Some hybrid spinning wheels

This is what you may get if you cross a Sleeping Beauty wheel  and a Pipy saxony.

Just as some orchardists cross varieties of (for example) apples to produce new ones, so a few wheel makers have crossed varieties of spinning wheel to create something new. The most prolific hybridiser in New Zealand has been Ray Chisholm, who took over both Pipy and Sleeping Beauty. The offspring above has retained the characteristic Sleeping Beauty maidens and the tilting mother-of-all, but look at the metal flyer bearing with its hook to keep the flyer in place, so typical of Pipy.

The drive wheel has spokes that are more Pipy than Sleeping Beauty, but two grooves round the side of the rim; the table is somewhat shaped but the legs and treadle are pretty much Sleeping Beauty. (I’m tempted to ramble on about dominant genes, but that would be taking the metaphor much too far.)

Chisholm didn’t stop at the saxonies, either – he clearly loved to experiment. This appears to be a late Thumbelina by Sleeping Beauty, right?

But look at those flyer bearings! Metal, with a hook. Here is another, with its flyer bearings on the other side of the maidens, and its owner remarks that its bobbins too are very different from Thumbelina’s; they are much longer and have a metal core like Pipy bobbins. The tilting mother-of-all is not found on late Thumbelinas either.

Not content with those crosses, Chisholm actually also combined elements of Thumbelina with the Sleeping Beauty economy model, Serena.

That’s a Serena. This isn’t:
The most obvious Thumbelina element is the maidens, but there’s more to it than that. Other examples of these have been seen, and an owner has done some measurements: for instance the length of a late Thumbelina table is 260mm, of a Serena, 270mm, and of a hybrid, 360mm! So these hybrids are not just made of collections of spare parts (the sort of thing some call a Frankenwheel). Clearly they are specially made wheels, by a maker who liked to try new ideas.

Then there are the Nagy hybrids, and they are rather mysterious.

From the mother-of-all up, you’d swear it was a Nagy. The legs are identical to those of the later Woodspin Nagys made by Peter Cottier (that’s one on the left below), and the split table and the treadle and treadle bar are like those on the special lower-orifice Nagys also made by Cottier (on the right, below).

But what about that drive wheel? I’ve only ever seen drive wheels like it, with the six cutouts, shiny finish and almost moulded appearance, on Koala wheels made by Graeme Dawes in Perth, Australia around the 1980s. Here are a Koala (front and detail views) and the smaller Koala Cub (front and side).
Unlike any Nagy ever made, they are Picardy-style wheels with the flyer in front of the maidens. But the composite drive wheels are at first sight very similar to those of our hybrid Nagys. There’s one big difference, though – the Koala drive wheels have two grooves, of different circumferences, so a wide range of ratios is available.

How might we explain the similarities and differences? First of all, it’s known that Dawes commissioned parts for his Koalas from other craftsmen, and he assembled them. Secondly, local knowledge tells us that not long after Peter Gubb took over Woodspin from Peter Cottier in 1983, he died in an accident, and his father endeavoured to keep the business going but was soon reduced to selling off the remaining parts.

So perhaps these hybrid Nagys were made by someone who picked up some Nagy parts, and obtained a few drive wheels (possibly from whoever made the Koala wheels for Graeme Dawes) and put them together skillfully to create a new wheel style. We don’t know where this person got the parts – Australia, New Zealand, the US? There can’t have been many made; I’ve only heard of three, including one in the US and one in Canada.

Another wheel has been seen in Australia that has Nagy flyer assembly and drive wheel, but the rest of it looks almost (but not quite) like an Ashford Traditional. Have you seen any other types of hybrid wheel? If so, I’d love to hear about them.

Quite different of course are wheels that have had missing or broken parts replaced. My little Wilson wheel now has not only a flyer by Mike Keeves, but a also replacement strut that keeps it stable when spinning, changes that are part of its special history.

