Spinning

Twist Is What Turns Fiber Into Yarn

Loose fibers, however long the pile, are not yet useful for weaving or knitting. They slide past one another, drift apart and have no continuous strength. Spinning solves that problem with a single action: twist. Several fibers are twisted together so they bind into a strong, long yarn. As twist is inserted, each short fiber is pressed against its neighbors at an angle, friction multiplies along thousands of contact points, and the strand can be drawn out longer while new fiber is fed in at the same time. The result - yarn, and at other scales thread, rope or cable - is continuous in a way no single natural fiber is. A cotton fiber is short, a wool fiber is longer but still finite; a spun yarn can run for hundreds or thousands of yards because twist keeps handing strength from one fiber to the next.

Four variables govern what kind of yarn emerges, and a spinner controls all four, by hand or by machine setting. The material used sets the starting character: cotton, flax for linen, hemp, wool, silk and synthetics each behave differently. Fiber length and alignment decide how smoothly fibers lie together and how strong and even the strand can be. The quantity of fiber used sets thickness. The degree of twist sets hardness, strength and elasticity: too little twist leaves a soft but weak yarn that falls apart, while more twist makes a firmer, stronger yarn up to the point where over-twisting makes it harsh and lively. Every yarn you have ever handled is a particular balance of those four choices.

From Fingers to Spindle, Wheel and Power

The history of spinning is the history of making twist faster without losing control of it. The earliest spinning probably involved simply twisting the fibers in the hand. Later, a stick was introduced to help twist the fiber. Drop spinning refined the stick into a spindle - a stick with a whorl or weight to stabilize its spinning - which is spun and hangs supported by the yarn as more fiber is introduced; the new fiber picks up the twist and becomes yarn. Later still, the spinning wheel allowed continuous and faster yarn production, driven by foot or by hand. Modern powered spinning, originally done by water or steam power and now by electricity, is vastly faster than hand-spinning, but it performs the same sequence: prepare fiber, draw it out, insert twist, wind the finished yarn away.

Hand spinning has not disappeared, and its reasons are instructive. Hobby spinners spin their own yarn to control specific yarn qualities and to produce yarn not commercially available. They may also spin for self-sufficiency, for a sense of accomplishment, for a connection to history and the land, and for the meditative qualities of the work. Those motives underline what spinning fundamentally is: not a machine, but a process. Plant fibers such as cotton, flax, hemp, raffia, yucca and coconut husk; animal fibers such as wool, angora and cashmere goat, angora rabbit, llama, alpaca, camel and silk; and synthetics such as nylon, rayon, acetate and Mylar can all be spun, because the principle does not depend on the material. Wherever short fibers need to become a long, strong, usable strand, twisting them together is the answer, and that act is spinning.