Friday, February 19, 2010

for reel

Photobucket

My CPW had a full bobbin of Jacob singles on it, and I wanted to clear it off, and ready my wheel for some flax.

I decided that I would set the singles aside for trying a "dyed THEN plied" technique.

So I reached for my reel, and started winding off. I have disconnected my "hammer" mechanism because the gears are a bit, um sticky, so I had to keep count of my turns.

Photobucket

This reel may be European, perhaps German in origin, and it does not measure in conventional yards. If I measure the entire distance of one pass, I wind up with about 90 inches.

Photobucket

Grace suggested to me that my reel could be measuring in ells. One ell is equal to 45 inches (or 1.25 yards), so one complete pass would give me the 90 inches and equal 2 ells (or 2.50 yards) I counted my turns and did the math...and wound up (or off) with approximately 392 yards...(give or take an inch or two....)and I haven't yet measured wpi.

Photobucket

The word ell is from the Latin ulna which originally meant the elbow and is now the name of the bone on the outside of the forearm.

Photobucket My yarn has been on the bobbin for a time and my singles seem to have a permanent wave.

8 comments:

Lisa at Greenbow said...

This has interesting texture. I always want to feel these singles you show us from time to time.

Manise said...

Love, love the wave on your singles. Very pretty.

annmarie said...

I love the soft grey.
And that's very interesting about the 'ell/ulna' connection. It makes a lot of sense. I just used my 'ulna' this afternoon to wind a small amount of yarn off a bobbin. :)

Sharon said...

facinating.

Unknown said...

As usual, I love your visual and textural pairings. I didn't immediately recognize the background behind the yarn as glaze on a plate, first thought it might be some sort of lace or fabric, then thought it looked like some sort of bone.
Some sort of bone, hmmm...
Aha! the ulna...you brought everything full circle, you clever girl.

Jody said...

What a lovely old yarn winder. You have a wonderful collection Cyndy :)

thecrazysheeplady said...

Cool!

~ Phyllis ~ said...

I like the yarn wave. Love looking at your blog pictures.
Your blog always leads me down memory lane. My Memaw and great aunt raised chickens. I had the chore of feeding them and gathering eggs.

Blog Widget by LinkWithin