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.
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
New Guild Episode Drops Saturday!
Are you ready for this? The latest guild episode is coming! I repeat, the latest guild episode is coming!
Saturday (February 15, 2025) we reveal the 14th (and final) episode for season 1 of the PLY Spinners guild! It rounds out a season full of foundational spinning episodes taught by some of the best spinners and spinning teachers around. And boy, is it a doozy! Featuring several greats in our community—Stephenie Gaustad, Michelle Boyd, Roy Clemes, and Jacey Boggs Faulkner—this episode is a wrap of of the season with some (older) never-before-seen segments that were too good not to share, and some (newer) segments on small fiber processing tools and yarn handling tools. There’s some stuff on oiling and leaders, and a great, giant segment on getting started spinning (because Jacey didn’t want anyone to go any further without having a good handle on the basics). So if you just need a refresher, this baby should get you up to speed. Finally it also includes a segment on how to use the guild—a segment you can (and should) watch on YouTube. You won’t want to miss out.
If you’d like to learn more from your favorite fiber instructors, make sure your membership is active! Each month is jam packed with new instructional videos and virtual spin-ins. Membership is cumulative, meaning you get access not only to the current episode, but also to every previous episode and recorded spin-in as well.
New Monthly Building Skills Spin-in
The PLY Spinners Guild (PSG) hosts three 90 minute spin-ins every month:
- On the first Sunday of every month, guild members meet and spin at 5 p.m. Pacific.
- On the third Sunday of every month, guild members meet and spin at 10 a.m. Pacific.
However, those spin-ins can get more technical and in-depth than some spinners are ready for or comfortable with. In response, we’re launching a new monthly spin-in! T
he Building Skills Spin-in will start in March and will take place at 5 p.m. Pacific on the third Thursday on each month.
The first one will be on March 20. Just like all the PSG spin-ins, guild members will get a spin-in link the week before the spin-in and it’s always posted in the PSG forums.
The guild is priced at $85/year or $12/month. This is a very good deal for the amount of information and community you will get, especially since new video lessons are added every six weeks! This fee allows us to pay for the substantial hosting required by so many high-def videos and the charge per member to access the site, along with fairly compensating the teachers, editors, and everyone involved in making the guild work.
If you aren’t already a member, we think you’d definitely enjoy it!
The PLY Spinners Guild is a space for spinners at all levels of spinning. We are an inclusive and diverse community that embraces all spinners and welcomes everyone to create a brave space to question, challenge, and support one another. We strongly believe that the more diverse our community is, the stronger our community is. Our core beliefs of kindness, diversity, and inclusivity inform everything we do. Racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression will not be tolerated. We reserve the right to remove anyone who meaningfully and purposefully disrupts the community or makes other members feel unsafe.
Ask Jacey: How Much Twist is Right?
Dear Jacey,
I’ve been learning so much from your reels on Instagram. Recently you did one describing what the different whorls do to the yarn you’re spinning. You show one yarn and then change the whorl to a bigger one and show the other yarn, but you don’t say which of the two plyback samples is the right one. I’m a new spinner and just can’t figure out how much twist is too much or not enough. ~Celena
Hi Celena,
I messaged you on Instagram, but I wanted to dig a little deeper and give this a bigger audience since I know that lots of people struggle with these same questions. I’m including a link to the reel that you’re talking about in case others want to check it out for reference [add links to IG, YT]. In the 3-minute video, I spin a little bit of a yarn on the smallest whorl of my wheel (in this case it’s a Schacht Ladybug), show the plyback, then change to the bigger whorl, spin a bit more yarn, and show the two plybacks side by side.
For each of the two plybacks I did my best to keep everything the same except for changing the whorl on the wheel.
- I drafted the same number of fibers (roughly, because I’m not magic) for each draft.
- I drafted the same distance for each draft.
- I drafted one draft each time I treadled so we could be sure the differing twist amounts was the result of the whorl change and not speedy feet or hands.
Changing whorls
When I changed the whorl size from smaller to bigger I changed the amount of twist going into my yarn. With the smaller whorl in action, my yarn got a certain amount of twist. When I switched to the bigger pulley, my yarn got less twist. That’s really what I wanted to demonstrate – that you don’t have to know the ratios of your wheel to know what they do relative to each other. I have lots of wheels, and to be honest, I don’t know what the actual ratios are on most of them. If I want to know the real numbers I either have to run a test or look them up online.
However, because I know what the different size whorls do, I can make decisions about which whorl groove I want to use. And if the groove I choose doesn’t make the yarn I want, I change it to a bigger or smaller groove based on what change I want. What will help you, even if you don’t know the ratios, is to know what they mean relative to each other:
Bigger whorl = less twist
Smaller whorl = more twist
Which is right?
