Mixing Things up for a Sweater
words and photos by: Johanna Carter
I always admire those who are able to spin mountains of yarn for a big project, ready to knit a wonderful sweater or cardigan. It is a satisfying feeling when you finish all that work, especially if you started with washing and combing the wool or even raising your own sheep.
Mixing spinning and knitting
The typical way to work through a larger project is to spin all the singles first and ply them in a particular order so you get the yarn even throughout the whole project. I don’t have so many bobbins, but my bigger problem is that I am quite impatient and want to get on with knitting once I have an idea. And normally, my brain is full of ideas for fibre work and the limit is the time, as I am a musician and teacher. I can’t sit at the spinning wheel for a long time if I’m not on holiday, so during the school year I mostly knit, and during the holidays I can dye, spin, use my drum carder, and do lots of fibre work. The only time I was able to produce bigger quantities of yarn before I knitted them up was during the Tour de Fleece in the two years during the pandemic, when we did not go on holiday at the beginning of July.
A highly photogenic collection of naturally dyed fibres.
I like to finish knitting one big project like a sweater or cardigan before I start the next one, or at least until I can’t carry it in my bag easily anymore, so I have an excuse to begin the next one. Sometimes it is good to have a second project on the go – I call it mindless knitting, where I don’t have to look very much – which I can keep my hands busy during Zoom or other meetings, which helps me listen.
Mixing colours and fibres
Usually I dye my yarn with plants which I collect in the woods or get from garden flowers. I also use cochineal and indigo, which I buy, to get lots of different colours. I really love the greens and blues I get from dyeing with indigo. I have lots of dyed wool, and all those colours give me inspiration for further projects.
Beautiful greens and blues dyed by the author using indigo and other natural dyes.
Blending the wool on the drum carder I can get even more shades. I like to blend with fibres like silk, alpaca, or plant fibres, and I love sari silk, to get those little bits of colour in my yarn.
Fibres of different types and colours are blended on a drum carder for elegant results.
When I have an idea for the next sweater, I start carding, and then I can begin to spin. Once I have spun enough yarn – say, for one day – I cast on and start knitting, usually top down, so I don’t have to decide too much in advance about length and width.
An idea for the author’s next sweater in the gathering stages.
When I spin on my wheel, I have to sit at home, but while spinning I can read a book or talk to others during online meetings. I also like to spin on my spindles, and that works on a walk, or a museum visit. I take them on holiday as they don’t need much space, and when I spin for a lace shawl, I don’t even need much wool either. At home there are spindles all over the place; I can spin when I am waiting for the kettle to boil, when the computer is slow, when I am cooking. Like that I can make good use of a short time and the yarn still grows.
Knitting as soon as the yarn is spun helps the author complete sweater projects in a timely manner.
I can take my knitting almost everywhere, which is why I don’t want to wait to get started until I have spun all the yarn for a whole sweater. I knit at home, on the bus or train. The only thing I have to make sure of is to be one step ahead with the yarn.
I love to knit Fair Isle sweaters. My favourite method is to use only one bobbin, which I don’t even fill, because I need smaller quantities of lots of colours. Then I wind a ply ball and ply it on itself. For that I put my thumb through the ball, so I can tension the two singles with my fingers and they don’t get tangled, as long as my thumb (or a cardboard roll or a pencil) stays in the middle. I don’t have any leftovers from plying, and it is quick when I suddenly need more yarn.
Several charming sweaters dyed, spun, and knit by the author.
I have never had problems with the yarn not being consistent enough throughout a project. I just know what yarn I want and my fingers seem to remember what to do. I am sure it is good advice to have a little card tied to the spinning wheel with a bit of the singles you are aiming for, so you can check and make sure you are spinning a consistent yarn.
Mixing breeds
There are so many different breeds, but some of my favourites are Shetland, BFL, and Jämtland – a Swedish breed. After dyeing them, I often forget what I have used, so when I do a new project it often turns out that I have used different breeds and fibres just to get the right colour. For the Fair Isle knitting I want to juggle lots of colours, which is more important to me than making a sweater out of only one breed.
Recently I made a pullover for my husband using about 12 different breeds and colours, even mixing short and long draw. For me it was a breed experiment and a way to use up lots of smaller quantities of wool I had in my stash. For that sweater I used combed top without blending.
Mixing in knitting during the spinning process is a wonderful way for a spinner to avoid being overwhelmed during a sweater project.
