Boat shuttles 2

In the last post I showed you how to wind a pirn and in the images I showed you winding a cardboard pirn, which come in two types, dimpled and smooth.  I showed you an image of two shuttles with the front one having a dimples pirn and when I showed you how to wind your shuttle I showed a smooth pirn.

Here I'm going to show you how I make paper pirns if I run out of cardboard ones!

I take an A4 sheet of paper and cut or tear it in half.  I don't worry about the quality of paper, here I used an old technical sheet I use for my woven samples.

Fold the half sheet and cut or tear that in half.  So you now have 4 quarters.

On the top right hand side of the photograph in the right you can see that I've folded one quarter diagonally in half.   Cut or tear along this fold.

You now have 8 right angle triangles of paper.  Here are just two.

Take the narrow point of the triangle and wind it round your pirn winder.

Once your feel it's securely on the pirn winder, trap your yarn in between the layers of paper, turning the handle so that the paper continues to wind round the pirn winder with the yarn firmly trapped.

Build up your mounds of yarn at either end, then fill the middle as in the previous post.

Maggie Stearn shows another method of making paper pirns on her blog, click here to see it.

Another pirn you may come across is a wooden one, as in this picture.

With these pirns, it's not so critical to build up the mounds at either end, because of the wood stoppers at the ends.

However, when you are level with the top of the stoppers, you must ensure that you begin to build up the yarn towards the middle.  Really for safety, stop winding when your yarn gets level with the end stoppers.

In the next post I'll give you a few tips the ensure that you are doing all that is necessary to prevent those nasty "nose dives"!