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.
Spinning “Lopi” Singles
Guest blogger Beth Abbott is here to share with us her experiences spinning “Lopi” style singles yarns and using them in her knitting. Follow along with her exploration of the history of these yarns and her efforts to engineer a way to spin them for herself.
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When I started my study on Icelandic fleece, one of the first things I learned was that although traditionally the fleece had been separated into the two coats, thel (undercoat) and tog (long hairy outer coat), currently in Iceland, to my knowledge, there was/is no one spinning the coats separately. The two coats are now spun combined into several styles of singles yarns.
Lopi in History
In the late 1980’s there was “Lopi” under the brand name of Alafoss and a yarn that was mostly used in Iceland called “eingirni” meaning “singles”, a fine fairly firmly twisted yarn used in lace knitting. In early 2000 there were two more yarns added to the collection called Lett (light) Lopi (about half the diameter of the original Lopi) and a Heavy Lopi which was about twice the diameter of the regular Lopi. The company has undergone a reorganization and is now Istex.
A lopi plate showing the size of the strand – note the lack of twist.
The word lopi means roving in Icelandic and the plötulopi plates that the Icelanders use for knitting their popular patterned yoked sweaters are actually just the last roving step in the process of spinning the fine “eingirni.” Usually three strands of this roving are worked together and the result is a very bulky but very light airy sweater, very warm, because the air is trapped in the yarn. The Lopi yarn was developed for the export market because they thought it would be easier for non-Icelanders to knit.
a hand knit sweater from real lopi plates
An interesting point is that those yoked sweaters have only been a tradition in Iceland since the 1920s, when a creative spinner decided to try to knit on her knitting machine with the rovings as they came from the mill, without spinning them. When she found this was possible, it opened up a whole new area of knitting for the hand knitter as well as the machine knitter.
Re-creating a Lopi style yarn
The original Lopi yarn has about one twist per inch and a twist angle of 15º. The diameter is about 8 – 10 wraps per inch. As many of you will know, it is difficult to spin a yarn this soft and thick consistently, and with some air to prevent it from being dense and heavy. I found that preparation was key to success in spinning a Lopi style yarn.
handspun Lett lopi and regular lopi style yarns
To prepare an Icelandic fleece: wash, dry and then carefully tease out the locks, paying special attention to the butt ends which tend to clump together during the washing. It is worth noting that the “thel” or undercoat is extremely fine and short and felts very easily, so that care is also needed in the washing process – NO playing with your hands – while the fleece is in the hot soapy water. Carefully lift the fleece from the slightly cooled water to empty the tub and fill with rinse water. Try to keep the temperature of the rinse water close to that of the slightly cooled wash water. Again – no movement while it is rinsing. Carefully lift out of the rinse water and either roll in a towel and dry flat or put in the washer on JUST SPIN – no rinsing process – to take out the excess water. Then lay flat on towels to dry. Once the fleece is dry, the teasing is fairly easy, though time consuming. However, the time spent in this part of the process will save time and agony later.
After carefully teasing out the locks I put them through my drum carder. I usually use a Louet drum carder for Icelandic as it has longer and finer teeth and will take the loft of the combined coats more successfully than many other carders. Usually I put the fleece through at least twice, splitting the first batt into two lengthwise and then putting each through again. I hold the batt up to the light and see if there are neps and lumps that need further carding.
Once the fleece is well carded, I split the batt into narrow strips and predraft these into a sort of roving form. These I spin on a Louet wheel, because of its larger orifice and bobbins. Using the lowest bobbin/flyer ratio you have, work slowly to draft a bulky yarn, as consistent as possible. Any lumps often tend to drift to the outside of the yarn and can be picked off. Aim for one twist per inch. If need be, because you have only a high ratio wheel, you can put the yarn through the wheel again in the opposite direction to remove a little of the twist.
It is not easy for the hand spinner to create the roving style of Lopi but, by using my fingers to fan the fibres and letting the twist pick up the fibres, I am able to create a very light and airy, softly spun singles yarn. If I put in a little more twist, I can ply two strands together and get a Lopi diameter yarn that is airier than the original Lopi yarn, and one I like better.
closeup of hand knit real lopi sweater – purchased in iceland – long hairy look is due to the long tog fibres in the yarn
The next time someone tells you that you must cut the fibres to be the same length for blending, or that fibres should be compatible for blending, remind them that the Icelandic fleece, with its strong outer coat like a long Lincoln and its fine under coat, more like the finest, shortest Merino, are regularly blended and spun in Iceland.
Beth Abbott has been spinning since 1975 and earned her Master Spinner Certificate from Georgian College, Owen Sound Ontario, in 1990. Her in-depth study is now in print as a book. Beth teaches in the Spinning Certificate Course at Haliburton School of Art on a regular basis. For more information on the Icelandic Fleece, consult her book “The Icelandic Fleece – a Fibre for All Reasons”. It is available from Beth and Ron Abbott – contact elizabethandronabbott@gmail.com
Keeping Track While Spinning and Lazy
There are a lot of different ways to keep track of your yarn for consistency while spinning. I like the lazy ways. Here are four ways to keep track that I use when I spin.
On the left, WPI gauge: I love this one from Nancy’s Knit Knacks. I find I get a more consistent reading with this one because I roll the yarn on rather than wrap it, so it goes on gently not pulled tight. I use this way of measuring while I spin the least.
On the right, Spinner’s Control Card/WPI Gauge: This is a piece of clear plastic that has lines painted on it approximating the WPI of yarn. To use it, hold your yarn either on top or under the plastic and see where your yarn fits but doesn’t extend past the lines. I used to use this one a lot, but I kept forgetting what number my yarn was supposed to be, so I moved on. This is my third favorite way of measuring.
