Fibre Prep

 

red/rust - 2/16 cotton - teal - 16/2 cotton

I keep coming back to my microscope photos of yarns, willing myself to better understanding what is happening in the yarn.

I learned to spin in 1974, long before I had any intention to take up weaving.  But I became fascinated by what was happening in the loom room and eventually changed my focus.

However, what was 'common' in 1974, at least in my town, was that people tended to spin wool from local fleeces, make their own rolags with hand carders, and spin using a supported long draw method.

Having finally managed to get a handle on spinning that way, it was a very short step over to spinning shorter fibres from the 'cloud'.

I gave up spinning once I became immersed in weaving, but those early days never left me and I was able to spin both from rolags and the cloud many decades later.  Still can, although my hands have enough arthritis in them that spinning is less enjoyable (more painful) so I only spin a little bit, now and then.

At various times I've posted photos of cotton still in the boll, and talked about different methods of spinning yarn.  And the editors at WEFT seem interested in following that 'thread' where it leads.

So I asked a local spinner if she would produce some very short staple cotton from the cloud and make a small quantity of thread on a drop spindle, both singles and plied, which I'll send with the latest article.

Some people will argue that it doesn't matter because the *weavers* don't need to know how the yarn is spun.  I still maintain that it *does* matter because different qualities of yarn are produced.  And weavers need to know the quality of their yarn - is it weaker or stronger?  More or less lint-y?  Is it smoother or more textured?   Etc.

It is no different than a baker needing to know what type of flour they are using and how best to make bread using that type of flour.  Or a potter the type of clay they have.  A woodworker which of hundreds of kinds of wood are being used.

If we do not understand the qualities of our materials, how can we know the 'best' practice while using them?

It depends.  Everything.  It all depends on the particulars of what a weaver does with their materials as they attempt to create a cloth of a particular quality.

So, yes, I'm back to sampling, doing more samples for the article I sent last month(?).  I've second guessed myself a couple dozen times now, but the loom is set up for the 2nd sample, and I think I have a good set up for the 'next' sample.   Then I will re-sley again, and weave another.  Then re-thread and sley and weave another.  If there is warp left over, who knows, maybe I will weave more?  

It depends!

Flax vs Cotton

 

Fabric Science 7th edition page 23

cotton (left) and flax (right)

Textile Science 2nd edition page 51

flax

A while ago I was reading an article about a new discovery that placed humans working with fibres back even further than we thought previously.  

Textiles tend to degrade and discoveries were rare, or were dismissed as being too insignificant to be of interest, until lately.

However, one of the photos that had been used in the magazine article (which I cannot now find, of course) showed an example of what they said was linen (or flax) fibres.  But what that photo showed - to me at least - wasn't flax but cotton.  I went searching on line and found the original paper and no such illustration was included with the paper so I wondered - had the magazine randomly done a search online and found a picture labelled flax, but which was actually a photo of some cotton fibres?  And I did actually find the magazine photo posted online, labelled 'flax'.

The topic came up on a group I belong to and I began to question what I had seen, and if I was correct in my interpretation.  Late last night I rooted around on the web and looked for better photos of fibres magnified such that their shape/structure could be seen so I could better compare them.  What I found pretty much confirmed my conclusions, but there is such a thing as confirmation bias, so today I sifted through several of my textile science books.  Not all the illustrations were helpful in trying to show the actual structure of the fibres.  Some just had really good word descriptions, others had simple sketches.  But I did find interesting images in several of the books and chose these two to share in the post today.

The first one has a decent comparison of cotton and flax, including a cross section.  The second has a bit more detail about flax.

Cotton fibre comes from the boll (or seed head) of the cotton plant.  While growing it forms a hollow tube, closed at the tip.  When it is harvested, the tube 'deflates' and the fibre becomes a ribbon, with twists back and forth along the length.

Flax is a 'bast' fibre and comes from the stalk.  It is segmented along the length, and while it has a very small 'hollow' at the centre, there isn't much room for the 'tube' to flatten in the way the cotton fibre will.  

And this is why I don't ever just accept whatever the first site I find says.  I will go digging, deeper and deeper, if I can find more websites, to see if the various resources agree, and if they have different conclusions, do they say why?  

While I search I ignore the now overbearing AI 'recommendations' because there is no 'intelligence' involved.  There is no intellect that can rationalize and/or interpret the subject.  AI is *not* your friend in such a search (or most searches, imho).  In the end, I went back to my trusted library (I have at least six textile science books in my library!) to try and tease out the best information I could find.

My 'usual' first book that I grab didn't have quite as much detail as I was looking for, so I pulled the rest off the shelf and checked all of them before I chose which ones I would use.

So, am I right?  Dunno.  But what I saw in the photo labelled 'linen' were cotton characteristics.  My concern is that someone who doesn't have the resources I have will accept that photo in the magazine as being accurate.  And as far as i can tell - it isn't.

I'm not saying the archeologist didn't know what they were doing - *they* didn't use the photo in their paper - it was the publication that included the photo.  It was, more than likely, just a mistake.  But it's a mistake that will be carried on with people who don't know repeating it.  Or looking at cotton fibres in the future and assuming that they are looking at linen instead of cotton.  

How important is this?  Perhaps not at all.  But it is a good example of not believing what you see online without double checking.  Because mistakes happen...