It’s proving a very relaxing wheel to spin on. The new strut with its round profile doesn’t look like the original, in fact it looks rather odd, but it’s very strong. It was once a trapeze bar which my daughter used, and I like to think that it would never have let her down. I don’t have a video of her using one of those, but here she is flying with a very different apparatus:

Do you have a wheel with a history that future spinners might like to know about? I have written the Wilson wheel’s identification and history under the treadle – an idea I recommend if you have a rare or interesting wheel.

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Stuck whorl? – don’t panic …

If a spinning wheel comes to you that has been unused for a long while, perhaps sitting in an attic or a barn, one of the most likely problems is finding you absolutely cannot unscrew the whorl off the flyer shaft. Here’s what to do.

1. The first thing to know is that you need to be very, very careful not to break a flyer arm. That would be a major repair! (You can’t trust glue to hold a flyer together when it’s rotating at speed.) So before you do any serious twisting, put something strong like a screwdriver through the holes in the shaft so you can hold onto that:

Do not twist while grasping by the flyer arms!

2. Try to find out which way you should be unscrewing it. Many whorls screw the opposite way from what we are used to: not ‘righty tighty, lefty loosey’, but ‘righty loosey, lefty tighty’. Look at it with the orifice pointing away from you. If it’s an older wheel, it’s very likely to be ‘righty loosey’– that is, turn the flyer clockwise to unscrew. My 50-year-old Norwegian is like that:

If it’s a newer wheel, all bets are off. Many will undo clockwise (it’s a bit of a tradition) but not all – for example a Sleeping Beauty unscrews anticlockwise:

If you don’t know and a gentle twist each way does nothing, try to find out the right direction from someone with the same make of wheel.

There is a very small chance that your whorl may have a tapered press fit rather than a screw thread. If the flyer shaft is round, in a round hole, the method below should still work if you pull a little towards you while also trying to twist it. If the hole in the whorl is square and fits onto a square-section part of the shaft, you may ruin it if you twist hard. But this is really rare; I’ve only heard of it once or twice.

3. Still not budging? Time for some medicine. You need two ingredients: WD40 or any good penetrating oil, and patience.

First of all stand the flyer securely on end, whorl uppermost, somewhere it won’t be disturbed. You need to protect the surface under and behind it from spray or drips. You can stand it in a container, like this plastic jug:

Or you can lean it in the corner of a room, with the carpet and walls protected by newspaper:

Spray or squirt a drizzle of WD40 or whatever you are using onto the flyer shaft where it goes into the centre of the whorl.
Then walk away.
Don’t touch it till the next day.

4. Come back to it a day later, put that screwdriver through the holes in the metal shaft, and (holding the screwdriver not the flyer arms) try to twist the whorl off. There’s an excellent chance that it will now unscrew, but don’t despair if it doesn’t.

5. If necessary, repeat steps 3 and 4. I’ve never yet had one still stuck after two repeats with WD40, but I think it would be worth trying every day for up to a week.

Some favourite websites

I thought it might be interesting to tell you about a few blogs and other sites that I like and look at a lot.

https://www.ravelry.com/
Ravelry has to be at the top of the list. It’s a treasure trove of discussions, advice, information, friendship and of course patterns (both knit and crochet; the pattern database is huge and very searchable). Under the name ‘maryinnz’ I mostly hang out in the discussion groups. You’ll often find me in ‘Antique Spinning Wheels’ and ‘Working Wheels’, but also in some of the specialised ones for different makes of wheel, or ones like ‘Historic Spinning’, or ‘The Sciences of Spinning’. I can’t tell you how much I’ve learned from the experts on Ravelry!
You have to join but it’s free, and there aren’t security worries. You can publicly reveal as much or as little about yourself as you want. Currently there are nearly 8 million members.

http://www.yarnharlot.ca/
Stephanie Pearl-McPhee’s blog is always entertaining, usually informative, often funny, and sometimes deeply touching. She’s a Canadian author and teacher about all things knitting (and some spinning).

https://katedaviesdesigns.com/
Kate is a knitwear designer who lives in a beautiful spot in Scotland. Her husband Tom just happens to be a wonderful photographer so her posts are always lovely to look at as well as to read. Her designs embody a sense of place and of tradition. The story of how she has rebuilt her life (and her knitting) after a stroke at the age of 36 is fascinating and inspiring.

