Tamba-fu: Hand spinning

A special feature of Tamba-fu is that the weavers hand spin their threads themselves, an almost dead art in present day Japan . The seeds are extracted from the harvested cotton balls (wata kuri), the meshed fibers loosened and aligned by beating them with a vibrating bow (watauchi), and then they are rolled into hollow tubings or rovings (jinki). Holding a roving in the left hand, the woman uses her fingers to spin the thread attached to the spindle on the rotating spinning wheel , and then winds the twisted thread onto the spindle bobbin. The uneven thickness of threads that have been spun by pulling out the fibers from a roving and adding twist makes them different from machine-spun threads. It is just this that gives the final woven fabric its texture.