Knitting, with Dogs

Learning new things: charkha spinning, part 4

Part 1.

Part 2.

Part 3.

Note: I have a set of these pictures over on Flickr.  You can see them with notes there too.

Starting to spin:

The first thing to do is put all the belts on.  My ex-Lendrum belt goes around the largest wheel and then around the BOTTOM pulley on the accelerating wheel:

I just tilted the accelerating wheel up so you can see how the belt goes on.  The rest of it goes into the groove around the edge of the large wheel.  The other, little skinny string belt goes around the top pulley on the accelerating wheel and then around the little pulley on the spindle.  Below, you can see the ex-Lendrum belt going UNDER the accelerating wheel, and the string belt going around the groove in the accelerating wheel itself.

Here's a view from the spindle end, embiggened for detail. 

Look closely.  You see what's holding the spindle up against those corn husk bearings?  That skinny little belt.  That's it.  It took me a long time to wrap my mind around that.  That little belt also has to pull against the spring that wants to make that mousetrap lie down flat too.  And as I understand it, you're supposed to tension the mousetrap so that it's standing up at right angles to the bottom of the box.  Funky. 

And yes, the spindle is supposed to point down like that.  I'm not sure why.

For now, ignore the fact that the spindle in the picture above already has yarn on it.  :)  Here's a picture from the spinner's position, showing just a leader tied to the spindle.  You want to spiral down to the tip.  A big hint:  you CANNOT put a lot of pressure or pull on the spindle.  It'll pull right off the bearings.  Remember that it's only held there by the tension on that little cotton string belt!

So now I actually want to start spinning.  I have cotton punis (or poonis) in my stash.  They're basically cotton rolags, rolled around a dowel so that the fiber is pretty compressed.  You can buy them very inexpensively in many places.

I lay the leader over my puni and start turning the drive wheel clockwise.  The twist will run up into your fiber and you can start drafting.

Notice that you can't use two hands for drafting.  (Your other hand is turning the wheel.)  Yeah.  That took me a while too.  But I'd been spinning cotton on my Country Craftsman earlier this year, and I've gotten a lot more comfortable with drafting cotton and keeping the thread together.  Cotton is a short staple fiber, and needs a lot of twist to hold together.  Charkhas are ideal for this. 

You spin holding the thread at an angle to the point.  The camera angle is a little wonky here.  But you can still see how the thread comes up at an angle from the point of the spindle.  From there, the trick is drawing your hand back at about the same speed that the twist is entering your fiber.  Then stop drafting, reach out a little ahead of your fiber supply and pinch off the twist, and add a little more twist to the yarn to keep it together.

To wind on, you turn the wheel backwards just enough to un-spiral the yarn from around the spindle.  Then you change the angle you're holding the yarn so that it's straight back, turn the drive wheel clockwise again, and wind on, starting back at the disk, and then spiraling back to the point.  Here's the angle of yarn for winding on:

And before you know it, you have a spindle full!  Woohoo!  (Yeah, I could probably have gotten more on there, but it's my first large amount of yarn spun on the charkha.)

I know I gave short shrift to the actual spinning process.  But it's kinda hard to take pictures with one hand, hold your fiber in another hand and turn the wheel with ANOTHER hand.  I'll see if I can get a little video up so you can see what I'm doing.

I hope this has been helpful and/or interesting to someone.  It's been a pretty fun learning experience for me.  I have literally POUNDS of cotton in my stash, and this should be a good way to use it up.

If I've said or done something egregiously wrong, someone PLEASE tell me.  I've pretty much done all the figuring out of this on my own, with help from MANY internet sources.  But I don't think I've every actually seen anybody else with a charkha in real life.  Videos, yes.  :)

Here are a couple of good resources:

Charkha tips

Charkhas at Yahoo Groups

Learning new things: Charkha spinning, part 3

Part 1

Part 2

Note: I have a set of these pictures over on Flickr.  You can see them with notes there too.

There are a few more pieces to talk about, then we'll get into setup and spinning.

