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.