In the middle, Card of Laziness (two ways of measuring in one): Some spinners call these control cards, but I’m not about control, I’m about lazy. I use card stock tags. On the top I wrap unfinished singles. While I spin I can compare the singles I’m spinning to the ones on the card, by holding them side by side. On the bottom of the card on the left is a ply back sample made from fresh single twisted back on itself and pretending to be a balanced 2-ply. Every so often while spinning, I pull a length of single from the bobbin, let it twist back on itself and compare it to my ply back sample. (The yarn on the bottom right is 2-ply that has been finished.) I use these two way of measuring almost interchangeably, but the singles wrapped on the card wins as my #1 because it really uses the least effort, skipping that time-consuming plying-back stage.
I can’t spin without measuring now. While I do like my yarn to be mostly consistent, I’m not anal about it. I’ve spun too many yarns that start out worsted and finish less than DK to shun measuring while I spin. I’ve reluctantly become a measurer, but a lazy one.
Tell me your measuring stories!
finishing
wristbands or tyvex envelopes cut down
Scouring
It’s January and around my house that usually means a lot of wool washing is going to happen. I have 8 teaching appointments this year and almost everyone chooses classes that require unprocessed wool. That’s because around 75% of my class list consists of classes that are about processing wool from raw. I love it. I think the yanr you get when you do your own processing is better than the yarn you spin from mill processed stuff – that’s not to say that i 
don’t spin plenty of mill process wool. It’s like thinking about cakes. The completely home made from scratch cake will always be better than the box mix but that box mix surely has its place on my shelf.
Anyway, when I get to scouring I usually wash about 60 to 80 pounds per week. This year my list has 21 breeds that need a good dunk in the hot water. That will take me about 3 weeks to complete.
Everyone has their favorite method for scouring raw fleece and I thought I’d talk about mine today.
I’ve read every article that has come in my view about scouring and talked to other spinners who love raw fleece and from all of them I developed the method that works best for me and my space. I tried doing the whole fleece in the bath tub and I hated it. I ended up wet from my shoulders to my waist. Plus all that getting down onto the floor made me sad.
I tried it in the washing machine tub but I hated it because at first it was too scary and then it was just too much moving the wet wool in and out of the tub. as the water filled and drained.
I haven’t tried the fermented suint method because I need to get the wool washed now and it takes too long…plus it stinks.
In addition, I have tried most of the wool scouring products plus Dawn and Orvus and found that my favorite is Unicorn Power Scour. One of the main reasons I love it is because there is no need to boil water to get the temperature high enough to melt the lanolin. There is some kind of magic ingredient that makes that not necessary and since I wash wool in my laundry room on the second floor, heating water would make me crazy.
So after all that, what do I do? I have 4 tubs that I use. I got them from the people at Soak. They call the ones I use Phil. You can get them from the Soak website or your local shop that sells Soak products. These basins hold between 1.5 and 2 pounds of wool depending on the breed and how fluffy it is. That’s why I have 4. If I have a fleece that weighs 8 pounds I can almost always wash the whole thing all at one time. 
So, I line the basins up using my washer and dryer as a counter top. I have a utility sink next to the washer and I have a cut off garden hose attached to the faucet. This way I can direct the water to the tub that is furthest away without having to move it an extra time. (ignore the messy stuff around the sink, please.)
I turn on the hot water and let it run a bit until it is as hot as it will get. We have our hot water heater set to 120 degrees F. (Unicorn recommends 140 but this temp works for me.) Then I start filling the 
buckets until they are a little over 3/4 full. It seems like a lot when you are going to put the wool in but the wool soaks up some water and often I have to top them off a bit after the wool is in.
But before I add the wool I add the wool wash. The Power Scour works sort of like dye as far as how you determine the amount to use. It is based on the weight of the wool you want to wash. For these basins when I am washing about 2 pounds I add around 2 to 3 tablespoons in the first soak.
When I add the wool I push it down into the water. I have a couple of paint stirrers on the shelf for this purpose.
I soak the wool in the hot water and scour for at least 15 minutes. It’s important to not forget about the wool at this point because if the water cools and the lanolin sets back onto the wool it can be much more difficult to remove.
So, after 15 minutes I take the basin to the sink and dump it out. I squeeze out a bit of the water and refill the basin with hot water. At this point I add half as much
of the scour to the basin. After all 4 have been emptied and refilled I let them soak for another 15 minutes.
I repeat the process 2 more times but with only clear water. So that’s 2 washes and 2 rinses. After the last soak the water may not be clear. There may still be some dirt showing but I don’t worry about it. There are several more opportunities to get the last bit of dirt out.
At this point when i dump out the basin in the sink, I transfer the wool into lingerie bags. I 
used to just squeeze out as much water as I could and then roll the wool in towels but I like to spin it out in the washer now. It gets out more water and I don’t have as many sopping wet towels laying around.
One bag will hold all of the wool from one basin.
I let it go through the whole spin cycle. Make sure that your washer doesn’t spray water during the spin. If it does, you can turn off the water going to the washer during this part.
And finally I take the wool to the drying racks.
These are just sweater drying racks that are stackable. I have several of them and if I run out of space i move to the floor. I wash wool until there is no more space and then I may need to take a a day or off while the fleeces dry and some space is available. I make sure to write the breed on a card and place it next to the wool. Sometimes if you have several white fleeces drying next to each other it can be a little confusing so the labels are important.
All of this takes about 90 minutes from start to finish and I feel pretty accomplished.
Do yu have any special things you do to wash your fleece?
If you are interested in playing with the fleeces i’m scouring now, come and see me in Boulder Colorado! I’ll be ther in February. Here’s the link for registration. http://www.handweaversofboulder.org/explore/forms/HGBBethSmithRegistration.pdf
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