https://loopholes.blog/
This one contains serious studies of the history of knitting. It can be highly entertaining too, like the  post earlier this year about shepherds in the French Basque country who used to watch over their flocks while knitting – and standing on stilts!

https://scholar.google.co.nz/
Google Scholar is a useful tool for researchers – this is its New Zealand interface but you’ll find it in other countries too. It will search for and bring up academic papers on any subject you can think of, and if you are specific with your keywords you won’t get too much other stuff. There are no ads. I’ve used it a lot for subjects like spinning in prehistoric times.
The only drawback is that a lot of the articles it finds have to be paid for, but there’s usually an abstract so you can get a general idea.

For sheer entertainment, here are three (oops, four) Youtube videos I love – and who cares that they are actually advertising.

First, a brilliantly animated (and amazingly accurate) history of spinning, all made of wool!

A house that knits itself to keep warm –

How on earth did they do that? Find out here:

This last one was made back in 2000, and it has almost nothing to do with yarn or spinning, but I can’t leave it out:

The story of how it was made is at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_Herders.

Two wheels by James ‘Gib’ Wilson (1907-1973)

Back in March I received an email from a sharp-eyed fellow-spinner who had purchased a wheel that was sold as by Joe Gibson of Wellington. She browsed on www.nzspinningwheels.info, and thought it was by Gib Wilson of Invercargill. After studying her photos I agreed.

Here are a wheel known to be by Wilson (left) and Sonya’s wheel (right). Sonya’s wheel is basically a mirror image of the Wilson. It doesn’t look exactly like any of his other wheels we’ve seen, but it has features that are typical of him and of no other maker I know of.

This jogged my memory: a neglected-looking wheel with no flyer had recently come to our Guild and been rejected as useless. In fact it was consigned to become an ornament in a member’s garden. Now I began to think I had made a terrible mistake in letting it go. Fortunately I was able to intercept it, with many apologies to the deprived gardener, before it ended up outside. Yes, another Gib Wilson wheel! This is exciting, because I’ve long wished I knew more about him and his wheels.

So far we know little about his life, except that his occupation before retirement was ‘wood machinist’. But we do know he loved making spinning wheels. I have a copy of a very touching letter dating from 2006 when Lyndsay Fenwick and I were first trying to find out about New Zealand wheels. The writer (signature illegible, perhaps Pamela) describes how Gib made her a wheel to her specifications using wood from her own property.
‘Well, dear Gib, he was terminally ill, in great pain, and I used to go down and find him huddled over a little heater in his shed at the back of his house. His eyes lit up when we got onto the wheel and he incorporated all my ideas … You have no idea how that dear little man perked up when talking wood turning, or working on the lathe – his work is quite perfect.’

This was my wheel before any cleaning or restoration. The diagonal strut is broken off, there’s no flyer and if you look hard, you may notice a bird dropping.

Wilson also made a few wheels that are more elaborate, and very beautiful. I know of three; here are two of them. They are excellent spinners and their owners love them.
As well as the cutout design of the drive wheel, they have two struts steadying the support posts instead of just one, an unusual and lovely hook-orifice (click to enlarge the photos and see it  little better) and generally fancier turning.

Wilson’s wheels share a unique system for adjusting the drive band tension.
When the wing nut (on mine, left) or the knob (on Sonya’s, right) is loosened, the two horizontals can slide up and down the support posts, moving the whorl, spindle and flyer up or down. When it’s removed completely, you can disassemble the mechanism (but it’s necessary to cut the drive band to separate everything).
However, Sonya’s works a little differently from the (admittedly few) others I’ve seen. The knob is the head of a screw, and there are two metal guides to keep the crosspiece level.