One nice feature of the charkha is that there's a skein winder included.  It fits in the bottom, under the drive wheels.  Here I took the wheels off so you can see the skein winder in situ:

You assemble it simply by fitting one notch into the other to form a big plus sign.  Then you can set it on top of the smaller wheel.  Very clever!

Here's a spindle.  I'm using a bigger picture so you can see the detail. From left to right, you can see the little pulley, then a leather washer.  That little dark bit that looks like left-over fuzz is actually a bit of string wound on and glued down.  Its purpose appears to be to keep the larger disk just to its right in place.  And to the right of the disk is a piece of string tied on as a leader.

You can also go to this image on Flickr, where I've got notes for each part of the spindle.

Caution:  The spindles are SHARP.  I don't think they have to be.  I think the Bosworth charkhas have spindles with blunter points for safety reasons.  (BTW, the Bosworths have some really interesting innovations in their charkhas.  I wish I could afford one!)

Belts:  The charkha originally came with a thick cotton cord belt for the main wheel and a string belt for the accelerating wheel:

I have to tell you, that dratted thick belt was one of the reasons the charkha sat in my closet for all these years.  It's aggravating as hell to work with, it doesn't grip well, and even though it has a sewn join, the wheel still goes thump as the join goes around.  Argghh....  But since I was in the process of rethinking things, this time I had a different idea.  I pulled out an old Lendrum belt I had sitting around and /gasp/ cut it.  I rather inelegantly melted the ends back together.  Anybody know a better way to do this?  So far it works and hasn't pulled apart.  And it's a million gazillion times better than the damnable cotton belt.

Ok, I think that covers all the parts and pieces.  Next stop:  putting it all together.

Learning new things: Charkha spinning, part 2

Charka spinning part 1 is here.

Note: I have a set of these pictures over on Flickr.  You can see them with notes there too.

When we last saw our Indian charka, we had examined the drive wheels.  Now let's look at what on the other side of the box.

At the top of the picture is a little storage tray.  It has a little hook closure.  At the bottom is the spindle holder, or "mousetrap." I'm guessing it's called a mousetrap because there's a spring that wants to push the piece down.  If you let it go incautiously, it would probably slam down on your fingers. 

Here's the little storage box opened.  The spindles fit like they were made for it.  :)  You can also store belts in there.

Here's a view of the raised mousetrap, from the spindle side.  See the light-colored vertical things in front of the darker slots that slant down to the right?  Handbraided cornhusk bearings.  I know that braided cornhusk bearings are traditionally used  on great wheels.  I'd read about people using them on charkhas, so I figured I'd give it a try.  The leather lace bearings and the string bearings I'd tried before hadn't worked so well.  These actually seem to do pretty well.  And the corn husks?  I just went to the grocery store where folks had been shucking corn and pulled some out of the trash.  Recycling is good.  :)

A view of the other side of the mousetrap.  I just let the ends of the bearings hang out.  It was tight threading them through the holes.  They're not going anywhere.  With a little extra length available, I can change the spot on the other side that the spindle when the bearing starts to get worn.

Here's how the spindle sits in the mousetrap.  Yes, it sits on TOP of the cornhusk bearings.  Took me forever to figure that out.  But it's just bare wood behind the spindle.  The spindle does not like to turn against rough bare wood.  Ask me how I know this.

Next:  miscellaneous parts.

Learning new things: charkha spinning, part 1

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails."
-- from T.H. White, The Once and Future King

In an effort to get over my doldrums, I decided to take Merlin's advice to heart, and to work on learning something new. I love learning new things.

I have had an Indian charkha sitting in my closet for years now.  I'd pull it out occasionally and play with it, but I could never get it to work as easily as I thought it should.  I understand the principles, mind you.  It was the MECHANICS of the wheel that would drive me nuts.  But I've been obsessing over a great wheel for a while, and since I can't afford one of those in the foreseeable future, I figured it was time to see if I could get my charkha to work.

