The Charkha

A while back, I purchased a book charkha from another person selling hers on Ravelry.  I had no idea how to use it and it has sat in the cupboard in a time out.


This weekend at spin group was all about cotton.  I handled ginned cotton, cotton roving, cotton/bamboo roving, cotton/flax fiber, and recycled blue jeans cotton.  There is so much variety to cotton.  I excelled at carding punis.

Jan had a video called Spinning Cotton on the Charkha by Eileen Hallman which we watched for a bit.  The video is great in that it takes you through setting up your charkha for spinning.  If you are new to cotton spinning on a charkha, this video is a must have.


We spent quite a bit of time working on the set up and finally was able to get the thing working.


It is an ingenious little device and here are the photos of how it is set up.

In the above picture, the band is set for S twist (where the top of the band travels to the bottom of the whorl).  For Z twist, the drive band needs to be changed so the top of the band travels to the top of the whorl.

Now off to practice drafting and hopefully be able to spin cotton successfully.


Here is a demo of Gandhi spinning cotton on a charkha.