There are several other differences between the two wheels. For example the axle of mine is firmly sealed into the hub, and probably has needle roller bearings like those Mike Keeves found in the spindle assembly when he was making me a new flyer. Sonya’s wheel has the hub secured to the axle by a metal pin, somewhat like those on earlier Ashford Traditionals except that the pin goes right through the hub and sticks out on the other side. Moreover the axle on my wheel ends in a visible bearing on the spinner’s side, whereas Sonya’s is concealed in the support.
Then there are the conrods (footmen) and their connections. Mine has a complicated connection involving unsealed ballbearings where it joins the crank. These may need replacing at some point – one of the little balls is already missing. It connects to the treadle via a piece of leather and a metal fitting very securely attached to the treadle. The top of Sonya’s conrod has leather fastened to the crank with a simple nut/bolt/washer. The bottom has a piece of leather slotted into conrod and treadle, almost exactly like an early Traddy.
The flyers obviously vary. I think we can assume that my wheel had a flyer like the identical complete Wilson wheel, whose flyer is shown below left. Sonya’s flyer is so different that we have wondered whether it is a replacement. It would be stronger than the usual Wilson flyers, which (as Mike Keeves pointed out) don’t have a lot of wood at the ends of the crosspiece to secure the arms in, and it would certainly be simpler to make. The hook is very different too.
A significant difference is in the whorls: Sonya is fortunate to have three ratios (6:1, 8:1 and 12:1) whereas I have only one (8.5:1). A further refinement of Sonya’s wheel is that the little knob on top of the front post turns to adjust the bobbin brake. Mine, shown below left wearing its handsome new flyer, has a rather awkwardly placed peg for the purpose, and the knobs on both posts are purely decorative.
The contrast in the finish and detailing of the wheels (I’m beginning to want to call them earlier and later) is very noticeable. Sonya’s has more elaborate and crisper turnings. The edges are sharper and the surfaces smoother. Perhaps this could be partly due to using different wood. The complete wheel we saw above is made of White Meranti from Malaya, and I think mine is too. We think Sonya’s wheel is made of Southern Beech (nothofagus spp) which may be easier to work.

In general it looks as though Wilson may have refined his style, while at the same time simplifying some details of construction, particularly around the hub and the conrod. It’s tempting to think that towards the end of his life he saw more spinning wheels by other makers, including Ashford whose Traditional hit the market in 1965.

Sonya is delighted with her wheel – she comments
‘I love the “look” of my wheel. I really like the simplicity it has. Having the upright post knob as the bobbin brake knob and no table contributes to this. The turnings are very precise without being fussy, and the compact size is perfect for my apartment.
‘Treadling is very smooth, quiet and effortless with an easy rhythm. It is really easy to start and restart the wheel with the heel of your foot. There is a little bit of bobbin chatter, but not in an annoying way. The scotch tension is easy to adjust and doesn’t need a lot of fiddling with. Changing between ratios is very quick and once properly adjusted the drive band doesn’t jump off the wheel at all.’

My wheel is not quite ready for serious spinning yet, as it wobbles badly without its diagonal strut. Once this is replaced I believe it will spin well too, though perhaps with some signs of age. It has had a hard life, but the moderate mount of noise it makes may quieten with more oiling and spinning.

It has one more tantalising feature: some possible writing on the treadle. The wheel came to me with the treadle covered in ancient carpet tiles. When I stripped them off I was left with grainy glue residue and in one front corner, some markings under it:
I’ve tinkered with it in Photoshop and come up with this (click it to enlarge):

I like to imagine the word near the centre could be Wilson … but it’s just as likely that there were some carpet maker’s markings on the back of the tile that got transferred to the wood. Whether it will be possible to remove the worst of the glue without removing all the writing remains to be seen.

Sonya and I would both love to learn more about Gib Wilson and his wheels. If you have one, or can tell us anything further about him, do please get in touch.

I thank Sonya for her generous help with details and photos, and Mike Keeves for helpful advice and creating a flyer and bobbins that work and look at home on my wheel.

Christchurch – sightseeing and spinning wheels

I was last in Christchurch in February 2013, almost exactly two years after the second dreadful earthquake.
Much of the central city was still a red-zoned no-go area.

There were unsafe buildings everywhere awaiting demolition, and it’s no joke demolishing (for example) a 26-storey hotel that’s ready to fall down at any moment. Aftershocks were still happening, too, though we didn’t feel any.

