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.
What is luster?
Oh, no! Meagan is at it again! Can we tackle an easier topic, like the cure for cancer or world peace, please? While the word luster brings to mind pearls and diamonds, it can be difficult to nail down exactly what luster means in regard to fiber. This is complicated by the fact that luster is most commonly used to describe mineralogy. Most of us can gather that it has something to do with shininess and light and that some fibers are shiny and some are not. This is a good place to start our exploration!
| Luster is… how light reflects off a surface Words we use to describe luster… shine, brilliance, glow, radiance, luminosity |
While that sounds like a simple explanation, this is where it gets complicated. Light may reflect off the surface layer or may pass through the top layer and reflect off the layers beneath, presenting a different reflective quality.
| Commercial production of rayon and wool use a full list of official descriptors applied to luster: 1. Clear 2. Bright 3. Semi-Dull 4. Semi-Matte 5. Dull 6. Matte 7. Extra Dull 8. Super Dull |
Luster in fiber is often expressed as a range from shiny to dull, with the most shiny and most dull fibers easily identified near the ends of the spectrum and all other fibers somewhere in the middle. Lincoln and Teeswater might be at one end while Southdown is at the other. However this doesn’t take into effect how the light is reflected. How would silk compare to Teeswater? Not all shiny is equal. For today, let’s stick to wool.
Luster in wool
The microscopic structure of wool is one of the primary factors in determining the luster of the fiber. For example, high-luster wools like Coopworth, Teeswater, and Wensleydale are fundamentally different from low-luster wools like Merino, Cormo, or Southdown. Beside crimp structure, the main difference between these wools is the size of the scales that make up the surface of the fiber. High-luster wools have larger scales which cover more surface area. When light hits these larger scales, more light is reflected in one direction, creating more shine. Low-luster wools have smaller scales. This causes the light to diffuse in different directions, so less light will be directed toward the eye.
I mentioned crimp. Crimp can also impact how lustrous a fiber appears. A higher crimp wool redirects light in many more directions than a low crimp wool, resulting in a more matte appearance.
What suppresses luster? How it is spun!
It is important to understand how luster changes when spun. In the most basic sense, worsted spinning makes use of a short forward draw and a combed fiber preparation to create a smooth, dense yarn. Woolen spinning makes use of a long draw and a carded fiber preparation, usually rolags, to create a light, fuzzy, warm yarn.
A worsted yarn will always be more lustrous than a woolen yarn of the same type of fiber. In a worsted yarn, we smooth down the fibers, helping them to align more parallel to each other. When the fibers are aligned, light tends to reflect in the same direction, making the fiber appear more lustrous. More light reaches our eyes. On the other hand, a woolen yarn has fibers crossing and going in all different directions. The different angles and bends of the individual fibers redirect light in all different directions, resulting in a duller appearance.
In addition to woolen and worsted techniques, the amount of twist you add can impact luster as well! The more twist added, the less luster. Why? The more bumps there are, the more light is diffused in different directions.
Try this!
Luster is impacted by how we spin. If we take a fairly lustrous fiber, how will the luster present in the finished yarn if we spin it with a worsted method vs a woolen method?
You will need:
- A sample of lustrous wool, like Teeswater, Wensleydale, or Cotswold
- A spindle or spinning wheel
- Spin a sample of yarn using a woolen long draw.
- Spin a second sample of yarn using a short forward draw.
- Compare the two samples.
- Which one appears more lustrous?
- What words would you use to describe the luster of each?
- Can you think of a reason you might try to reduce the luster of a high-luster fiber by spinning it woolen?
- What other tricks could you try to increase or decrease the luster of your samples?
Challenge!
Take the same fiber and wet spin it. How does this sample reflect light when compared to the first two?
Tell us in the comments!
The Woolly Animal of Dawn
Words and photos by Christina Socorro Yovovich
No matter when I go to bed, I wake between 4:30–5:00 a.m. Months ago, I gave up fighting this and decided these predawn hours were for me. My husband often stays up late and has admitted that he relishes these solitary midnight hours because everyone else is asleep; nobody is going to make any demands on him. He can do what he likes – work until the wee hours, read old comics, watch shows I have no interest in. I understand, because for me the predawn hours are like this. And what do I do in these hours where nobody makes any demands? I create. Sometimes I knit. Sometimes I write. But mostly, I spin.
