The Truth About "True Woolen"

I've been laying low and spinning for the past few weeks, with sporadic bursts of baking and holiday gatherings thrown in to keep things interesting. I've been pondering the projects I am taking on, preparing for my 2013 workshops, and writing. And all of this means I have been thinking way to much about the minutiae of our craft.

So I was deep in this place of over-thinking when the dreaded phrase that never fails to raise my blood pressure came up again. This phrase is one commonly used in technical spinning circles, but it's definition varies from expert to expert. It is a phrase that strikes terror in the hearts of spinners everywhere. And it is a lie. This phrase is "TRUE WOOLEN".

Spot the "true" woollen. C'mon, I dare ya!

 As spinners, we all want to do it "right". We want to make our yarns in the best traditional manner we can. But few of us actually understand the physics and mechanics of making the yarn, even the most experienced of us. We rely on the experts and gurus who have taught us for the correct language, the proper terminology, and the correct definition of the terms. As a teacher, I have seen dozens of people who have spun, successfully, for years suddenly throw everything they know out the window because a famous teacher told them that they were doing it "wrong".

Now, I am not a fan of the "there is no right or wrong" school of spinning, either. I do believe that some techniques are more effective than others, and that learning these techniques and refining them will make you a better spinner.  And, sometimes, you have to learn the less-effective techniques, too. Learning the "wrong" thing will often help you understand the "right" thing. There are several very effective ways to make yarn, each with its own virtues and shortcomings, each with a very specific outcome. It is learning which techniques works best for the result you want that sets you free to be a great spinner.

As I see it, the problem does not lie in the "right" and "wrong" techniques. It lies in the language we use to describe these techniques. And some of the most misleading and inaccurate language exists in the phrase "true woolen".

Here's what's wrong with that phrase: "true woolen" is far too often used to describe a drafting technique rather than the yarn. Woolen and worsted are words that describe YARNS, not techniques. I cringe every time I hear someone say, "I'm working on perfecting my worsted drafting." or some such other twaddle. (Though I will admit that I frequently joke that "that's some of the worsted drafting I've ever seen!") I reiterate: worsted is NOT a drafting technique. Nor is woollen. They are the resultant yarns.

Briefly, to clarify: A woolen yarn is one in which the fibres, after spinning, plying, and finishing, lie in a non-parallel arrangement. The fibres, when examined, will be jumbled in all directions, pushing outward and making a fuzzy, lofty yarn. A worsted yarn, on the other hand, is one in which the fibres, after spinning, plying, and finishing, lie parallel to each other. These fibres will be arranged in a smooth, linear manner, pulled close together and pushing up and down along the length of a smooth, compact yarn.

For the uninitiated, worsted is on the left, woolen is on the right.

What determines whether a yarn is woolen or worsted is NOT how long your drafting zone is, or how fast or slow you draft, or whether you double draft or not. It is how the twist enters the fibre and how it stays there. There are several steps to creating a woolen or a worsted yarn, which I will not go into in detail here today. Let it suffice to say that selection and preparation of fibres, spinning techniques (including spinning wheel set-up!), plying, and finishing techniques are all factors in making these different styles of yarns successfully. And the more of these steps that are appropriate to the style of the yarn, the closer to "true" woolen or worsted we get.

Woolen yarns are best spun from non-parallel arrangements of fibre, such as roving or rolags. However, there are ways of spinning parallel arrangements, such as sliver or top, to achieve a woolen result. It's just easier to start the way you intend to continue. Non-parallel arrangements will obviously be easier to turn into non-parallel yarns, and vice-versa for parallel arrangements. Drafting techniques that allow the fibres to stay non-parallel (i.e. by not pulling them out straight before allowing the twist in) will obviously keep those fibres in that configuration.

And it is at this point that I get a little testy. There is pretty much one way to draft a worsted yarn: by pulling the fibres straight and guiding twist in with your lead hand. There are several ways to draft a woolen yarn, all variations on a theme. We attenuate (pull the fibres into a thin line) and allow the twist to go where it will. We do not guide the twist in, we do not control or compact our fibres with our lead hand. We pull those fibres thin over a space of a few inches, or we can pull them out to the full extension of our arm. We can pinch fibres to control the rate at which the twist grabs them, or we can let the twist travel unimpeded. (We call the first "supported long draw" and the latter "unsupported long draw".) We can use a Scotch-tension wheel, or a bobbin-led, or a double-drive. Or a spindle. No matter how fast or slow we draft, no matter how long we pull back, these techniques all achieve the same result: a non-parallel yarn.

Adherents of the "true woolen" draft insist that we must draft quickly and with little control, relying on "double-drafting" (another bugaboo--don't get me started!) to smooth out our yarns. They sneer at slow, controlled drafting, or at "supported" drafting as being less than traditional and resulting in inferior yarns. They tell us that other methods make our yarns "too tight for woollen", or worse, the dreaded "semi-woolen".  They tell us that woolen yarns must be, by definition, uneven in the singles, lumpy and slubby. They tell us that we cannot make a lace-weight or thin woolen, that woolen must be thick to be lofty. They are wrong, or at least inaccurate, on all counts. The simple fact of the matter is, if you do not guide the twist into fully parallel fibres over a short, controlled space, you are making a woolen yarn. Tight, loose, even, uneven, thick, thin, semi-, hemi-, or demi-, WOOLEN.