It’s by no means all fixed now, but some places are getting there. The Arts Centre, for example, which will be a happy memory for any fibrecrafter who visited Christchurch before the earthquakes, looked like this in 2013:

Here is much the same view today:

It’s not so pretty round the back though:

Did you notice the very white new stonework on the right, contrasting with yellowed stones around the windows that date from when this was the original Canterbury University? Christchurch is a city of contrasts at present – lovely old heritage buildings restored, others shored up and crumbling, impressive new buildings, and many, many open spaces still awaiting who-knows-what.

It can be a bit confusing, even (I was told) for the locals sometimes. The cathedral, for example, is famously a wreck.

(taken with the lens poked through a high wire-mesh fence)

Recently a decision has been taken to restore it, at huge expense. But everyone I talked to thought it should be preserved as the ruin it is and a new cathedral built (think of Coventry). There are still, after seven years, families and elderly people whose homes are uninhabitable while the Earthquake Commission, the insurers and assessors squabble about what to do with them. Better, surely, to choose a cheaper alternative for the Cathedral … ?

Yet from the back, you’d hardly know it was damaged.

Look around you at this spot, and you’ll see the new as well as the old –

these charming sheep flock in various public spaces, and there are murals and installations all over.

Here, strange things are done with mirrors.

Further along the tram route (a wonderful way to tour Christchurch) you pass near the most interesting playground I’ve seen. This is a tiny corner; I didn’t see it all as my feet were getting tired by this time.

It was Friday during school hours. I’m sure it would be crowded on a fine weekend!

Yet half a block up the road, the site where an 18-storey office tower had to be demolished has turned into this –

One thing hasn’t changed: Christchurch is still ‘the garden city’. We stayed at the YMCA, opposite the Botanic Gardens. Here is the autumnal view from our window –

So what about those spinning wheels I promised? I was fortunate to be able to go to a meeting of the Christchurch Guild of Weavers and Spinners, at their wonderful rooms at The Tannery.  I was in awe of their beautiful work – you can admire it on their blog
http://chchweavespin.blogspot.co.nz/

They were welcoming and friendly, and several had interesting wheels. This one is a hammer wheel (no prizes for guessing why the name) made in the late 1970s by a company in the Netherlands called Moswolt. It’s bobbin lead, and the owner said she was told she’d never be able to spin fine on it – but she can and does.

There was also a Gypsy, one of Mike Keeves’ earlier Grace wheels. They are rather rare.

And something I’ve never seen in person before, only in photos – a wheel by Noel Price  of Greymouth.

He only made a few and they are really well engineered. See the little wheel that smooths the path of the thread to the hooks:

On my last day in Christchurch, I saw another intriguing wheel. That one and its relatives will be the subject of next month’s blog.

Double drive bands again, and an unexpected kiwi

Tying a double drive band by yourself, if you’re not a dexterous octopus, can be frustrating. It’s easy to keep ending up with something like this.

Charlie Wong, “spin doctor” and valued correspondent, has devised a method which may help, and kindly agreed to it being published here.

The way I have always done it, which is fairly standard, starts with a loose slip knot or half hitch on the back maiden just to keep things under control a bit. Then over and around the drive wheel, under and around the bobbin groove, around the drive wheel again, and under and around the flyer whorl groove. Release slip knot from maiden and join the ends with a reef knot.

Whichever method you are going to use, start by adjusting the drive band tension so that the flyer is as close as possible to the drive wheel. Most string stretches in use, and you will probably soon need to tighten it! And remember to allow plenty of string! It’s helpful to keep the string you haven’t got to yet (the working end) rolled in a little ball.

Charlie’s system may seem complicated at first, but it’s less likely to leave you with unruly string everywhere. Personally I’d still suggest hitching the end of the string to the back maiden before starting, but undoing this before making the first knot.

Step 1 – Starting near (or temporarily attached to) the back maiden, bring the string over and around the drive wheel, under and around the bobbin groove and lay it over the drive wheel (beside the first circuit of string).

