ShmoopTube

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well we can't just string together some silk moth cocoons and call it a [woman wearing a shirt covered in silk moth cocoons screams and runs away]

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shirt and we can't just take a sheep straight onto a loom probably drive us

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nuts instead we have to take the natural

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fibers and turn them into some kind of thread well the process of making thread [Woman using a machine for thread]

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is called spinning why well because we have to spin a bunch of tiny fibers

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together to make thread or yarn well the oldest method of spinning

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involved an ancient tool called a drop spindle this was basically a wooden [A drop spindle]

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dowel with a hook on it early weaver's

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would hook a hunk of fluffy wool and spin the spindle as they pulled downward [A weaver spinning the spindle]

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the wool fibers would twist into yarn

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the drop spindle worked like a charm but it took forever which was less than [Man checking his watch as drop spindle worked]

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charming imagine being forced to watch every second of a slug crossing a

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parking lot now imagine every single thread in a whole sweater taking that [Woman knitting a sweater sitting on a couch]

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long to make well by the early Middle Ages the Chinese and several Middle

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Eastern cultures had replaced the drop spindle with the spinning wheel this is

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approximately oh we don't know a million billion trillion times better give or [A spinning wheel at work]

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take sorry drop spindle we're just keeping it real you were quaint an all but life's

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too short to hang out with you well spinning wheels used a pedal to spin a

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weapel very clever naming there huh that helped to twist thread from raw wool

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they increase the speed of spinning by at least 10x and according to some

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reports they occasionally prick princesses fingers making the ladies [A princess pricking her finger on a spinning wheel]

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snooze for a hundred years so after we make thread we've got to weave it

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together to make cloth so the finer our thread the better the cloth and the [Man points finger and laughs at another mans clothes]

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longer it takes to weave, right even with the spinning wheel weaver's had to

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beautification the earliest form of weaving thread into cloth probably

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happened on a structure called a back strap well the backstrap loom was [Man weaving thread using a backstrap loom]

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back-breaking because it needed a humans body weight pulled against the threads to

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give them tension so take away don't mess with those

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ancient weaver's those ladies were ripped as early as seven thousand years [Ancient woman weaver slaps a man away]

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ago a new structure was used called a loom or if we want to get

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technical it was called a warp weighted loom these were a huge step up from the

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old school back strap of course even though they work well these looms were [Woman working a loom]

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big heavy and cumbersome no wonder all those nomads started settling down even [Man leading a camel down a road]

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those ripped weaver ladies couldn't carry a warp weighted loom and when the

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beasts of burden Union was pressed on the issue the horses said and the [A horse and a camel standing in a garden]

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camels just spit don't quit our day job you say.. ha-ha! [Man on stage doing stand-up comedy]

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the joke's on you this is our day job

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