Mwa hahahahaha!

I am now finished my 1 tpi... my 4 tpi... and my 8 tpi....

It took 21 tries to get my 8 tpi right and what they didn't tell me in class is just how to figure out grist (thickness of the yarn)... now if there was a formula for that we would have her knocked.

All I knew going into this exercise were the formulas for figuring it all out.... like this....

Step 1
twist per inch in singles = [t.p.i. in doubles x (# of plies +1)] divided by the # of plies

so I want a 8 t.p.i. in a 2 ply yarn....

t.p.i.(s)= 8x(2+1) divided by 2..... which equals...
8x3 divided by 2....
24 divided by 2.....=12
so my tpi in the singles is 12

... but now I need to know how many treadles to get this amount of twist in my singles

Step 2
# of treadles = t.p.i.(s) x length of draft divided by the ratio

length of draft for you guys that are not spinners, is the length of your comfortable draft for whatever type of yarn you are spinning... I generally use a 1.5 inch draft for a worsted and a18 inch draft for a woolen.

and the ratio is the difference between the number of time your flyer turns to one revolution of your wheel..... I have several but I usually use my 6.

so based on these figures the formula would go like this...

# of treadles = 12 x 1.5 divided by 6
# of treadles = 18 divided by 6
# of treadles = 3

So now that I figured that out I would sit at my wheel and spin a single at 3 treadles per every 1.5 inches of fibre that I drafted...

easy right?

then when I had spun a single that was at least 15 yards I would do the same thing again only on a different spool.

So now I have two spools of fibre spun into singles at 12 t.p.i. (s).

What do I do to put these together.....

Step 3

Well the generally accepted rule is to ply at 2/3 your singles so mine would be 2 treadles for every 1.5 inches of plying.

But my length of draft is longer for plying than for spinning....
so let's figure that out.

My plying length of draft just happens to be 15 inches.....

so 15 divided by 1.5 = 10

if my treadling for the singles length of draft of 1.5 is 3 and then my treadling would be 2/3 of that so 2 in the ply but I need that spread out over a 15 inch draft so I would multiply 10 x 2 and get 20

I would treadle 20 times every time I draft out 15 inches of my two singles......

are you with me? I probably left a lot of you back somewhere around "what's grist"!!!!

Bare with me......

Now the problem is that this works only if you have the right grist... and generally the right grist rule is that the higher the tpi the smaller the grist.

Yes well that's not a lot to go on......

My questions ask for a 1 tpi, a 4 tpi, a 8 tpi, a 12 tpi and a 15 tpi... my default yarn is a 4 so doing a 12 and a 15 is a real stretch.

12 is thread and 15 is micro thread...... and I can't wait to get this done. I am using a merino/silk blend with the hopes that the silk will give this very fine thread a bit of strength.

My 1 tpi was fat. My 4 tpi was normal slightly lighter than worsted weight yarn, my 8 tpi was equal to a embroidery floss and my 12 tpi will be equal to sewing thread and heaven only knows what the 15 tpi will be like..... probably around BARELY ABLE TO SEE THE DA-- STUFF!!!

But I at least have 3 out of 5 samples done..... and a whole bunch of samples that are just not fine enough..... good enough and I can't use them....

Try doing all this and coming away with a nicely balanced yarn...

If I'm not back in a few days you know I lost it and they carried me away in a straight jacket......

Mwa hahahahahahahahahahaha.......!!!!