I always open the west curtains covering the patio doors first, to let in the darkness. My spinning wheel lives in front of this floor to ceiling window, and when I am seated on the ottoman I place in front of the wheel, at first all I can see is my own reflection. Some mornings I put on a fiber arts podcast or an audiobook. Other mornings I choose to let my thoughts drift where they will. I pull out the wool of the moment, sometimes something sheep colored, sometimes dyed in the hues of a sunrise or a body of water, and I begin to spin.
It is a tactile occupation. No matter how much I try to learn about the technical aspects of spinning, in the darkness at 4:30 a.m. spinning is simply me holding the woolly animal of dawn in my hands as my feet treadle in rhythm to my breaths, and I draft and let in the twist and then let the newly made yarn wind onto the bobbin, and none of it is thought, but feeling, an occupation of instinct. Although I only started spinning a year ago, my body believes it has been longer. My body believes I have been spinning since the predawn of agriculture, my hands setting a spindle twisting against my thigh over and over again as I draft the fiber in my hands. Don’t reason with the body, ever.
There are thoughts as I spin, sometimes a tight focus on a book being read over my phone’s speaker. Sometimes simply my thoughts, going where they will. I am bipolar, having been diagnosed so for nearly three decades, and I have complex-PTSD, having been diagnosed so for less than a year. I have thoughts, hard thoughts, and though I try not to drown in them, I’ve found that if I let them drift through me while I spin in the dawn, they do not overwhelm me. My feet are treadling, my left hand holds the roving, my right hand lets in the twist. I am rooted and no memory can completely overtake me.
I began knitting the year I turned 49, and a large reason was because I read knitting has a similar effect on those with PTSD as EMDR therapy. Eye Movement and Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy is a mental health technique that involves moving the eyes in a certain way under the direction of a mental health practitioner while recalling a traumatic memory. Its aim is to help a person process the trauma so that it becomes a thing that happened in the past and not a thing that still overtakes them in horrible flashbacks. I do not understand how or why it works, but it seems to have something to do with using different parts of the brain and with crossing the midline of the body.
A couple months after I picked up knitting, I began to spin as well. I have not read it anywhere, but surely spinning, with how it uses the whole body, both sides of it, the feet in rhythm, the hands each with their separate task, surely spinning is the same as knitting when it comes to processing trauma. It allows me to have these memories without being overwhelmed. They come and then leave, and through it all, I am okay, still rooted to my wheel and my wool, not floating through recollections in a way that allows them to traumatize me anew.
My window faces west, so I don’t see the sun rising over the Sandia mountains. Instead, I see the black sky gradually become alight. First just a hint of something not black. Then a rosy dawn. When I see the pink sky outside instead of my own reflection, I cease spinning. I have spun in the day. It is time to rise from the wheel to step into the bustle of making breakfasts, packing my son’s lunch, being a part of a family and community that does make demands on my time. I do so joyfully, fortified by my predawn creativity, by learning to let memories be memories and not things that overtake. I have not been a spinner for long, but already I cannot imagine a life without its grounding presence.
Born and raised in Wisconsin, Christina Socorro Yovovich has lived in New Mexico since 1998. Her nonfiction has appeared in The Hunger, Cagibi, MUTHA Magazine, the Atticus Review, and elsewhere. She is currently working on and seeking representation for a fiber arts memoir about wool, mothering, and mental health. She can be found at https://christinasocorroyovovich.com/
I Want to Tell You About My Friend
I don’t want to tell you that Stephenie Gaustad was a great spinner. Everyone knows that.
I don’t want to say she was a talented and generous fiber artist. If you have ever taken a class with her or read one of her books or articles, you already know that too.
I want to tell you about how warm her hugs were and how she never let go first. I want you to know how funny she was, how her eyes twinkled when she smiled, how she followed her heart in all things, and how she loved getting in good trouble. I want to tell you about the Stephenie I knew and how much I loved her.
The first time I fell into the arms of Stephenie Gaustad was at SOAR in 2010. Her flax to linen workshop was next to my textured yarns workshop. When I got to the part of the class where I have everyone spin a thick and thin singles yarn from cotton, a spinner in my class (who had recently taken a class with Steph) hopped up and ran out the door.
The retting sounds from next door halted, and Stephenie Gaustad walked through the adjoining classroom door.
“What’s this about spinning cotton thick and thin? Handspun cotton needs to be spun fine, with lots of twist, and very even.”
I was not a cotton spinner. My spinning skill was not nearly at the cotton “spun fine, with lots of twist, and very even” level. I only used cotton as an (extreme) example of how you can spin any combed fiber into a thick and thin yarn if you pay attention to the staple length.
