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.
We are the ones: PLY Away
We are the ones carrying around a wad of fiber that we happily suspend by a piece of colorful string, the ones referring to a 15-lb contraption that doesn’t have a handle or a bag as “portable”, the ones that think it just makes sense to have that many raw fleeces, the ones that don’t give a rodent’s bum how cheap yarn is at Target. We are spinners and for the past few years we’ve been without a retreat of our own. I loved SOAR and sorely miss it so can you guess what’s coming next? Yep, the rumors are true! The world is no longer going to be devoid of an all-spinning retreat! For at least 4 days, we’ll be the ones surrounded by other ones just like us.
PLY Magazine is holding its first annual PLY Away retreat April 21, 22, 23, and 24, 2016 in Kansas City, MO at Crown Center’s Westin. I’m giddy with excitement, only sitting out of typing necessity. I want to dance and scream and spin and yell. Seriously, I’m that excited. As excited as I was when the original kickstarter hit it’s goal! I told the cashier at Natural Grocers about PLY Away yesterday. She seemed only moderately impressed. Anyway, the location is perfect. It’s right in the middle of so much stuff but when you’re inside the center, it’ll feel like it’s just us. Just us and all the fiber and fiber tools a spinner could dream of.
Thanks to our wonderful and generous VERY BIG SPONSORS — Lendrum, Kromski, Louet, The Woolery, and Hansen Crafts — for helping bring these spinning stars together while keeping the costs out of the clouds. For those of you that are wondering about the cost, half-day classes are $85, 1-day classes are $145, and 2-day classes are $260. That means that 4 full days of classes will run a spinner $600 (this also includes a free ticket to the banquet/talk of Friday night), 3 full days will be $485, and weekend full will be $340. The special room rate we’re getting is $140/night for up to 4 people. I know it’s not pennies, but we did our very best to keep it to as reasonable as possible. Registration will open November 11th but classes and schedules will go up in August.
It’s an a la carte retreat which means that you pick and choose the classes you want, building your prefect 1, 2, 3, or 4 day retreat. There are four 2-day retreats that span Thursday and Friday, each one with one of these amazing teachers: Deb Robson, Beth Smith, Coleen Nimetz, or Stephenie Gaustad. These 2-day classes are what spinning dreams are made of. Soon I’ll tell you about each one. But if you’ve got something else to do on Thursday and you’d rather stroll in with your bad self on Friday, you can take a 1-day class from the likes of Amy King, Patsy Zawistoski, Jillian Moreno, Michelle Boyd, or Esther Rodgers. Is it wrong that I scheduled classes that I desperately want to take? I want each one of these and don’t know how I’ll manage it. When the weekend rolls you’ve got a choice between all the above teachers plus Amy Tyler, Abby Franquemont, and Christina Pappas. That’s 12 teachers, each teaching two days worth of half-day classes that will blow your mind! I don’t envy you the choices you’ll have to make.
What would a spinning retreat be without a marketplace? We’re going to have one for sure! It won’t be huge and it won’t be tiny. We’re hoping it’s just right. There will also be an open-to-all spin in and both the spin in and the marketplace are free to anyone that wants to join in! If you’d like to be a vendor, check this page out!
Finally, there’s a Friday night banquet and talk.
I am so excited about it. I have such big plans. I want it to be the best retreat, not only for spinners but also for teachers and vendors! I’ll share more of the cool details as the weeks pass. Like the scholarship fund. And how you can win a PLY Away retreat on me (including airfare, classes, and hotel). And how you can be one of 10 people that gets to register early. And how there’s going to be a giant marketplace gift certificate for one lucky attendee. And about each class. And and and and…
For now, check out the website! ! If you’d like to join our illustrious ranks of sponsors, go here!
ps. if everything goes well, PLY Away 2017 will be bigger and longer!
It’s a Process
Last week Jillian spoke beautifully about rejection. She said it all perfectly. I agree with every feeling.
Today I thought I’d talk about my process of writing an article after the joyous news comes that my article idea has been accepted. This is the way I go about things and I happen to know that Jillian’s process is completely different than mine so ask her to tell you how she works.
