Making Punis From Roving

Day 162: Having discovered the joys of spinning cotton from punis, I will never go back to my old method of tearing off little bits of roving to pre-draft (i.e., stretch out and loosen the fibers). Instead, I'm making my own punis from the roving, using a cotton carder (one with fine, straight teeth) and my best blending board technique to prepare a small batt. I cover roughly a sixth of the carder with cotton, then carefully pinch the tips of the fibers between two knitting needles and pull the fibers through the carder teeth as I roll the needles, lifting the cotton slightly as I do so. Pulling too hard or rolling too tightly compacts the puni and makes it difficult to spin. Once the material is free of the carder, the knitting needles can be pulled out and the finished puni added to the box. One I have a boxful, I will begin spinning on the charkha wheel without having to worry about prepping another batch of fiber for several hours.

Spinning Plant Hair

Day 153: Many of my fiberarts crafts tend to be seasonal, depending on the amount of available natural light and the colour of the material with which I am working. When spinning wool on my Louët wheel, it's a simple matter to change the contrast by laying a lighter or darker piece of fabric across my knees. However, with the charkha wheel, I'm working against a backdrop of grey carpet, so at least with tan cotton fiber, I need more "window light" on the developing thread. I put the charkha away last fall, and it sat on the bookshelf for the dark months of winter. I pulled it out a few days ago, spun a few chunks of roving just to be sure I hadn't lost my touch, and then it occurred to me that making my own punis (a miniature version of the rolags familiar to wool spinners) would allow me to spin longer without having to fuss with prepping another bit of cotton. I had not spun from a puni previously because they are rarely (if ever) available in any colour other than white, and at a much higher price per ounce than dyed roving. Having worked through the many quirks of spinning with cotton told me to beware of lumps and to roll the "mini-rolags" loosely, both easy to achieve by manually loading the roving onto a 2" x 4" section of a single cotton carder. Then, with the tips of the cotton fibers pinched between two knitting needles, I rolled the batt off the carder teeth. It was much easier to do than anticipated, and in no time, I had a boxful of punis ready to be spun. After making a few tweaks to the way I handled the feed of unspun fiber, I found to my delight that spinning from punis was a huge improvement on spinning from roving. After an hour or so, I had a full tahkli spindle, ready to ply with the thread on the one I'd put away last fall.

Rookie Mistake

Day 150: To put this essay in the proper perspective, you must understand that I learned how to spin before I entered kindergarten. Admittedly, I could only make a simple and lumpy single strand, and I was unaware of the nuances in the twist (S versus Z), but I feel I can still claim to knowing how to spin for most of my many years of life. However, I am fairly new to spinning cotton. Nevertheless, that doesn't excuse making a rookie mistake.

I sat down yesterday morning to ply from two full tahklis, thinking I'd perform the task with my regular spinning wheel as I usually do. I tied the ends together on the leader and began treadling. Almost immediately, one of the strands broke. That's a common problem with cotton which hasn't been sufficiently twisted, and because I was at the end of the strand, I thought that was the cause. I re-tied and tried again, but had only spun a few inches before the strand broke again. Then I noticed something. One of the singles was twisting, the other untwisting. Both should have been untwisting slightly as they plied together. I looked more closely, and discovered the problem. One was twisted Z, the other S. Apparently when setting up the charkha wheel, I had inadvertently reversed the direction of spin for the second tahkli. At this point, I had a couple of options. I could spin more of each twist on two fresh tahklis, or I could wind off all the S-twisted thread and ply it with itself. I decided to follow the latter course, and began winding a "plying bracelet" on my hand.

What is a plying bracelet? I knew someone would ask. I have to say that the primitive person who came up with this seemingly impossible piece of engineering was the Einstein of their times. Basically, it's rat's-nest of single-ply thread, wound around fingers and palm in a complex pattern and then slipped onto the wrist, a tangled mess (or so it would seem) which feeds from both ends simultaneously to ply with itself. The principle works very well with wool, but with the much more fragile cotton thread, I wasn't convinced I'd be able to salvage my work. In fact, I was unable to ply from the bracelet using the spinning wheel, and thus resorted to putting it on a manual tahkli. The process of plying 38.5 meters of thread took over an hour, as I constantly had to remind myself to twirl the tahkli counter-intuitively. I achieved my goal without any breakage, in itself a milestone in the art of spinning cotton.

Alike But Different

Day 149: As I mentioned yesterday, spinning wool and spinning cotton require two separate skill sets. Both are alike in some regards, but also quite different from each other in the same manner, one might say, as barbering is to dog-trimming. In this case, the overlap is in the fact that fibers are being twisted together to form a cohesive strand of thread/yarn by using a rotating spindle of some sort. That said, the difference lies in the length of the fiber being spun. If "wool" is defined as coming from sheep (as opposed to rabbits, goats, etc.), almost any type is considered "long staple," i.e., having individual fibers an inch or more in length. On the other hand, cotton has a "short staple." Its individual fibers are roughly half an inch long. This means that more twist has to be imparted to a cotton thread than to a wool thread or it will come apart. Cotton is spun with a great number of revolutions of the spindle on which it is wound, even when the resultant thread is the same diameter as one spun in wool. In comparison, the wool fibers in that lovely multi-coloured top are about five inches long. Now you might suppose that it would take longer to spin 50 yards of cotton thread than it would for wool, but in fact because the spindle (tahkli) rotates so much faster, the time is fairly close to being the same.

Spinning Cotton With A Tahkli

Day 171: Looking at the top photo, you might think, "Oh, she's spinning yarn with a drop spindle," but the bottom photo puts my latest fiber-arts adventure into a different perspective. The spool of thread is there for size comparison only. I thought you might miss the needle without something to draw your attention to it. I am spinning cotton using a "supported spindle" device known as a tahkli. It works on the same principle as a drop spindle, but as you can see, the resultant product is much finer.

Cotton is a short-staple fiber, which is to say that the individual fibers are much shorter than those found in wool. Consequently, the device on which cotton is spun must be able to impart a lot of twist in a short distance. Some spinning wheels have a ratio which is high enough that cotton can be spun on them under low tension, but mine is a relatively "slow" wheel and isn't capable of supplying the necessary amount of twist to thread before it is drawn onto the bobbin. There are wheels made expressly for spinning cotton, the most common being the charkha as seen throughout India (-cough- waiting for the stimulus check to arrive...).

The tahkli is the simplest form of "spinning wheel" possible. Spin is imparted to the shaft by the fingers with the pointed end resting in a bowl. The whorl (in this case, a brass disk) at the base keeps it spinning for a long time while it is held upright by the newly forming thread. The loose cotton fiber is held in one hand and drawn out slowly until it reaches a comfortable arm's-length and then is pinched while the tahkli is spun several times to add twist. Then the thread is wound onto the shaft and the process repeats.

Even with my years of experience at the spinning wheel, it took me the better part of an afternoon and about a quarter ounce of cotton before I was able to make a satisfactory thread. I watched a dozen or so YouTube videos, most of which offered at least one clue into the device's operation. None covered the full process adequately. How to start the thread was discussed by one presenter, how to remove slubs by another, how to wind the cone by yet another. I was struggling and getting a little frustrated with how frequently my thread pulled apart or got too thin or too thick, but finally I hit on one description of how to hold the unspun fiber ("loosely"), and that simple suggestion provided the key to being able to spin a realtively consistent strong and fine thread. I won't say I have the technique perfected yet, but at least I'm well on my way to being able to spin my own cotton threads for incorporation into some very special weavings.