But what you’re asking is something else, I think. You’re asking which of those two plybacks is the right one, which one you should see and say “yes, that’s the yarn I want!” And here is where you might not like my answer – it depends. It really does! I didn’t tell you which one was right because they’re both right for something and they’re both wrong for something else.
If there was just one type of yarn that was “right,” most of us wouldn’t spend so much time spinning, right? We’d go buy the one “right” type of yarn at the store and call it done. But the magic about spinning is that there’s a gazillion kinds of yarn you can spin, and each of them is going to be good for something and bad for something else.
Comparing the yarns
Okay, first know that the two plybacks I spun in the video are very similar; the only difference is a little more or a little less twist. Keep in mind that the comparisons I’m about to make about these two yarns would get more dramatic and extreme if we were to add even more (or less) twist to them.
The one with less twist (bigger whorl, left yarn in the video)
- Feels a tad bit fluffier: there’s more air in it since the extra twist I added to the other one isn’t there to bundle it down so tight
- Looks a little thicker, again, since it didn’t get bundled down so much with twist
- Is loftier: less twist means more air and more air means more loft
- Might abrade or pill faster
- Would show less stitch definition in knitting
The one with more twist (smaller whorl, right yarn in the video)
- Feels a little firmer: the more twist you add, the firmer the yarn gets
- Looks a tad thinner: as you add twist your yarn gets thinner (even though it has the same actual number of fibers)
- Is denser: with each bit of twist you bundle the fibers down tighter, replacing the space where air was with tightly bundled fibers
- Will hold up a little better over time; the extra twist will help it stand up to abrasion so it’ll be less likely to pill
- Would show more stitch definition in knitting
To know which one of the two plybacks is the right one, we’d need more information.
- What craft will the yarn be used for? Knitting, crochet, weaving, something else?
- What kind of project? You’ll want different things from a yarn that’s going to be a hat than you’ll want from one that’s destined to be socks.
- What is the goal of the project? To keep you warm, to drape down your back? To protect your hands? To look stunning and fill your non-spinner friends with awe and envy?
Let’s assume I want to knit. As a knitter, these two yarns are similar enough that they’d both work for many of the same projects, but those projects would turn out a bit differently. If I only had these two yarns to choose from, I might think through it like this:
If I wanted to knit a pair of mitts
I’d choose the one with more twist. Mostly because the one with more twist still isn’t what anyone would call a high-twist yarn, it’s still soft and airy (just not as soft and airy as the other one), so it would make fabric that was warm. The extra bit of twist would help it stand up to the abrasion that gloves/mitts are often subjected to.
If I wanted to knit a warm, squishy hat
I’d choose the one with less twist and more air. I’m a naturally cold person, so warm hats help keep my head toasty. The airier the yarn, the more warm air trapped in the fabric, the warmer my head. Since heads encounter less abrasion than hands, I’m not too worried that the yarn has a little less protective twist.
If I want to knit a sweater
I’d probably want to do a test swatch of each. A sweater is a bigger time investment, and I want to make sure I know how the yarn is going to act. Will the lighter-twist yarn create the lofty and warm sweater of my dreams? Maybe, but will it pill and abrade immediately? I don’t know. Will the higher-twist yarn feel too hard and dense as a sweater? Or will it make my planned cables pop and sing? Probably, but again, I won’t know until I sample.
If I want to knit a pair of socks
I’d spin another yarn but on a much smaller whorl. Socks need more twist than either of these yarns have, a little more in the singles and quite a bit more in the ply.
More than just twist
And all of these are just decisions I’m making about the twist of the yarn. There are so many other decisions we could be talking about. Is wool the right fiber for the project I’m envisioning? If it is, is this the right breed? Is there another fiber prep that would give me more of the qualities I want? What about the draft? Should I let some twist between my hands while doing a short forward draft? Would a long draw be more suitable? Is this the ply structure I want or should I explore a 3-ply, 4-ply, cable, or crepe? Should I ply to balance or add extra ply-twist? And on and on. . .
Don’t stress
That might all sound overwhelming, like, how will you ever decide about everything? Don’t worry, you don’t have to right now. Just the fact that we have all those choices is why it’s magical to be a spinner – you can make exactly the yarn you want. No yarn is wrong, though it might be wrong for a specific project or use. So experiment, spin all the yarns, figure out what you like and don’t like, trust yourself, and most of all, enjoy the process.
Don’t let the fact that you’re never going to know everything about spinning stress you out; instead, relish the fact that you’re never going to run out of things to learn and spin and you’re definitely never going to be bored.
Want Jacey or Jillian to take a stab at your question? Tell us what you want to know:
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