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.
Hacking Yarn Tools: How to Twist Skeins with a Power Drill
words and photos by Carrie Sundra
Twisting skeins – it’s a deceptively tricky process which generally takes some practice to produce consistently tight and tidy results. Even so, I definitely encourage everyone who handles yarn to put the time into learning how to do this by hand. When you get it down, it can be a very quick and easy way to package your yarn into a non-tangling, easy-to-store, and easy-to-ship bundle.
That said, there are many reasons as to why a person may seek mechanical help with this task. One of the most common pieces of feedback I hear after a yarn dyer uses our production tool, the SkeinTwister, is that it has enabled them to perform this task without pain. Many people have injuries, arthritis, or other medical conditions that affect their shoulder, elbow, wrist, or finger joints, and the process of manually twisting skeins can by physically painful. Eliminating the majority of the twisting motions can reduce, if not entirely eliminate, that.
Hand-twisting skeins can also be a special kind of terrible when the weather is humid. The yarn should slide easily around your fingers (or thumbs if you’re a thumb-twister!), but in humid weather, it can stick to your skin and bind. Not only can you get blisters if you’re twisting a lot of skeins, but because of the binding and uneven tension, your twisted skeins won’t come out as nice and tidy-looking.
So I’m sharing with you a DIY method for twisting the occasional skein with some mechanical help – a power drill! You can also find these instructions on our Hackaday.io page and we’ve made a short video showing you the whole process:
Step 1: Hook the drill
You’ll need a power drill with a typical 3-jaw clamping chuck and a hook. I did a survey of the hooks available at our local hardware store, and even though it’s a little smaller than ideal, I liked the metal one best, even better if you can find one with a pointed tip. I do NOT recommend a bicycle hook – the plastic coating on these isn’t slick enough and the yarn is more difficult to remove.
Clamp the hook tightly in your power drill, threads and all.
Note: It’s possible to use an electric screwdriver instead, but only if it has clamping jaws. Most have magnetic hex chucks, which won’t hold a threaded hook.
Step 2: Rig something solid to pull against
The drill and hook is going to be in your hand, on one end of the skein. The other end will need to be firmly fixed to a table, rod, or shelf, enough that you can pull with 10–15 pounds of force against it. I settled on two different ways of doing this.
Method 1: Clamp a post/peg to a sturdy table. I used both a wide paper towel holder (without a bulb at the top) and a PVC niddy-noddy (“release” arm pointed up). It’s important that your post or peg be at least 1 inch in diameter because you want the skein to be held a bit open at this end, even after it’s twisted.
Method 2: S-hook to a very sturdy shelf or rod. This way isn’t bad either. I used the largest S-hook I could find at the hardware store and also tried a large plastic hanger S-hook. This method tends to be a little fussier because the skein isn’t held as open at this end, and the ball at the end of the plastic S-hook dragged against the yarn a little when un-hooking it. I prefer Method 1 but wanted to give you the option to use other items you might already have around the house.
I do NOT recommend having a friend hold the other end of the skein – with a power drill, it’s easy to overshoot and end up painfully squeezing their fingers. You have been warned!
Step 3: Hook the yarn
First, snap the skein between your hands a bit. This will even out some of the strands and help with consistent tension. Then hook one end of the skein around either your peg or S-hook. Hook the other end of the skein around the hook in the power drill. Take a few steps backwards so there’s a slight bit of tension on the skein.
Step 4: Twist!
First, make sure that your power drill is on the slowest speed setting. Then gently pull the trigger just for a second or two. Power drills can spin very fast, so go easy at first and don’t overdo it! As the twist builds up, you’ll have to pull against the skein more and more to keep tension on it. If you don’t, the skein will twist up on itself like a phone cord. Once this has happened, it’s almost impossible to undo, so just pull the skein off the hook, let it untwist, and start over. The right amount of twist is reasonably tight but not hard as a rock. You’ll have to practice this to get the feel for how much twist you like, and it’ll vary with fiber content and skein size.
