Keeping Warm With Wool Part Three

Hello ATS crafters and welcome to the third and final part of Keeping Warm With Wool.

Parts one and two here.
www.abovetopsecret.com...
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Wool can be used for all kinds of clothing and footwear. Here's a quick video showing how to make boots using a simple felting method.

If you want to knit or weave cloth for your garment you will need to spin the prepared fibre into yarn. Spindles of various kinds are suited to nomadic lifestyles. It isn't unusual to see someone spinning while walking behind a flock of sheep. They can be very productive in skilled hands. Fine yarns can be spun with suitable fibre. Here we see a fairly coarse yarn being spun.

Turning the spindle on it's side and adding a simple hand-powered drive wheel gives us the Great Wheel or Walking Wheel. The Great Wheel is dangerous to children having a long, sharp spike at a child's head level. This is the spike that Sleeping Beauty was injured by. When these wheels were in common use in small cottages the children would have been warned to stay away from it, the folk memory exists to this day in many people.

The Flyer Wheel is the most common wheel today.

Flyer wheels (also called flyer-and-bobbin wheels) allow continuous spinning: the spinner does not have to stop drafting for the newly created yarn to wind onto the bobbin. For this to happen, the flyer needs to rotate more quickly or more slowly than the bobbin. It’s complicated, and I won’t even attempt to explain this feat of engineering . . .

knitty.com...
That feat of engineering can be damaged by a child playing and again the children would have been warned to stay away from the wheel. I find repeatedly when teaching spinning the ingrained folk memories cause some people to treat the wheel with too much caution. The fairy-tale image is also a factor in some people causing awe that interferes with their learning.

This is the most common Flyer Wheel in the world. It is fairly robust and should not be treated with too much awe or caution. The only major danger is for little children looking straight into the wheel. This causes a strobe effect for them which can affect them. An adult standing beside them will most likely not realise what the child is experiencing and will just think the child is watching the process intently. Very occasionally a child may suddenly leap forward and attempt to thrust their hand into the wheel which could result in badly broken finger if caught in the crank. So watch out for little children staring intently at the wheel. Break off a piece of yarn for them if they need to be distracted.



When you have your wheel or spindle and your prepared fibre you will need to learn a spinning technique. Here we have the longdraw woolen method that produces a light, fluffy yarn.


And here the short draw method for a worsted or semi-worsted yarn.

Next you need to ply your yarn to balance the tension and make it usable.

When you've learned how to spin a yarn you can decide what garment you need, decide how you are going to knit it or weave the cloth, then spin a yarn that is suitable for your purpose.

This is my contribution to Global Warming.

My Japanese wife made a wool blanket i use it in Hokkaido when camping

a reply to: musicismagic

What kind of sheep do you have in Japan?

My brother once took a Japanese girlfriend on a tour of Britain. When he asked her impression of the countryside she thought for a while then said, "There are a lot of sheep!"

a reply to: Kester

My dreadlocks only started to look right after I understood the process of felting...

a reply to: Terpene

I've often though of making a huge dreadlock wig out of grey and brown wool.

Thank you for this inspiring thread. I so want to make those boots, I have a soft calf or goat hide which I would add on to the sole. Keeping my eyes wide open now while searching second hand shops for some wool.
But in the mean time I will keep crocheting already spun wool. Made some leg warmers and now make a circular scarf for my dad.

Happy crafting everyone.

Puts a perspective on how much work needed to make a decent pair of wool boots!