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 have a winner!
Thanks everyone, for participating! And after using this random number generator, we have a winner! Kimberly Burnett-Dean of the great state of Virginia (which I hear is for lovers). I’ll be sending the fiber out to her this week.
Thanks to Anne Podlesak for the pattern and the Wooly Wonka Fibers fiber.
Stay tuned for more of these! Every issue has 2-4 projects and I plan on giving away the fiber that the spinner/designer uses for as many of those as I can. So if you really like a design and wish you could make it out of the same fiber, well, you could actually go to the indie-shop and purchase it, but if not, you can win it here!
love,
jacey
Learning to make a magazine pt.2
How about another installment of learning to make a magazine?
First to set the stage — here’s where we are in the grand scheme of cycles and status:
End of the Autumn 2014 cycle
Middle of the Winter 2014 cycle
Planning of the Summer 2015 cycle
That sounds easy enough, right? Let’s look closer, things are always more difficult and dirty when you look closer and making a magazine is no exception, my spinnerly friends.
End of Autumn 2014 cycle — Kitten sends me PDF of the final design and layout and I review them. However, he’s a bit behind (this sometimes happens where one of us is a bit behind, we always catch up) so I don’t have any to review this week. Which is actually not a bad thing for me since much of my time needs to be spent planning, and spinning samples for, my Craftsy class. Yes, folks, I’m doing a craftsy class. Very excited! Amy King just did one (and it’s great) and if there’s anything else in this world I want to be, it’s Amy King!
Middle of Winter 2014 cycle — there’s more work here for me, mainly, finishing all the first edits and re-orgs or author’s articles. There are still 2 articles out with the authors (extended deadlines) but everything else is in and I’ve gone over all of it once. Now I’m in the middle of going over it again so that I can make sure there’s not too much overlap, repeating of information and so on. Again, with the themed issues, it’s more of a threat than not. I’ve already got most of these done and by the end of the week I’ll send them all to Levi for a 2nd round of editing.
I just sent the Winter 2014 patterns to Amy P, our tech editor. Except that we have a inkle weaving project and so I’m on the hunt for a inkle weaver for a little tech editing. It’s small and simple so if you have experience, let me know!
Planning of the Summer 2015 cycle: The best part of my week is the planning of the Summer 2015 issue. We got so many fantastic proposals and it’s my job to sort through them. I told you before that I’ve got a folders in my mail client, right? Under Summer 2015 there’s Yes, No, and Maybe. In my Yes there’s 5, in No (which later I will transfer to my trello board in case we can use them elsewhere) there’s 39, and in Maybe there’s 56! It’s a lot to go through but building the issues like this is something I really enjoy.
I used to use a giant sheet of butcher paper but since I discovered Trello, I do it there. I have several things I look for when I first start this job. I have to make sure that there’s a great intro article, something introducing the topic, broad and focused (it’s a thing, really). There’s not one in the proposals this time so I have to go hunt for one. I’ve already put out an e-mail to who I’d like to write it, negotiating with her now. I hope she consents, if so, it’ll be a great opener.
After finding that article, I try to make sure there’s a good mix of what I label light, medium, and heavy. That refers to the content and how much brain power it takes to make it through the articles. Deb Robson and Diane Palme are examples of heavy! Smarty ladies, they are! But it’s important to have a mix, take the reader on a journey they’re going to enjoy, not just fill it with heavy, dense facts. I try for 40% heavy, 40% medium, and 20% light. Our regular features take care of some of that, you know, stuff like fiber study is usually heavy while guilded, who’s that spinner, and follow the fiber are usually light, and spin it’s are often medium. The articles that don’t fit into those categories — the extras — are the ones that I have to make sure have a good balance and cover everything the issue should cover.
So after considering the intro article, and a good mix of article weights, I also consider authors. I like to have a mix of those, as well. I try to make sure we have at least 4 new authors in each issue. There can be more, but I make sure there’s no less! It’s important to me that we don’t just hear the same voices, that we involve the community, that we recognize that we are more than just our known teachers.