Step 5: Fold the skein
You now have a skein that’s twisted just right, still attached to the power drill. Keeping tension on the skein, pinch it at the power drill using your free hand. Slide the hook out of the skein, and set the drill down (or hook it on your belt loop for a sweet yarnslinger look!). Still keeping tension on the skein, take your newly free hand and pinch the skein an inch or two over the middle, closer to the peg or S-hook end. Also keeping tension with that middle-holding hand, fold the skein in half. The end that’s in your other hand should be an inch or two past the peg or S-hook. Release the hand in the middle. If you’ve done a good job keeping good tension on the skein the entire time, it should perfectly twist back up on itself. You may find that releasing the tension slowly and twisting a smidge helps guide the twist and produces a more consistent result.
Step 6: Tuck tail
Everyone does this last step a little differently, and it depends on your setup, whether you’re using a peg or a hook at this end, and what feels comfortable. I like removing the skein from the peg or hook in a way that allows me to keep that end an open loop with both hands, and I push the tail through the loop with both thumbs. Others like to hold the loop open with the thumb and forefinger of one hand, grab the tail from the other hand, and pull it through. There is no right or wrong way of doing this. This step also requires motions that are totally different from hand-twisting, so expect to practice and experiment a bit before finding the way that’s right for you.
Pushing Tail 
Pulling Tail 
Happy twisting!
P.S. Sometimes people mix up terminology, which can be very confusing. This process is called twisting, not winding. Winding is the process of wrapping yarn around something in a circular motion, like winding yarn on a bobbin or winding a skein from a cone with a skein winder. Twisting is the process of wrapping two things around each other – like twisting fibers together to make yarn or twisting strands of yarn together to ply them, or twisting a skein back on itself to make it a tidy bundle.
Carrie Sundra is an engineer with a serious yarn addiction, who decided to leave a life of electronics and high-tech spy planes for hand-dyeing and knitting. Alpenglow Yarn started in 2009 with 3 words: Glowing Natural Color. Her most well-known products, the SkeinMinder and SkeinTwister, add automation to winding and twisting operations, make the process more efficient, and help scale up production. You can find out more at alpenglowyarn.com.
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July Vlog with Jacey and Jillian
For this quarter’s vlog, Jacey and Jillian share their favorite parts of the Electric issue, including the story of the creation of the cover. Then Jillian spotlights the vendors who contributed fiber, wheels, or other items to this issue. Following the Electric theme, Jacey and Jillian take a spin on their new Hansen miniSpinner Pros; Jillian has been spinning on it for a little while and this was Jacey’s first spin. They discuss the advantages of this wheel and how it differs from the Classic. Laura Linneman, who researched the information for the chart of e-spinners in this issue was on hand to answer questions about e-spinners. Can you spin singles on a treadle wheel but ply on an e-spinner? And can you leave an e-spinner made of plastic in a hot car? (Yes, as long as it’s a specific type of plastic—those differences in plastic are also discussed.) Next up is information about next year’s PLYAway (finally, we’ll get to be together in person again!), including some teasers on the teachers and some of the classes that will be offered. (Classes will be listed on the website in late August and registration will be in October.) The vlog ends with teasers for the upcoming Autumn issue on Consistency.
Links mentioned in this quarter’s video
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PLY Magazine believes that Black lives matter, as well as LBGTQI+ lives. Those most vulnerable and persecuted in our communities deserve our love and support. Please be good to each other.
Did you know we also have a monthly PLY newsletter? Sign up here!
Send Us Your Tips
We often spin yarns to cover the heads and hands of kinds, what is the best handspun for these high-wear but low-care projects? Blends, structures, fibers?
Share your tip by going to our Tip Jar submission page.
We share tips in every issue of PLY; these tips will for the Head and Hands Winter 2021 issue.
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PLY Magazine believes that Black lives matter, as well as LBGTQI+ lives. Those most vulnerable and persecuted in our communities deserve our love and support. Please be good to each other.
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