I haltingly and nervously explained that even the shortest cotton can create a stable thick and thin singles yarn as long as you make your thick section shorter than the staple length so that the ends of the fibers are caught in the high-twist thin section on either end of the thick bit. I demonstrated as Stephenie (along with all my students and hers) stood around my wheel watching.
When I finished, she whooped!
She whooped and hugged me, and we never saw each other again when we didn’t hug and huddle up.
Because we both made a living travelling to teach, we saw each other often. One evening, after several days of teaching, we sat next to each other, exhausted, in a Chinese restaurant. I leaned in and whispered to her all my plans for starting a magazine. She smiled and her eyes twinkled. You have never seen such a twinkle.
When the first issue of PLY came out, she sent me a short length of handspun thick and thin cotton and a letter:
Dearest Jacey, Ply is fantastic! I love that you have multiple voices on a single topic, and really hear the person as he/she takes time with answers. This is what strikes me first. I get the chance to focus on something, spend time with it and not rush off in another direction 2 pages later. I treasure this copy and will refer back to it time and again.
-Stephenie
Your enthusiasm for the craft and project is palpable too. It is so exciting. I feel transported back in time, actually to a decade when new magazines were popping up right and left, in different formats; it all was new and fresh. Ply is a breath of fresh air!
Now it is time for Alden to add his 2 cents.
Well, I am flabbergasted. The scope of the work is mindboggling. The possibilities are limited only by your imagination and energy. The mag is a visual knockout, the advertising is arranged with taste and finesse and considering the stated purpose “the magazine for handspinners” what can I say but bravo! Huzzah! You are a phoenix rising in a world of turkeys.
-AA
From that first issue on, Stephenie was in almost every single issue of PLY and she and I were firm friends. I don’t even know if that’s true. I feel like I wasn’t friends with Stephenie – we were family. She was the closest thing I had to a grandmother, and when my mom died, she was there for me. Stephenie’s hugs were the warmest and she’d hold on as long as I needed.
Of course there were other things, business things, that happened – she became PLY’s technical editor, she taught at PLYAway every year, she wrote a wonderful book with us. But it’s the actual time I spent with Stephenie, the moments, that I remember and that mean the most. She went to a May Day festival at my kids’ school with me once. She beamed as we watched dozens of kids in handmade dresses, dancing and wrapping the May pole. She leaned over and whispered in my ear, “I’m pagan,” and held my hand the whole time.
Last year she visited us in Oregon. I offered to fly her out, but she insisted on driving. She pulled up in a giant SUV filled floorboards to roof with spinning wheels and tools (almost all built for her by Alden). My kids unloaded the tools as Steph and I sat on the porch and talked about the future of fiber arts.
That night, after dinner, Stephenie, the kids, and I played Telestrations – a cross between the old telephone game and Pictionary. I had never seen Steph laugh so hard as I did that night. Stephenie was a part of my life. She was a part of my family’s life. We were family. I will miss her forever.
While she was here that time, we filmed the first Teacher Tea for the PLY Spinners Guild. It’s a segment where I sit down with spinning teachers, drink tea, and talk. It was so early in the PSG that we didn’t have good lighting yet, hadn’t figured out how to get a decent sound track, didn’t even have the PSG studio set up nicely, but none of that matters because Steph is such a joy. We’ve made the teacher tea with Steph public, viewable to everyone, guild member or not. Please sit down with some tea of your own and spend some time with this dear, darling woman.
https://www.plyspinnersguild.com/videos/9-teacher-tea-steph
Stephenie Gaustad was a wonder, and the world is better for having her in it. I’m better for having known her. Since I heard the news, I’ve been rereading all the emails she’d ever sent me, and it is helping replace some of the tears with smiles. Her closing lines especially help. I’m including a few of them here. I hope they make you smile too.
Hope that your spring days are full of beautiful green growth and smiles,
-SG
This morning’s rainbow reminded me of you. You are all the colors and you always bring a smile,
-SG
Well, the snow has turned to rain. It really is kind of late in the year for it. It is o.k. I have plenty of fiber to spin here, and a few wheels to do this.
-SG
You see, dear friend, I didn’t want to scare the hell out of you with dire futures. It ain’t like that one bit. I want to give you, dear friend, good news. And this is it.
-SG
The rain will pass, my dear Jacey. The rain will pass and you and I will keep growing,
-SG
So don’t fret over me. (In my best “Arnie voice”, “I’ll be back!”)
-SG
So I am laying here this evening basking in the glow of a completed job and oh boy, Jacey, my dear, are we going to have run raising some dust! Whoopee!
-SG
Stephenie Gaustad
August 1947–February 12, 2025
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