Then take the end you started from (detach it from the maiden if necessary). Tie it firmly with an overhand knot around the string leading from the bobbin groove. You are tying it with itself, not with the other string.

Pull the end from the knot and the string that is to go round the drive wheel in opposite directions so the band is taut. The first stage is now secure.

 

Step 2 – Go around again, passing around the whorl groove this time. Go past the first knot, and firmly tie a second overhand knot to the string you tied the first knot with (not the string you tied it to – I got this wrong on my first try). The string you tied it with is the one that can slide along the other string.

 

Step 3 – Cut off the first knot. Be careful not to cut the string it’s tied to – if you are uncertain, test which string is which by loosening the knot a bit and sliding it. It’s the string that moves with the knot that you cut. Then all the strands should stay in their proper places.

 

Step 4 – Tie the cut end with an overhand knot to the other strand (not to the one it was tied to before) close to knot 2 – closer than in the diagram. Pull the two ends tight. Knots 2 and 3 should now neatly become one, and you can discard the remains of knot 1.

After trimming the ends, Charlie likes to rub a drop of PVA glue into the knot, just to keep it firm and tidy.

Thank you Charlie, and also thank you to my friend Sue who helped troubleshoot the instructions.

And now for something completely different … here is a Rappard Mitzi, seen in Denmark.

Look closely at that treadle –

Isn’t it lovely? Nothing is known of the wheel’s history, though it has clearly had a lot of use. I wish Maria Rappard were still alive, so we could compliment her on her artistry and ask how she came to create this special design.

I’ve added it also to the earlier post on Rappard treadle carvings. Thank you so much to Dorte who posted it on Ravelry and has allowed me to use her photos.

 

 

Just for fun – how monsters spin and knit

 

Enthusiastically but badly.
How do I know?
I have been one.

The story starts several years ago with our younger daughter, her husband, and two friends inventing a monster family – Tangle, Dangle and Mangle.

 

They made their first appearance at Kiwiburn in early 2014

Since then they have proved that they are multi-talented. They perform various death-defying feats.

Dangle is particularly skilled at aerials.

Baby Mangle is a very independent little monster-person, who hates having a bath.

It seemed to me that they needed another family member – Grangle, in fact. You may have noticed her beside certain forum posts on Ravelry. She loves to spin and knit, as she first demonstrated by knitting a scarf for her little grandchild.

It was a great day when the family came to visit and she proudly gave Mangle his new scraf (monsters have their own ideas about spelling).

You can see that with her furry paws she finds spinning and knitting a bit difficult. But she loves her crafts.

 

She also likes to help her friends fix their spinning wheels. She had a lot of trouble with this one, which she said didn’t werk proply.

 

 

Later she made Mangle a swetur too. Of course it had lots of mistakes. From a human point of view, making effective deliberate mistakes turned out to be much harder than I expected.

With hindsight, I should have chosen a smoother yarn. This shaggy stuff is appropriately monsterish, but mistakes don’t show up well. Random crossed-over stitches and mini-cables were a waste of time. I had high hopes of wrapped stitches (wrapping the yarn two or three times instead of once to make a long stitch), but they’re not nearly obvious enough.

Holes (yo, k2tog) show up quite well and I should probably have made a little row of them. Slipping a few stitches and leaving the yarn across the right side of the work was useful. So were a few purl stitches among the knit.

I tried leaving a long hanging loop, tying it off so it wouldn’t affect the whole fabric too much, but the knot looked too intentional. So I half-undid it and got a tangly-looking knot – much better.

Dropped stitches had to be used sparingly. I didn’t want the ladder running right down to the border (this has to stay on the little sausage-shaped creature, not sag right off) so the trick was to make a new stitch and mark it. Quite a few rows further up, the stitch above this one was dropped. At first I put in two of these but having two ladders spoiled the effect so I hooked up the second one.

I have enjoyed getting to know the monsters and being part of their family.

____________________

Some of this post is based on an article first published in Creative Fibre magazine, September 2014.
There are a lot more videos by the monsters here.