COVER STORY
of the wheel manually by hand. The movable wheel contains one spindle only. Two persons take the slivers of the coir prepared and kept ready after willowing. Usually two women keeps the sliver in the arm pits, make a loop with small quantity of fibre which is put into the notch of each spindle set into motion on stationary wheel. Further fibre in the armpits is added to the loop while walking backward forming single stand yarn. The operation is continued till the required length is reached and are passed through the grooved rod. The two strands of yarn spun are tied together into the notch of the spindle on movable wheel which is at the other end. The grooved rod is allowed to move forward and the movable wheel is turned in the opposite direction The object of the grooved rod is to regulate the twist of the yarn and to prevent entanglement of the strands at the time of doubling. When the grooved rod reaches the stationary wheel, the turning of the spindles of the spinning wheel is stopped and all the ends from that of stationary wheel are cut off and made into hanks.
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Depending on the usage the yarn is tested if there is sufficient twist. If ore twist is required, the movable wheel is turned towards its original direction till the required twist is obtained. If the yarn has more twist than required, the movable wheel is turned in the direction contrary to the original twist. The women of East and West Godavari districts have been practicing the skill of spinning coir ropes for the local vendors since the last 7 decades. We tried to replace the coir fiber with banana that has better commercial value and asked them to make it finer. In few areas where the women are not so skilled we trained them to spin single strand yarn on a ratt. It took almost two years for the artisans to get comfortable with the new material and spin a good quality of yarn. Slowly standardised three different counts of yarns using two kinds of fine fibers with colour variations of natural white and brown.
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