My feeling is that some people don’t dare to start spinning for a bigger project because they get overwhelmed by the quantity they have to spin and then all the knitting there is to do, especially when you want to spin the yarn entirely on spindles. Mixing the spinning and knitting for the same project is more interesting; you get more variety and more freedom to choose what you want to do next as long as you don’t run out of yarn. It breaks the project down into smaller, less daunting parts. The only thing you might want to plan is to have enough fibre at the start, but even that is not necessary, there is always a sheep growing more wool.
Arm Knitting with Textured Yarns
Regular PLY contributor Maja Siska is here to show you how to turn your skein of textured bulky yarn into a wearable piece in less than 30 minutes. Take it away, Maja!
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Arm knitting works well for that special skein that is too beautiful to knit regularly, or just the latest crazy yarn off your wheel looking for a life of its own. Yes, you could wear the skein around your neck – but if you want something more “finished,” this is a good way to go.
How do you do it? Just use your arms instead of knitting needles. It makes gigantic stitches, which open into loops that show all the glory of your yarn.
It is child´s play – literally: I have taught it to a 7 and 10 year old and within half an hour they were proudly wearing their scarves.
I love arm knitting because it is quick and easy, it makes a proper item that you can wear multiple ways, you do not need a lot of yardage, and last but not least it allows your textured yarn to be seen in all its beauty.
Adapting Arm Knitting for Handspun
Depending on the length of the skein, I have begun with anything from 5 stitches for a long thin scarf to 12 stitches for a wider one. If you knit it and it is too wide and too short or the reverse, just rip it back and change the number of stitches; it will only cost you another 20 minutes or so.
For a cowl, I found the best way to close the loop is to make a scarf and then knot the two ends together into every other stitch or so with a bit of left over yarn. I leave about 2 inches of tails on these knots and they become a feature – rather than trying desperately to hide the seam.
An example: approximately 35 yards (32m) of yarn, arm knitted across 9 stitches = 4 ft (120 cm) length, which works for a cowl.
And the most important rule: HAVE FUN!
For more information …
Here is just one video demonstrating this technique:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPer3Xv2QSM
Trained as an architect Maja is also a designer, artist, knitter and spinner. Anything wool is high on her list. She lives in Iceland on a farm with an array of animals. https://www.facebook.com/Icelandisfullofwool/
On ravelry: majasiska.
PLY Away Sponsor: The Spinning Loft
One of our sponsors for PLY Away is The Spinning Loft – and today, Alison from The Spinning Loft is here to introduce us to her business and give us some sneak peeks of what she’ll be bringing with her to PLY Away! Here’s Alison …
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Have you heard? The Spinning Loft is both a sponsor and a vendor at PLY Away!
We were so excited to hear about PLY Away that we had to throw our hat in with Jacey and the PLY Away crew. With such a great group of teachers and classes, fantastic vendors, and the backing from such an amazing publication, there was no way we could say “No.” More importantly the conference is a perfect match to our mission: The Spinning Loft exists to help bring shepherds and spinners together through fleece, and in so doing, to help preserve rare breeds.
It’s our pleasure to work with shepherds and to make their wool available to our fellow handspinners. We seek out shepherds everywhere with quality rare and heritage breeds, from Hog Island here in Maryland to Gammelnorsk Sau (the wool that made the Viking ship sails!) from Norway. We have the distinct pleasure of making these fleeces accessible to spinners, explain what characteristics make the breed, and help them explore these breed’s unique qualities.
Alison holding a Hog Island lamb
It is a great partnership that enables us to keep what we both love – the farms and the sheep – alive. The shepherds are compensated fairly for their work and the quality of the fleeces and we are able to introduce spinners to some really wonderful fibers.
That’s a big complicated mission, but it comes from a single starting point – a passion for wool. I love doing this – I love the wool and I love to expound on its wonders.
I started spinning like so many do, with commercially prepared fiber. Then I learned how to process my own fleece from raw, attended my first breed study class, and began expanding my exposure to different breeds.
Beth Smith, then owner of The Spinning Loft, changed my relationship to wool forever. We attended her breed study class in which we explored 12 different breeds of sheep. We explored fine wools and coarse wools, crimpy wools and dual coated wools. Wools from sheep I had never seen before. She also told us about the forthcoming book by Deb Robson that was all about the wool from different breeds of sheep.
I was hooked.
By the time The Fleece and Fiber Sourcebook came out, I had sampled about 40 breeds – nearly all the sheep commonly available in the United States. And when Deb did her book signing at Maryland Sheep and Wool, I stood in line for my copy and a signature … bouncing up and down so energetically that Deb declared she had “never seen someone so excited to buy a book about wool.” I simply loved the idea of the book so much – and the sheep – I couldn’t contain my joy and enthusiasm!