Finally I consider word count. We have space for about 37,000 words in each issue but I probably won’t get to word count this week so we’ll skip talking about that for now.
It’s interesting, and I’ll tell this to the spinners I have to send the “thanks but no thanks” email to – sometimes a really great article doesn’t get in because it doesn’t work with the rest of the issue. It could be fantastic but if there’s a gap in the issue and it doesn’t fill it, or if it’s too heavy or long or whatever, and I can’t make it work, I have to take the article that is lighter or shorter and gives the issue the roundness it needs. It’s probably the hardest (and most interesting) part of my job. Sometimes I am very happy with the results. For instance, I think the Silk and Twist issues both are very full and round and diverse. I don’t think the First issue or the Color issue are as much, though I think the stuff in there is wonderful. That early in the process I wasn’t quite sure what I was doing yet and didn’t know how to really put together an issue. The winter issue is better but not quite as finished as the last two. That just means I’m getting better at it, which is good. Hopefully I’ll just keep getting better at it!
But this week I’ll just decide on the articles and build my trello board. My next work week I’ll deal with word counts, contracts, e-mailing authors, and all the in-house stuff. I’ll tell you about it as it comes.
And that’s what the editor-in-chief is doing this week.
But there’s more! Here’s the less interesting stuff, in list form so I don’t lose you completely.
- Stuff backorders and mail them (we got pre-paid envelopes so it’s a bit faster now!)
- Resend copies of the magazine that got lost in the mail.
- Answer e-mails.
- Sell website ads for September! Wanna buy one? Only $15!
- E-mail all the people that have a credit card on file with us (LYS and advertisers) because the recent Quickbooks update erased that info and I need to re-input it.
- Sell the rest of the Winter 2014 issue ads there’s still some of every size except full page.
- Send in payroll taxes to the government. Government, if you’re reading this, thanks for understanding that I’m late, I’m sure you can see why, right? It’s busy up in here.
- Secure a time and location for Winter shoot. It’s gotta be soon and it’s gotta be wintery!
- The winter issue has a glaring gap so I need to whip up a short little article on worsted joins.
- Start thinking about our Spinzilla team!
- E-mail the LYSs and advertisers that are behind in paying us. I’m reading (listening to on Audible while I work out at the gym) Gold Finch right now and there’s a whole section where he’s in Las Vegas with a gambling dad. Me collecting from those that owe the magazine will be NOTHING like what happens in the book, I promise. It mostly includes me saying “please”.
So that’s my work week. What’s yours like?
ps. if anyone wants to make me a graphic for this series (you can see the terrible one I made at the top of the page), I’m sure we could trade something good for it. Please?
xo,
jacey
Brighton top fiber give-a-way!
Man alive, did you just love Anne Podlesak’s new design in the Twist issue of PLY? I adore it. I also adore the woman that modeled it for us. So wonderful. We were just out shooting and out runs this woman with my book in hand asking me to sign it, saying she’d just taken a class with Lexi Boeger (Pluckyfluff), and that she absolutely loved spinning! Of course we asked her to model and of course she was stunning.
Anne Podlesak used energized singles to create a ziggity-zag edge and very cool slanting stripes and now you can use the same exact fiber and create your own — merino/bamboo blend (60/40) in cool blues from Wooly Wonka Fibers!
If you want to win this fiber (enough to do the exact sweater Marilou is wearing, here’s what you have to do — leave a short (or long) (or really long) review of the issue here for the twist issue of PLY. Just click on the review tab under the add to cart button. Be honest, the winner will be chosen at random, not for the content of the review (though if your content contains links to diet sites, fake fancy handbags, or sites with more than one naked person, chances are you won’t win). Sound good? If you’ve already reviewed it, you’re entered!
I’ll pick and announce the winner on Monday, the 11th (one solid week).
Go!
xo,
jacey
ps. it’s okay if you put your review here too, but make sure you put it here!
Leave a Reply
Want to join the discussion?Feel free to contribute!