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.
Book Review: Women’s Work by Elizabeth Wayland Barber
reviewed by Sukrita Mahon
First published 27 years ago, Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years: Women, Cloth and Society in Early Times by Elizabeth Wayland Barber is still considered essential reading for contemporary textile artists. Its importance cannot be understated, considering that thread- and cloth-making have been so vital to our civilisation from the very beginning. It’s disturbing to think that since they were the domain of women from the earliest times, they have been left out of much of our histories and archaeological studies. There are a few reasons for this: textiles are much more perishable than other crafts, and until recently we did not have technology to analyse the fibres that did survive. Moreover, they were often not considered worth studying in detail, since most archaeologists were male and not particularly interested in these crafts. Archaeologists who also weave and spin are surprisingly hard to come by even today. Add to this the fact that women usually did not tell their own stories by writing them down (but men did), a lot gets left out.
As a spinner who took it up mainly for fun and stress relief, I found it really interesting to contemplate just how old the craft is. The fact that many of the chapters contain glimpses of the spinners’ and weavers’ lives make it all the more entrancing. I’m sure I’m not the only one who has wondered what the lives of earlier fibre artists might have been like, and the book certainly delivers on building that understanding. I was also struck by how common and all-encompassing a task it was to create cloth: all women participated in it, without exception, nearly constantly! Those who made it their occupation ran workshops that went through huge quantities of wool. Even those who belonged to the ruling classes – princesses and queens – spun and wove, in fact to a high standard, since they were required to make important pieces. Such work couldn’t be delegated away.
Textiles were of pivotal importance to a region’s economy and growth, even before money was invented in its current form. When we think of “treasure” today, we picture gold or jewels, but cloth was among the most prized of possessions. In many places in Asia and elsewhere, this is still true today, as regional textiles still hold a place on the international market. Many regions are famous for their unique handlooms, often passed down within families. Unfortunately, we can no longer say that they are prized as highly as they once might have been, nor that most artisans are able to make a good living from making them. While the book is focused on a small region: Europe, Egypt, and the ancient Near East, we can still imagine how some of the lifestyle aspects may have carried on into present day in areas where these crafts are still practised.
One of the criticisms of the book from other reviewers is that it’s overly academic – I didn’t really find that to be the case. The writing is engaging and the material was very interesting to me. For instance, I had no idea that Venus de Milo is depicted in a spinning stance and that this would have been clear to us if only we hadn’t erased the image of a spinning figure from our collective consciousness. The book does not include very much detail about the spinning or weaving techniques, and the little description there is, I found somewhat confusing. Other craftspeople may not think so, especially those more knowledgeable about weaving than I am.
The detail and intricacy of some of the early textiles is astounding, apparently even to the archaeologists studying them. They wonder why people would go to all that effort to make such beautiful things when, from our point of view, they were merely existing at subsistence level. The author suggests we change our mindset a bit to understand why their textiles were so lavish. In a time with few entertainments outside of the work that needed to be done, any creative impulses would have been cherished and explored to the fullest. Even in this far-away glimpse of an ancient society, we can see similarities with textile villages tucked away in remote parts of the world. People find ways of creative expression through cloth, often regardless of financial circumstance.
I found myself wondering if we had come that far at all in valuing these crafts today. While women have become a lot more independent and are no longer tied to gendered vocations, textile artisans struggle to make a living in many parts of the world. A number of crafts are dying due to globalisation and a shrinking market for the textiles. Women may not have had the opportunity to record their histories in the past, but in the present day, we do have the opportunity to educate ourselves and the wider world about the impacts of colonisation and globalisation on textiles. As spinners or weavers ourselves, we are uniquely positioned, since we have the experience of loving the craft and knowing, sadly, how little it means to people outside of these spheres.
