I've taken a few closeup photos of the sailcloth after washing, and, well, have a look for yourself:


Now... it looks to me as if the twist angle of the white yarn is about the same or seems to be even slightly lower than it was when spinning (I have the reference cards to compare with), but the brown weft yarn now clearly looks higher-twist than what I spun (which was about 30° approximately). This is definitely... interesting.

Next step for the cloth will be getting fulled, and I'll take another closeup photo then and give it another reading. But my first conclusion from all this looking at twists and getting stuff woven and comparing is: Twist angles lie. Do not trust that they are spun like what they appear to be in a finished cloth - and in further conclusion: If you need to do a hair-splittingly exact replica of a piece of fabric, you will have to do test-spinning and test-weaving and look at the angles in the finished fabric to figure out what you will have to spin.

Good thing I'm already mildly crazy, or that would drive me towards craziness indeed. Can't that textile stuff be straightforward once, just for a change? Please?

Today, a lovely green box came in the post - and inside was the sailcloth textile, fresh off the loom.

Here is a sneak peek at the cloth, in its raw state:


As it's a 2/1 twill, the two sides look differently thanks to the different colours of warp and weft.

The cloth is currently drying after a first wash, and then it will get its picture taken again, and after that... I will put my foot down. And again. And again... until it is slightly fulled.

Though I'll finish the rest of the spinning first, I think!

I've done a few more shenanigans with the spinning angle changes conundrum - and here are pictures for you to look at.

Here's a pic of yarn before steaming:


and of a second bit of yarn after steaming:


and the same yarn used as weft for weaving a sample:

[caption id="attachment_2887" align="alignnone" width="640"] Weft is running vertically here, and the thing is quite weft-faced plain weave (I only had a puny frame with huuuuge warp spacing for the quick test...). I'd have preferred a more balanced plain weave, but well. Maybe next time.


In the weaving, the warp yarn was spun to about the same spinning angle, and the same thickness, only in the other direction. (Again - hitting an exact angle and keeping to exactly that angle is really hard, and there will always be digressions.)

So. Can you see differences?

The emballage has been woven, and has come back to me, and it is wonderful. A thick, heavy cloth from thick, heavy two-ply yarns, it does feel like something trustworthy enough to pack valuable goods and protect them on long journeys.

Here's a picture of the cloth, raw off the loom:


The cloth is looking even better now after a nice wash to finish it, and it's currently hanging out to dry... and once it is dry, I can get the comparison photo for after the wash, and then set out to cut it into the required parts and secure the edges of the individual pieces.

If you're a spinner, you will probably know what "setting the twist" means. For those of you who don't know what that is about, let me explain.

When you spin yarn, you twist fibres together, pressing their surfaces onto each other. Friction between these surfaces gives the thread its stability - hence a thread with more twist is usually a stronger thread. Yarn thickness, fibre length and fibre surface all influence how much twist is needed for a certain amount of yarn strength.

Twisting these fibres together means inserting energy into a system - that is what you do when you flick the spindle or treadle the wheel. This energy (and may the proper natural scientists please forgive any odd wording) is stored in the fibres. Now when you let go of the piece of twisted yarn, the fibres want to return to their relaxed state (and there's probably something that could be said about the laws of thermodynamics here, or something equally smart). So... they will untwist as far as possible.

"Setting the twist" means  counteracting this, by getting the individual fibres settled into their new shape. This can be done by time (just letting the yarn sit will eventually deform the fibres) or be sped up by the application of heat and moisture. So dunking the skein in hot water, then hanging it up (possibly a little bit weighted, so the yarns remain stretched out) will help nicely. For those of us with less time, or less patience, or wanting to take before and after pictures, a steam cleaner will also deliver heat and moisture, conveniently at the push of a button.

So. I always thought that setting the twist would do just that - set the twist in the yarn, sort of freeze it in its current state. However, there seems to be something more happening here:

[caption id="attachment_2867" align="alignnone" width="640"] Yarn before and after steam treatment - you can see how the knot of the marking yarn moves. There is definitely a difference in the yarn after steaming!


Here's a closeup of the part with the marked yarn:


I haven't measured yet if the twist angle changes noticeably, but the yarns definitely move and shift and something happens to them when they get treated. Some of that movement could be explained by the steam shifting the threads, but not all of it - I tried not to get too close with the nozzle and be gentle enough to avoid shifting the yarn with the steam stream, and still things happened.

Well. Who would have guessed that...

Guess what is happening here?

Right. More yarn:

One batch still on the skeiner...


and one batch already off it and waiting for its colleague.


Both are waiting for a third one, and then I'll have done enough for the weft of the next batch. After that, it's straight on to the warp - which will have a little more twist than the weft, and will be spun in the other direction, and will be from a different kind of wool, and a little thinner. (This weft, by the way, is fairly thick with about 1.5-2 mm.)

With the last batch of this weft, I'm planning to do a little photo documentation of the setting effects - it does look like things happen to the yarn and the yarn twist angle between spinning, setting the twist and weaving, so the yarn in the woven fabric is a little different from the yarn right after spinning. It might be subtle, though, but I am definitely looking into that a bit. So: next skein - photo op before setting the twist (which I'm doing by steaming the yarn enthusiastically) and after.

This, my dear readers, is eighthundredandseventy metres of Coburg Fuchsschaf two-ply:


weighing in at 1630 grams. It is a honking big chunk of yarn, and it will travel off now to be woven into a fabric of the kind once used for packing up stuff.

Yay.