In The Hand

 

I know the photo doesn't look like much.  What it shows is two samples.  Actually it is the identical cloth, but cut in half and then one of the samples was hard pressed and the other left to dry without compression.

The cloth develops a great deal of texture, and I wanted to see how much the compression would affect the cloth, then decide if I would bother with the compression, or just leave the cloth to dry without applying a hard press.

The look of the cloth doesn't really show the 'extra' work/step of the pressing.  A lot of people might assume there is no benefit to doing it so would leave it.

But I have decided that I will, actually, apply the hard press to my cloth to 'finish' it.

Because here's the thing:  compression will 'lock' the warp and weft threads together and increase the resistance to abrasion and increase stability within the cloth itself.

There are fairly 'long' floats in the weave structure, which makes the cloth flexible and increases absorption.  Both characteristics that will improve the cloth as a tea towel.  And the hard press will help those longish floats to nestle closer to the threads beside and over and under it.

I will likely do a 'proper' book review of Michelle Boyd's book Twist.  I've had it on my TBR pile for months, but not felt as though I could properly understand it, so I had just opened pages at random and read bits and pieces.  But this month I decided I needed to read this book, and doing it steadily, a little bit every day, has allowed me to fully concentrate and absorb what she is saying (and showing in the photos).

On page 86 she discusses wet finishing freshly spun skeins of yarn and begins:

`We finish yarns for a lot of good reasons.  Finishing removes any spinning oils or dirt that may have gotten into into the fibres in the preparation and spinning processes.  These unwanted ingredients can prevent yarns from being as soft and bouncy as we want them to be and can make any cloth we eventually make with the yarn stiff or sticky.  This is also the time to rinse or set any excess dyes that may be lingering in the fibre so they do not bleed into the cloth we are going to make.  But the most important reason to finish our yarn is to settle the active twist energy into the fibres once and for all.'

She then lists some other benefits.    

But I think that like most people, if a step doesn't appear to make any great difference to our cloth?  We tend to assume that it doesn't actually do anything and will skip it.

When the difference is not in the eye but in the hand, though, we have to decide if the benefit outweighs the extra time and effort required.

In the case of the above cloth?  I can barely tell the two apart.  The compressed sample feels slightly thinner and smoother but that's it.  But I also *know* that the compression is doing things to the cloth that will allow it to serve its purpose better for longer.

I have 3 large mill cones of the singles 6.  I now know that I will not be skipping any steps in the wet finishing processes but will be spending quality time with the press (and my boombox) in order to give the cloth a good hard press.

Because my hand tells me it needs it and my brain knows why.