I have taken several breed study classes since and I have sampled over a hundred breeds (and counting). With every new breed I sample, I become more and more enamored with wool. Every time I have the chance to try a new breed, I find myself just as giddy as the day I acquired my copy of The Fleece & Fiber Sourcebook. It is this excitement and fascination in other spinners that I try to foster with The Spinning Loft, and it is particularly exciting when a brand new spinner – or a spinner brand new to breed study, or even a spinner brand new to a different breed – discovers all those breeds of sheep.
It was this passion that led me to buy The Spinning Loft from Beth. We both wanted the mission to continue and to share the joy of All The Wools. Sheep have so many different types of wool and so many uses for it, I’m just never bored. Trying new wools is exciting – discovering their properties, what I can do with them, how they feel in my fingertips, how they spin, what the yarn looks like, what the finished object looks like. It’s so easy to see why so many breeds have evolved – either through locality or through breeding for characteristics. And it makes me sad when we face the loss of a breed of sheep – what characteristic of their wool and what features that enrich us will be lost too?
The Wall of Fleece
We generally have over 50 unique breeds in raw fleece in stock, as well as commercially prepared top, with more fleeces always on the way based on shearing schedules. That’s quite a Wall of Fleece.
We can’t bring the WHOLE wall with us to PLY Away – but we are certainly going to bring as much of it as I can pack into my truck. Accompanying the Wall will be processing tools, wool scour, wash and rinse, and some of those valuable fleece guides and books about spinning different breeds into the yarn you want.
And maybe, just maybe, I’ll be bouncing with excitement to share a new breed sample with Deb Robson, Beth Smith, and all of you!
PLY Registration Rocked!
As the clocks clicked over to 10:00, everything went live.
I was nervous that I was throwing a party that nobody would come to (highschool was a tough time for everyone, right?) but at 10:01 we had 2 orders! The guides worked! Those first 2 spinners went through there like the wind! Or like somebody posted on Ravelry, like silk.
By 10:11 we were 48 registrants deep and Stephenie’s 2-dayer was sold out! By 10:20 Deb’s 2-dayer was gone too! Over the next hour over 110 spinners zipped through registration and by the end of the day we topped out at 150 spinners, most with full schedules.
Here’s how it shook out:
All the 2-day classes are sold out except for Coleen Nimetz’s Silk, the temptress unraveled, which is dangerously close to being sold out too! If you want this class, hurry, Coleen is amazing! I had her as my 1st year teacher in the Master Spinning program and she knows lots of secret things about silk!
There’s a bit more space in the 1-day Friday classes. Jillian’s Cheaper by the dozen class is long gone and it’s soon to be followed by Esther’s Wild Fibers class and Amy’s Sock it to me, both of which should be awesome and lots of fun.
The other 2, Illegal yarns and Technically Twisted both promise to be great but very different. Illegal Yarns is taught by the great Patsy Sue Zawistoski and she’s got such a brain in her head that I just want to walk behind her all day and hope some leaks out onto me. It’d be gross but probably worth it. Her class should be super fun and teach you how to break all those rules you want to break but are afraid to. Technically Twisted with Michelle is going to blow your mind! Michelle is the lead teacher for the Master Spinning Program and girlfriend can spin! She’s cutting her teaching down some after this so get in this class if you can! You’ll learn a ton, I can promise you that! If you can’t get in the 1-day, any half day with her would be worth your while!
The half day classes are a mixed bag. Many sold out right away (but some have other time slots available) and lots are on the brink. The totally gone ones are Deb’s and Jillian’s but Beth’s Going Steady which I may sneak into, is almost there as are all of Abby’s spindle classes and most of Amy King’s classes. Amy Tyler’s variations on long and short draw classes are also pretty full.
Ones that should be sold out but are only half full:
Silk Tasting: all the silk! Testing, trying, learning from a silk master! Seriously, I can’t believe there is any space! Did you read her silk articles in the Silk issue? Amazing!
Twist and Twine: If you have space for one more class, take this! Chris is so fantastic, you love her articles, she’s better in person!
Maximize your minis: I’m not as good at fiber prep as I should be so don’t be surprised if I totally crash Michelle’s classes! She knows so much.
Twist for Grist: If you want to know how to adjust the size and feel of your yarn, get in here! Michelle is great with twist and grist and again, she just knows a ton about spinning.
Wild Combing: It’s Esther, come on, the queen of texture!
There are a lot of great classes gone but there are still some gems to be had. I scheduled each of these classes/teachers based on how great I knew they would be, the things that I want to learn, and the people I want to learn them from. It’s going to be amazing no matter what classes you get! If you want to come, here’s the reg page!
And to those spinners that made yesterday such a success, thank you so much! And Jessica, man alive, you were outstanding!
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