OK, so when I submit an article idea for consideration I have an idea about how the yarns will look if I use a certain spinning method and I often want to talk about the technical details about how to get to the final yarn. That’s usually all I know and more often than not, I don’t have samples to back my words up.
When I write I need to have the yarn and swatches sitting right next to me so I can feel them in my hands. If I get stuck I pick up the samples and sniff them, hug them, feel them, rub them, anything that will get a littel spark going.
What that means is that all or most of my samples need to be spun before I start writing. What that also means is that I need to have a pretty good idea of what I want to show. I’m not great at writing detailed outlines. So for articles I usually just have a short paragraph that I’ve written to give me some idea of where I’m heading and then I choose fibers and spinning techniques that will get me there.
For example, the article in the Leicesters issue, I knew that I was limited to the three Leicesters and my article was about spinning for softness. Of course I wanted to choose the most coarse Leicester to demonstrate what I do so English Leicester was the choice (aka Leicester Longwool, or Dishley Leicester)
After I choose the fiber then I choose the wheel that will do what I want most easily. Often that is my Schacht Matchless. I can treadle pretty slowly and count treadles or whatever I have to do to make the yarn exactly what I want on that wheel. My other wheels have much larger drivewheels and I usually choose one of them when I want to get the work done fast and I don’t have to slow down so I can describe the process later.
This was actually the same process I used for writing my book. I had an outline which really was just a list of chapters. I wrote the breeds I wanted to use for each chapter under each heading and started spinning. Spinning for that project took about 6 months with 6 months of writing following the spinning. But having all of the samples right near me for inspiration was the greates thting I could have done for myself.
Right now I’m almost finished writing an article for the Singles Issue of Ply that’s coming up. It’s due in 5 days. I think I can make it because I have my samples.
Put Some Fiber On It
Hi friends! We recently finished shooting the Autumn 2015 – Texture issue of PLY. Jacey and I often joke about how each new issue is our favorite, but this one is going to BLOW YOU AWAY.
Before I divulge any information about the Autumn issue, let’s chat about Summer, shall we? I think it’s going to be your favorite. Some of you have already found it in your mailbox this week. Hopefully the postal system will be kind to the rest of you.
I’m sure we’ve mentioned this before, but shooting each issue seasonally can be tricky, because we take photos about 4-5 months before the issue is printed and shipped to you. We don’t strive for perfection but we also don’t want snow in the summer issue, you know? (Sorry, folks in the southern hemisphere, nothing is ever on time for you. I apologize for the hemisphere discrimination you face on a frequent basis.)
When the time came for our scheduled shoot, it was bitterly cold, the ground covered in snow. Clearly we couldn’t shoot outside, for reasons both aesthetic and practical. Fortunately Powell Gardens, only 30 miles away, had an exhibit in their natural light conservatory called Desert in Bloom. Because of the weather we even had the whole space to ourselves.
When evaluating a space for shooting, obviously we have some specific needs. Natural light is a must. While we have studio lighting, it adds a lot of time to the process and it simply doesn’t compare to the real thing. We also look at the colors in the environment, the availability of textured, interesting surfaces for backgrounds, and the variety of settings. Every set of photos has different requirements. Spinning shots take up more space and the background has to be interesting but not TOO interesting. Shots with models in garments need great light and good background, and they often set the scene for the magazine – they give the photography in the issue a unifying sense of place. Swatch shots need a flat surface that has texture but doesn’t compete with the texture of the fiber. The conservatory was perfect for our needs, and additionally provided the material for my FAVORITE cover shot so far.
When I spotted the beautiful Queen Victoria agave specimen in a pot beside the conservatory’s central pool, I knew it had to be in the issue. After taking a few shots of it, I employed the PLY equivalent of “put a bird on it,” which is to stick some fiber on the thing I find pretty and hope I get away with it. I think it worked this time.
After the shoot I had to get a Queen Victoria Agave of my own. I ordered some seeds and within a week they were planted in a pot in my kitchen window. It has been 14 weeks and I have three plants. I had read that they are slow-growing…yeah, they’re not kidding. I’ll get back to you in 15-20 years with an update. In the meantime, enjoy the Fine issue! ~ Bernadette
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