So - let's look at the individual limiting factors, or potential limiting factors, to your spinning speeds.

For the actual spinning process, there's the insertion of rotation - your rotational speeds achievable with your tool - and the drafting speed. You'll run into one of those before the other, and inevitably, that is what will limit your maximum achievable speed. We'll look at the rotational speeds first.

How you get the rotation that you want or need depends on the tool you're using, of course. Most modern hand-spinners use a treadle wheel (at least my impression is that most modern spinners are wheel-spinners). Here, your rotation is limited by the speed with which you can treadle and the ratios you can have between your wheel and your flyer and/or bobbin (depending on wheel construction). In general, if your wheel is larger, you will get higher speeds. If the size difference between your wheel and flyer/bobbin is larger, you will get higher speeds; so you can tune your wheel, to a degree, with an appropriately smaller-sized bobbin. However... there's limits to that; I have once tried to super-tune a wheel that I have, and it did not work in a rather spectacular manner. Because you also have slippage on a wheel, and changing the diameter of the pulley part of your flyer or whorl will change friction between your drive band and the pulley... and if the angles don't lead to enough frction to get everything running smoothly, well, your pulley can be as theoretically well-suited for high speeds as can be, it will still not work properly. So there's limits to what you can do regarding the transmission.

If we look at the hand-spindle, the speeds you will be able to get depend on a lot more factors. Your technique of how you set the spindle into motion; if you use the finger flick, the thickness of the upper end where you grasp the spindle is one of them (thinner means higher speeds achievable) and your finger strength, as well as the weight and shape of the whorl will all influence how well your spindle runs. Of course the frequency of your setting the spindle in motion also is important, as well as the amount of time that this action takes away from your drafting time if you're spinning long suspended.

If your tool is an e-spinner, your rotation speed limit is the limit of what the tool will deliver. This means it takes a bit of stress away from your body - you don't have to do movements (and maybe train them) to achieve high speeds, just twist a knob or press the pedal down some more, and you get more twist. The speed I'm running my e-spinner at? Well. According to its manual, it can get up to 1650 rpm with the foot pedal attached (which is the case when I'm working), and I have very rarely, if ever, cranked it up to max. But even if it's "only" running at about 1000, or 1200 rpm, I'm pretty sure that I would not be able to get that speed on a treadled spinning wheel, let alone on the hand-spindle.

Which means that for me, when working the e-spinner, the limiting factor is my drafting speed... which is what we'll be looking at next.

Spinning speeds are a topic (or a question) that comes up again and again - and it is, like all questions about craft durations and times needed and work speeds, a difficult one.

To start off by stating the obvious: There's no cut-and-dried formula for saying how long task X will take when we're talking about crafts. That is even true for modern craft works, where there are machines to help with (and often reduce) work time. Usually, when you are experienced, you can estimate how long something will take, but complications can arise at any time. As soon as more unknown elements enter your task equation, things get more squishy as well. And of course a lot depends on details such as the fineness of a textile, or the finishing of some woodwork (raw surfaces, or do they get sanded, maybe sanded more than once, or maybe then oiled or laquered as well?). 

That said, when we're turning towards textiles, spinning is a considerable chunk of the work time needed to make a woven fabric. And of course your spinning time needed will depend on a lot of factors again - type and preparation (especially prep quality) of your fibre, the amount of twist necessary (which depends on what amount of twist you're going to and the thickness of your yarn), and the tool you are working with, and the proficiency of the spinner. Because we're talking serious amounts here when spinning for fabric, a 10% difference in speed will mean quite a substantial difference in time.

Things that should not be forgotten as well are prep time for the fibre (but that's another can of worms, and we'll keep that nicely closed, with the lid weighed down, and stashed in the back of a shelf in the dark for now) and post-processing of the yarn. Reeling off will also take a bit of time, as will setting the twist - a must-do if you're working with high-twist yarns in the historical style. They are not taking too long each, but they will add up, too, especially if you are spinning smaller portions at one go, because your bobbin is small or your spindle has limited capacity.

Finally, when you are calculating the amounts needed for a fabric, you have to allow for the amount that gets eaten by the initial shrinkage, when you take the raw piece off the loom and wash it for the first time. (For me, that is part of the weaving process, because no textile ever is finished before it's been wet and dried again once.) And, of course, my personal frenemy: the loom waste.