The charkha is a spinning device developed in India, and is used primarily for spinning fine cotton thread, and spinning it quickly.

Part 1:  Overview and drive wheels (note:  this is my old charkha.  I haven't seen a new Indian charkha recently, so newer ones may be different from mine in some minor respects.)

Note: I have a set of these pictures over on Flickr.  You can see them with notes there too.

Mine is a largish charkha (attache size, I think.)  They come a couple of sizes smaller, but this is what was available about 15 years ago when I bought mine at a long-defunct weaving store here in Atlanta.  Here it is closed, with a 100 g ball of sock yarn for scale:

Opened, it looks like this (I had to bring out the second tv tray):

The right hand side holds the drive wheels.  The left hand side contains a little box for storage (top) and the spindle holder.  The spindle holder is called a mousetrap, because it's spring-loaded.  If you're not careful, it'll drop and smack your fingers.

Here's the main drive wheel, top view:

Main drive wheel, bottom view:

   

No fancy sealed ball bearings here, folks.  There's a metal post in the bottom of the box.  You set the metal hub of the wheel down on it.  The light color you see on it is grease.  :)

The larger wheel drives a smaller, accelerating wheel.  Top view:

Bottom view.  There's a much smaller pulley on the bottom here.  But it's all still metal on metal.  The wingnut at the bottom of the picture in the slot is used to adjust the belt tension.  The wooden piece that contains the axle for the accelerating pulley moves front and rear and also pivots, so you can fine-tune your tension.

Next:  what's on the other side of the box???

When you're eating something

and the dog thinks it's yummy, you know what you get?

Right.  Slobbersicles.

Extreme close up:

I missed getting the BIG ones, however.

Dogs on Thursdays

All this fun happened last Saturday, but I saved the pictures for Dogs on Thursday. 

We all hopped in the car and drove up to Red Top Mountain State Park. The park sits up on Lake Allatoona, up

I-75 north of Atlanta.  Dear Robert doesn't remember it exactly, but that's where we took our first Aussie, Sasha, up to learn to swim. 

Jasper's already a swimming dog, so he got the lion's share of the fun:

Bouncer prefers to wait for him on the bank. I think Jasper's giving him the stink eye here.

Jasper reacts:

Dear Robert and dogs by the lake:

Jasper crossed a little gully on a fallen tree (I don't know how my walking stick got into the picture, dammit.)

Boulder Dogs (Bouncer says "oh crap, I'm slipping!)

One of the less heinous pictures of me:

A good day was had by all!

Sunday Spin-in at Jane's

The lovely and talented Jane hosted a spin-in on her porch on Sunday!  Below you can see (from left to right) the back of Claudia's head, Sandy, Melissa (blogless, I think?) and Jane herself.

Here's Claudia (on the right) and Jacquie (sp?) in the background.  Jacquie was learning to spin!   

Here Jen is overseeing ESC's first attempts at spinning on the wheel.  Both Regan and Jacquie were doing very well on their first spinning!  Jen's wearing her tiara, since she and Sandy (below) both RULE!

And Sandy's going to kill me for posting this picture of her in her tiara, so I'll make it small.

Lemme tell ya, folks, sitting on the porch on one of the first cool days of the season, spinning with your chums and hangin' out and yacking -- doesn't get much better than that.  Thanks to Jane for hosting us!

A PSA

National Talk Like a Pirate Day will be here this week, on Sept. 19.

Use this video to brush up on your pirate-speak.

Here's how I've felt lately

via xkcd.

Update on Hunter

He's home! 

Hunter, Shirley Chong's service dog, was picked up by Shirley and her husband this morning.  He appearx to be mostly well, though very footsore.  He'll be checked out by the vet today.

An absolutely amazing and humbling campaign was carried out by volunteers and members of the Clicktrain mailing list.  People faxed flyers, contacted tv and radio stations, hired pet hunters and trackers.  And it worked.  Hunter's home.

The internet and its people amaze me sometimes.

ETA:  Here's an article on Hunter's return.

Welcome home, Hunter!