 I think it is time to put a stop to this nonsense. We have got to stop labelling one drafting method as a "true woolen" technique, and we have to start looking at what the language of our craft means. Let's stop using the word "woolen" to talk about drafting and start using the proper words like long-draw and short-draw. Let's stop quibbling over "supported" and "unsupported". Let's make the yarn that we want to make, in the best way that works for us and stop putting false labels on the way we do it.

Lets make yarn that is true for us.

Why Wash?

So, I'm home and settled in and getting caught up on my emails.  I found this wonderful question on one of the lists I follow, and I just couldn't resist the opportunity:

Hi everyone - I have been thinking about washing yarn and setting twist, etc.. When you spin a yarn you always wash it to set the twist and also to get out any yuckies that are left. Then when you knit with this yarn, you wash or wet the piece again before you block. Could one save a step and just spin, knit and then wash? Has anybody done any experiments with this to see if there is a difference doing it one way or the other?

Well, it just so happens that I have done experiments, and here is what I have discovered:

YOU MUST  ALWAYS WASH AND SET YOUR TWIST BEFORE KNITTING OR WEAVING WITH YOUR HANDSPUN YARNS.

Okay, so I'm shouting.  But with good reason.  You see, when we spin, no matter what fibre we use, we are stretching the fibre out to it's full length (drafting), and then holding it under tension as we force twist into those stretched fibres.  The stretched and twisted fibres are then pulled onto a bobbin, maintaining the tension.  As long as we keep those fibres under tension, they will hold the twist exactly where we put it during the spinning.  The fibres wills stay elongated, the twist will lay dormant under the stress of the tension.  All is good, right?

Well, as long as that yarn stays on that bobbin, yes.  Sitting there on the bobbin, that yarn looks all smooth and balanced and pretty.  But looks can be deceiving.  That yarn is under tension.  It is not ready to relax and cooperate just yet.  When you wind the yarn off onto your niddy-noddy to make a skein, you see what happens to that yarn.

A well-spun, balanced yarn should come off of the bobbin with some residual twist.  If your yarn comes off and makes a perfect U, your yarn is actually underplied.  You want to see this yarn twist up like this.

Why?  Because, in order to have enough ply to hold together in the working and create a balanced, smooth fabric,  you have to ply your yarns with 2/3 the amount of the twist that you put into your singles.  If you ply at 1/2 the singles twist, you will find that your yarn is unstable and that your fabric will seem uneven and may even skew.  Trust me, I've tried it.

"Okay, Ms Smarty-Pants," you say.  "I don't wind my yarns off onto a niddy-noddy, I use a ball winder."

That's fine, but what you're doing when you do that is maintaining the tension that the yarn has been held under on the bobbin.  Until you start pulling that yarn out and knitting or warping with it.  Then all that tension lets go and the twist runs rampant.  Little pigtails start snarling the yarn, and, invariably the yarn snarls inside the ball, creating a tangle.  Who needs that?

When you put yarn in hot water, something wonderful happens.  The individual fibres relax and try to return to their natural state, releasing the tension that we have tugged into them.  They fall into a softer arrangement, and create more space in the sideways direction.  The twist then finds more space to spread itself out and no longer tries to pull those fibres in it's own direction.  Balance is achieved.

Now your yarns have that perfect U. 

I did this little demonstration with two different fibres, treating them both exactly the same after they came off the bobbin.  The orange skein is Corriedale top (wool) and the purple skein is silk.  As you can see, the setting of the twist is vital for balancing the yarns in both fibres, but far more so for the silk.

When you go to work with the yarns, washed or unwashed, you will see a dramatic difference in the way that yarn feels and acts.

Let's look at the knitted samples before blocking.  The sample on the left is the unwashed yarn.  You can't see it in the photo, but it had a harsher hand and tended to snarl as I knit with it.  You can see, however, that the work curled and skewed as I knit it.

This effect was far more dramatic in the silk sample, which, let me tell you, was not fun to knit in the unwashed version!

Another interesting thing happens when you set your twist in hot water.  The wool sample came off the bobbin measuring 3 tpi and 14 wpi.  After setting, the same sample measured 4 tpi and 12 wpi.  The silk samples came off the bobbin at 6 tpi and 32 wpi, and was 9 tpi and 30 wpi after setting.  Ummm, the unwashed yarns are very different from the washed yarns.  Very.  And this will impact what they do in the fabric.

For one thing, the gauge of you knitting will be different.  The wool knitted up at 8 stitches/inch when it was unwashed, but 6 stitches/inch when washed.  The silk, 12 stitches/inch unwashed, 10 stitches/inch washed.

If you knit, you know what a huge difference 2 stitches per inch makes in the size of your garment.  If you don't knit, take my word for it--it's not good.

After blocking, you can really see the impact of washing and setting.  The top sample is the unwashed, the bottom is washed and set yarn.  I rest my case.

You will also notice that the unwashed samples are more open and less dense.  If I had a better camera, you would also be able to see that the stitches are not as tidy in the unwashed samples, showing uneven twist throughout and creating that notorious "bar" that happens when yarns with unbalanced twist are knitted.  And then there is the skewing...

So, does that answer the question? 

Good.