometimes including the question about where mine is from. There's several possibilites to get one - ebay is certainly one, though you'll have to have it shipped, or find a way to get it transported to you, which might be difficult, as these wheels tend to be rather large. There's woodworkers who might be willing to make one, or you can go for it and make one yourself, like I did. There's one plan available on how to build a wheel, and I think I actually did buy that plan at one point, years and years ago, but never actually used it.

No matter which way you are going to go for, the most important thing, in my opinion, is that you know what to look at so you get an actual working, functioning tool. So what are the important bits of a Great Wheel, or Spindle Wheel?

Obviously, since it's called a Spindle Wheel, one of the important bits is... the spindle. The second important bit is the wheel itself. Let's start with the latter.

The wheel has to hold and take along the driveband which in turn moves the spindle itself, which is usually set into a bit of wood with one or several grooves to hold the driveband. In some cases, there's an additional ratio-changing construction between the main wheel and the spindle, called a Minor's Head or sometimes Miner's Head.

The important things here are: The wheel has to be aligned well enough with the spindle or minor's head to avoid sideways pull on the driveband; the spindle has to turn smoothly in its bearings (which can take any number of shapes), and tension of the drive band needs to be high enough to avoid (too much) slippage, but otherwise as low as possible (as usual on spinning wheels). The spindle should be straight and taper towards a point; that point does not need to be needle-sharp, but it should be pretty pointy, as when spinning, the thread glides over the spindle tip with each rotation. So if your spindle wobbles, and/or has a broad tip, this adds to the "yank" you will get when the yarn goes over the tip. Less yanking means you have a smoother spinning feeling, and I find it easier to do a good, even yarn with a smooth spinning feeling.

The second important bit, the wheel. Here's where it gets interesting.

Medieval Great Wheels are great because there is no Minor's Head, so you need to get all of your rotational speed needs satisfied by the ratio between wheel and spindle. For a rather high-twist yarn, which we will assume is the goal of the medieval spinner in most cases, this means you want a big ratio so you don't spend an eternity turning the wheel... and that means: small spindle pulley wheel diameter, large wheel. This is still the case with the later wheels, though you can get a higher ratio with a smaller main wheel when using a Minor's Head (which was patented by Amos Minor or Miner - both variations of the name can be found - in 1810). The Knitting Geneaologist also has an interesting article about the Great Wheel vs. the flyer wheel (inspired by someone else's blog post, but an interesting read even if you don't look at the inspiration).

Since you have to turn the wheel with one hand, there's two options... in theory. Option one is one-sided mounting of the wheel, which is what you typically see on the Great Wheels. Option two is mounting the wheel with an axle on both sides in two supports, and fixing a crank to the axle on one side so you can turn the wheel with the crank. This is sometimes seen on small wheels with a spindle, and quite common on early flyer wheels. It is not a true option for a Great Wheel, though - because of the spinning procedure.

When spinning on a Great Wheel, you have a non-continuous process, just like in spindle spinning. This means you turn the wheel and draft your fiber, then turn some more until you have sufficient twist in the yarn. During this process, the yarn glides over the top of the spindle tip, forming a spiral from the base of the spindle (where you store your finished yarn) to its tip. Once your length is spun, you have to stop the wheel, turn it backwards a little to un-wind the spiral back to the spindle base, and then start turning it again in spinning direction to first wind up the finished yarn, then spin the next length.


This means you have to stop and speed up your wheel all the time while spinning, all with one hand. If you are doing this with a little crank in the middle of the wheel, it is much, much harder to do than when you can access the whole length of the wheel spoke - you can slide your hand towards the rim of the wheel for stopping and starting, getting a much better leverage and thus needing much less strength, and slide it towards the hub to maintain rotational speed with small, easy motions of your hand and arm.

The starting and stopping all the time also explains why the wheels on this spinning tool look so light and airy, and don't have the solid rims we know from pedal-driven flyer spinning wheels. From my own experience, I can tell you that each gram does count when you are spinning, and you want your wheel to be as light as possible. The wheel on my own construction weighs in at about 2.7 kg, and that is with a very wide rim (about 11 cm) and a diameter of 115 cm. When I start spinning, it seems all light and nice and fine, but after a while, you can really feel the arm muscles getting more and more tired - it definitely does need training, and building up some endurance in the arm.

So this is why you want a wheel that turns easily in its bearing (even though that can be as simple as a metal axle through a block of wood, like in my case) and does not weigh much - which is achieved by slender spokes and a rim that is not from solid pieces of wood, but from a steam-bent strip of wood. The smaller the distance between your spindle and your drive wheel, and the less inherently wobbly your construction, the narrower this rim can be. My wheel is designed to be taken apart and travel, which is not what the original wheels would have done, so I went for a really wide rim. This has proved to be a good idea - I've had the driveband wander off the drive wheel even with this large width when my things were not properly aligned, as they tend to do right after setting up.

So, to sum up - non-wobbly, straight, adequately pointy spindle, in good alignment with a light, large drive wheel that is mounted on one side only. These are the things that will make your Great Wheel a great tool.

 

I've told you about my spinning project, and my glorious decision to ply the yarn spun from the dyed top with nice, grey Gotland yarn, to get more length. Well, it is finished now, and it looks really nice. It also knits nicely, and results in a pleasing fabric. Only problem?

It's not much. I have 278 g of yarn, but this weight only runs to a scant 458 m according to my length-measuring thingie. (Damn you, high twist resulting in high-density yarn!) Which is definitely not enough for something sweater-like... so now I have the usual not-enough-yarn problem again.

Sigh.

Maybe if I spin up some more plain Gotland, ply that, and use the two threads alternatingly?

While I was at it, and the Zwirnzwerg was out, I finally finished spinning up that nice, dyed top that had been hanging out here for a good while. It was about 150 g altogether, which means it's a rather generous amount for a pair of socks, but way too little for anything sweater-like. I have more than enough pairs of socks, though (the sock drawer is overflowing), and I also have more scarf- or shawl-like objects than I actually wear. Same goes for hats. Which means... sweater-like things are currently high on the list of stuff I'd like to knit.

So out came some of the Gotland sheep wool. There must be an upside to having different kinds of wool for sale, right? And obviously, from time to time, I have to check whether the quality is good and it spins nicely...

Well, I can tell you - it did. The fibre is really lovely, with a soft, silky feel to it, and the colour is ever so slightly variegated, since the grey effect is achieved by a mix of dark and white individual fibres. It looks very nice, and very chic all on its own.

So. Spinning took place, which means that after a while, I had this:


...which turns into something like this when plied together:


And that's the current status. Which will not progress at all until tonight, when I will hopefully have a nice hour or two on the sofa, with the spinning dwarf in front of me, humming away quietly and turning these two singles into lovely, lovely yarn to knit with...