Spinning wool on a great wheel, also called a wool wheel, big wheel, or walking wheel. The hand carded rolls of Border Leicester fleece produce woolen yarn. Traditional technique as learned and taught by Norman Kennedy.
The ease of your spinning shows just how good your carding is! I'm terrible at carding, lol. I greatly enjoyed this video, it's very beautiful to watch you work.
You’ve got it, it’s all about that carding! Well oiled wool and not a lot of fiber on the cards is really important. “Like smoke,” is how it was described to Norman Kennedy who taught me how to card rolls.
I'm a great fan of properly carding your wool. It really isn't that hard to do and it saves a lot of fighting with the wool to make it spin consistently. It would be a better video if the guy would tell us what he's doing.
Thank you for this beautiful video, I find it quite hypnotic watching you spin. I suspect there is no need for any other type of meditation when you have a great wheel at your disposal. I’ve seen very old photographs of people with the great wheel but I had never seen it in use. Cheers from Australia.
Gorgeous! I could watch you spin all day! Just acquired my first great wheel, and studying your technique. I wish you had incluided the end of the process, when your spindle is full, and what your next steps are. I suspect I'll just wind off to the niddy-noddy, but wanted to see what you do. Very lovely video. Thank you for sharing!
When the spindle is full I remove the yarn onto a reel. The reel then indicates the count of the yarn and ensures consistent spinning and suitability for weaving later.
What a wonderful demonstration. I have a great wheel and I’ve used it. But, I’ve never used it enough to get to your expertise. Watching and studying your every move.
I would strongly suggest starting off with some cheeses of pencil roving so you can get a feel for the rhythm without drafting. After that the drafting is just a two step process, light twist to establish the yarn, then pull to even it while adding the final twist.
Fascinating! It seems so effortless, yet you obviously are very experienced. I like how the great wheel keeps the entire body in motion. It almost looks like a dance.
My grandmother taught me how to spin on this wheel right after the hand spindle. Great wheels are just hand spindles on their sides, so it’s the same process. Traditionally people didn’t drop their hand spindles, they supported and turned them with one hand while drafting with the other, so it was really not that different from what you see here.
Drop spindle isn't really just a beginner tool, and you can start on a wheel from day 1 if you choose. Drop spindles provide(d) textiles for everyone on earth who spun for quite a long time, and then they just turned sideways and got faster.
The thing with this wheel is that since you are doing it with a single hand, the rolag needs to be perfect and in the right consistency so you can draft with one hand only with no lumps and bumps.
Mesmerising! It looks so easy when you do it, but I painfully know it isn't! I especially love how you're able to pull on the yarn to even it out. Somehow that doesn't work when I do it. More practice needed...
You want your rolls well oiled and with just enough twist at first to hold the yarn together, then you can draw to even it as you put in the rest of the twist. It’s really fun once you get the hang of it and produces consistent yarn with little fuss.
You need to find the exact sweet spot where you have just enough twist to be able to pull a bit (and even out the flubs) and not pull the whole thing apart. There should (in my experience) be just a little resistance when you pull. As soon as you've pulled, the sweet spot is lost and you have to add a bit more twist to get to the sweet spot again.
He's doing basically two things. He's spinning the wool, and then winding it on the spool. Interesting, because these are the two things that happen when spinning on the 'Spinning Jenny' (the first spinning machine), and some later machines. Notice the different angle he holds the yarn when spinning, as opposed to when he's winding it on the spool.
Are you using traditional rolags? It looks more like thin strips of drum carded batts. Something about the direction of the fibers. Apart from that: You are good!!
I've just been lucky enough to get a Nova Scotian wheel from 1840! But I'm having some issues with the drive band slipping. I was wondering what you use?
I’ve used a lot of different cord depending on what’s on hand. I would recommend thicker rather than thinner, you want the cord to catch the sides of the spindle pulley, not just the bottom of the ditch, and to not over tighten the band and to make sure the wheel and spindle bearings are well oiled. I was taught to think about it as friction instead of tension. Hope that helps!
@@theburroughsgarret thank you so much, that's incredibly helpful! I think mine is too thin, definitely not enough friction. Thank you!!! Edit: just wanted to pop back and say that was 100% the issue I was having; my cord was too thin. I made a thicker one and it's working perfectly now! Thanks again!
Spindle spinning is discontinuous. A length of yarn is spun and then wound onto the spindle to store it while the next length is spun. This is different from continuous spinning with a flyer and bobbin that constantly draws the yarn onto the bobbin as the spinning takes place.
What type of oil do you use. The people I know that do fiber arts have never talked about oiling the wool. My daughter has spun wool in the grease but no mention of oil
@@tineditmarunnerup9513I'm no expert, like the guy who made this video, but I used to card wool, and then spin it with a drop spindle. Before all of that, I would wash the wool, and was told by a coworker (I worked at a living history village museum), not to take too much lanolin out of the wool when washing. The lanolin makes the carding and spinning go easier, and also makes the wool somewhat water resistant. This is why I never used dish detergent, because it cuts too much grease. I used laundry detergent, it leaves more grease in the wool. I used the wool that was sheared from our own sheep at the village museum, and the first wash, or rinse, I used no soap at all, as what happens is that the 'doogy' (my word) that hasn't already been picked off the wool, dissolves in that rinse, and I don't think soap in the beginning does a thing. Then I would wash it again with the laundry detergent.
