A few years ago a friend gave me a set of rather splendid books; The Textile Industries is a comprehensive yet easily-read catalogue of all the information that anyone could want about textiles.
In these volumes – 8 in total – the ways in which “Fibres, Yarns and Fabrics in every branch of Textile Manufacture” are prepared and made is outlined. There are lots of illustrations, photographs and drawings of machines, animals and plants, and microscope views to help tell the stories of these processes and items.
As part of the project to come up new yarns for weaving, I started to read a chapter on wool types and preparation. What a fascinating read it has been. When we visited a small scouring plant earlier this month near Christchurch to see where the parcel of raw fleece that I had sent over to be washed was being dealt with, I saw a steeping barrel of wool. It was not something that I knew much about, having only seen large-scale industrial enclosed steeping drums in the past. I took Volume One of The Textile Industries off the shelf and began to read. The chapters covering “Raw Materials” in general, and “Wool and Hair” in Part I of the book, and “The Preparation of Textile Fibres” in Part II, have been enlightening. Now I know how to go about making a steeping drum and what its purpose is:- to remove the grease, acids and lumps that adhere to fleece when it has been stored for any length of time.
I have also read about wool sorting and that, back when this book was published in MCMX (1910), sorting wool was already less refined than it had been in previous decades.Prior to the early years of the 20th Century, apparently it was usual to sort the fleece of each animal into thirteen or fourteen qualities. By the time of the publication of this book that was no longer the case and sorting for woollen spun yarns (the fibres are carded i.e. brushed to align the fibres roughly) gave nine qualities while those for worsted (the fibres are combed) sorting gave ten. (For more information on the difference between woollen and worsted spinning check out this website.)
There is so much information in these kinds of books and this volume includes inside the back cover, as an added bonus, a fabulous model of a ribbon loom with flip-up and flip-out tabs printed with the mechanisms inside the machine. It is all useful, especially when one is trying to understand the different machinery and processes that go into yarn production. As the search for the perfect yarn continues by small incremental steps, so the knowledge of what needs to be done, and why, increases. That can only be A Good Thing! Long live the printed word.
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