Loom waste is the bits of warp thread that you have which cannot be woven. You have a bit of loom waste with almost every weaving process; in the few special weaving variations that you do not get any loom waste at all, your price for this is more hours spent by doing the last centimetres of weaving with a needle, without the help of your normal method of opening a shed. It's entirely possible, but not something that's done quickly and easily (and it would be quite interesting to compare the amount of time needed to do that, and the amount of time spent on spinning for the loom waste, and compare those two). Loom waste, depending on your loom type, will range somewhere between about maybe 70 cm if you're lucky and have an economic set-up, or 150 cm if your loom is rather, um, hungry. That's per warp thread, mind you - so if you have 1000 warp threads (which would be a 10 thr./cm fabric in 1 m raw width, nothing out of the ordinary and actually rather on the narrow side of things), you're spinning a whole klick just for the waste bin. (You can use the cut-offs for stuff, of course, but they will definitely not be part of the fabric.)

There are quite a few statements about how quickly some people spin around the Internets, and some of them seem rather, um, outlandish to me. The Guinness World Record that has been documented is 99,45 m in one hour; unfortunately there's no statement about the tool used for this. There's people claiming that they spin more than 500 metres in one hour... which to me sounds not feasible, to be honest.

There's two to three limiting factors to how much you can spin in a given amount of time: Your rate of twist insertion (that's the rotational speeds you can achieve with your tool); your drafting speed; and - if you are spinning on a hand-spindle or spindle wheel or some other tool that does not automatically wind up your yarn, your wind-up speed.

Well, or at least warp time - I've started spinning for the warp for our textile reconstruction. The first bobbin has been spun, and reeled off, and it was quite a bit of yarn... 

The original textile has very, very tightly twisted yarn in the warp, so I've been trying to spin to the same degree of twist without overtwisting it (so that it corkscrews in places). That is a challenge - but, well, I have a few more kilometers to go, and I'll surely get more relaxed about it soon. 

But for now... the weekend is coming, and I'm very much looking forward to that!

I had the pleasure yesterday to meet up with three lovely colleagues for a little bit of weaving together - working with backstrap loom techniques used by the Maya in Guatemala. 

It was really fascinating for me to see the overlaps and the differences between the other bits of backstrap weaving that I have done. Some things remain the same, some things are done slightly differently, some are very different. I've also managed to do a few of the steps much better than in previous tries - so I was pretty chuffed at the end of the day. 

 I'm especially fond of the super simple way the heddles were made for this variation - they are just loops pulled across the stick, no knots, no nothing, super quick to make. Which was a good thing, because I didn't get the length right the first time around and had to re-heddle, and then there was an error or two so I had to re-do some bits again. And of course there were two errors in the cross (how did they happen, I ask myself, and why did I not catch them?) so I'm planning to do the heddles again next time I sit down with this and return the two stray slackers to the fold. (Also one of the heddles is too long, and despite several tries at adjusting it which is possible in theory, I have been quite unsuccessful.)

So I returned home a very happy lady after that day, and with a few more insights on what is important on a loom type like this, both in regards to the process and the tools. A grand day out indeed!

I'm already looking forward to NESAT - this conference is always a highlight of the three-year-period that NESAT takes place. This time, it will be in Warsaw, Poland. I've been to Poland once already, many years ago, for an excavation, and I have a lot of good memories of these weeks, so it will be really nice to re-visit some of the local delicacies. And, of course, meet with the friends and colleagues from all over Europe.

The conference programme looks quite stuffed with interesting things - you can find it on the website, in case you are interested.

Somehow this post didn't get sent off properly yesterday - so you're getting the black morel photo today: 

These are, apparently, not very common anymore. They are also edible - though I think I prefer looking at them if they are rare, instead of eating them. (Especially not eating them rare.)

These mushrooms are also the first thing that had the rating "selten" (rare, probably, in the English version) in the ObsIdentify app. That is a recent discovery the Most Patient of All Husbands made - it's an app where you can upload images of (wild) plants and animals, and it will compare them to a database and tell you what it is, and with what probability. Observations that are made with surety can then be uploaded. Your uploads help with monitoring where what species are found, and thus for tracking biodiversity. The app will even recognise caterpillars, so it's a really cool help in finding out what critter you have somewhere.

You can find out more about the app here on their website, or search for Obsidentify in your app store thingie of choice. 

Weekend is coming, and I'm very much looking forward to it - there's good weather predicted for tomorrow, so we might go for a bit of a bike ride to make use of that. There would also be garden stuff to take care of, but, well... we'll see.

Otherwise, spinning is progressing. I'm also trying to get all kinds of things sorted out and all ducks in a row as far as possible before going mostly off-line and on a break for all of May, for a number of appointments and things.

Meanwhile, the Little Cat is already channeling the weekend vibes:

That is relaxation proficiency!