Carding

Cleaned wool and cotton is carded by drawing the fibres over and through pins set into a block of wood, or with the fingers alone. Throughout the Middle East and Asia an extraordinary technique has evolved at this stage for disentangling snags and clumps of cotton. After the debris has been drawn out of the cotton, a bow-like instrument is held over the fibres and plucked. The vibrations from this cause the fibres to become disentangled —an unusual, musical method of carding.

Spinning

Among the tribes of Persia, the nomadic Qasliqai look down on spinning as “women’s work’, but it is a very laborious and seemingly never-ending task. As with the harvesting of the fleeces, it is a family pastime and with training becomes an automatic task. Everyone in the tribe, male and female, young and old, whether watching over the sheep, engaged in lively conversation, or keeping an eye on the many children, will more often than not be spinning with small and light tools. The deft touch that rhythmical ly twirls the spindle twists the wool fibres to gether to create the yarn. The very simplest spinning tools are used, from a stone weight, or a tlat stick rotated horizontally, to various types of spindle. The drop spindle is a vertical wooden or metal shaft driven through a weight, known as a whorl. The whorl may take various shapes and forms according to family and tribal tadition —a notched disc, simple crossed splines, carved horn hooks, or a multiple notched square. Another form, the thigh spindle, is used by the Kirghiz, the Kurds around Lake Van in Anatolia and by the older members of the Balouch tribes. Here the spindle, with the whorl at the head or tail of the shaft, is rolled from thigh to knee or knee to thigh, depending on the direction of twist required. Throughout Afghanistan, the very much more complicated hand-turned spinning wheel is used, the spinning wheel itself being locally or family made using coarsely-carved wood and metal scrap. From a bundle of fibres, or rove, held under the left arm, wrapped around the left forearm and wrist, or tucked into a capacious sleeve, fibres are teased out and knotted onto the spindle by the right hand, then suspended in the air by the left hand; the spindle is given a slight twist and allowed to hang, continuing to spin because of the weight of the whorl and the spinning motion imparted by the teasing out of the wool from the rove with the riht thumb and forefinger. As long as the teasing movement continues and until it touches the ground, the spindle turns automatically, spinning and winding the wool into a strong, pliable and even thread. The lengthening yarn is then wound onto the spindle shaft, whorl or hooks and the process begins again.

The individual threads have a twist that corresponds to the direction in which the spindle has been spun, either clockwise in a ‘Z’ twist, or anticlockwise in an ‘S’ twist. For right-handed people the natural turn is clockwise, and so most hand—spun yarn has a ‘Z’ twist. Two or more threads plied together give a very much stronger yarn. The direction of the spin of the plied wool is always opposite to that of the threads, so the plied yarn is balanced and less likely to untwist or break. The combinations possible at this stage are infinite, with plies of goat, camel and horse hair, metal, lurex, cotton and silk, with or without sheep’s wool. Whatever the structure of the yarn, it is the process of hand
spinning that gives so much character to the finished kilim. Hand-spun wool has a fairly loose twist with the fibres arranged nearly parallel to its length, and will give the surface of the kilim a smooth finish that soon acquires a supple sheen and lustre that enhance the colours used. Modern machine-spun wool, by contrast, is composed of fine, often frizzy and broken wool with intermeshed fibres that reflect the light less well.