I decided that cotton would be my summer project, along with exploring tablet weaving and figuring out how to spin from silk 'hankies' or 'bells'. I had tried out someone's takli at a meeting of our spinning group, and I liked it better than my other supported spindle, a bead-whorl spindle with a large amber (?) bead. So I asked for a takli and some Sea Island long-staple cotton for my birthday, and my sweetie gifted me with them.
In a word, I am gobsmacked by takli spinning. This tiny spindle inserts a phenomenal amount of twist into the growing thread, and the twist in turn causes the twisting thread-to-be to pull additional fibers out of the fiber supply in my other hand so rapidly that it literally looks like magic. My friend Jane, watching me spinning at her garden party, said it looked as if I were just conjuring thread out of the air... and she's just about right. That's exactly what it feels like.
What really astonished me is that it's almost faster with a takli than it is with my Ashford. I just went and tried it, and discovered that spinning cotton on my wheel is much easier now that I've learned with the takli; the last time I tried, it didn't go well. This time it worked, IF I let it spin with basically no tension, and then tweaked the tension spring to wind it on the bobbin.
The other big surprise is the amount of yardage I can get with a takli. Two takli-fuls of thread will fill one of my weaving-shuttle bobbins (the short ones); filling the takli four times results in a surprisingly large quantity of two-ply yarn once it's been plied.
I need to add pictures, but I haven't time right at the moment and I need to get a set of exams graded. Hopefully tomorrow I can set up a couple of photos.
The finished yarn looks and feels really marvellous!
ReplyDeleteThank you! I'm thinking it will become knitted lace, perhaps a jabot or something similar. It doesn't have a hard-enough twist to be good for tatting, but it would work fine for weft, certainly.
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