For history lovers and lovers of mythology, there is a lot of inspiration within these pages. Reading about how symbols, colours, and numbers were used to convey various messages struck a deep chord in me. We are still able to imbue our work with meaning and magic in very personal ways. Our ancestors might have woven protective spells into their clothes before embarking on dangerous journeys – and we might do the same today, for very different reasons. The thread of conscious intention, a source of personal power, remains unbroken even today, despite so many attempts to break it. I came away from this book with a renewed sense of reverence for this “women’s work.”
Rating 4/5
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The double-coated issue is coming!
Spring 2021 Sneak Peek
The Double-coated issue is twice as full and gorgeous as whatever you’re reading now! In fact, it’s so full we had to add extra pages (it comes in at a whopping 136 pages). From the softest sheep to “carpet sheep,” from Norway to Arabia, from woolen to worsted, from North Ronaldsay to Kihnu and Hungary to Soay, this issue travels around the world and is filled with sheep you’re going to want to snuggle and spin. It includes everything you’ve ever wanted to know about primitive and double-coated sheep, including separating, not separating, prepping, dyeing, spinning, plying, knitting, history, folklore, and more gorgeous images than you can shake a stick at. You’ll want this issue.
Get your subscription in (or renewed) by February 20th to get in on the first shipping (March 10th is our ship date).
P.S. It’s also got Nancy Bush. ’Nuff said.
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.
February’s Ask Jacey
This month’s Ask Jacey question comes from Elaine, who asks, “It seems like it’s easy for spinners to spin fine but harder to spin more bulky…any secrets?”
Hi there Elaine,
Thanks for asking a question I think half the spinners out there are also asking (because the other half are asking for secrets to spinning fine because spinning bulky is so darned easy for them). What I mean is – you’re not alone.
We all have a spinning spot that’s just easy and comfortable. Our groove. Our default. Our jam. It’s homeostasis, a natural rhythm where nothing special needs to be done to maintain it. I think everything has its own homeostasis. Our bodies have it: it’s the weight our body wants to be and if we want to change that, it takes some work. It’s genetic. Yarn is the same way, I think. We all have a natural spinning style and a natural spinning weight. It’s probably genetic, too (or at least stems from where, when, and from whom we learned to spin). It’s the yarn you spin where you don’t have to count treadles or twists or change your draft or prep. It just is and, boy, does it feel good.
But lots of people want something different than they already have. Often, the road to disappointment is paved with this desire for different. But in yarn, I think it’s perfectly fine and totally achievable! You should be able to spin every single type of yarn you want to spin, and you, Elaine, are in luck because it turns out that I’ve dedicated much of life to helping people get to that point.
Of course, there are all the common tips and tricks you’ve probably heard and that I totally agree with:
- Use a slow, big pulley (or spindle shaft if you’re on a spindle) so you aren’t putting much twist in the yarn – thinner yarns need more twist and thicker yarns need less. Plus, the more twist you put in your yarn, the thinner it gets as one of the things twist does is bundle yarn down tighter and tighter.
- Use slower feet and faster hands (or slower twirl and faster hands if you’re on a spindle). This can be tough for spinners. When you first start spinning, you probably had to work pretty hard to introduce your hands to your feet and get the two synced up together. I know I did. The longer you spin, the more difficult it becomes to break this connection. If you speed up your hands (which give the yarn less time to gather twist before it disappears into the orifice), your feet also speed up, which means you’re imparting twist faster than you were and which also means your yarn is relatively the same. So practice treadling and drafting at independent speeds (and yes, I know it’s far harder to do than to say).
- Strip your fiber out to just a bit bigger than you want your yarn to be. This is something people recommend all the time, and it can totally help, but it can also mess up your fiber prep enough that it does the opposite. Give it a try and see which camp you fall into.
And there are the tips and tricks I totally don’t agree with:
- Pre-draft your fiber. No. Don’t. That’s the opposite of what you should do for bulky yarn (or almost any yarn, but more on that later). You want more fibers, not fewer!
- Turn your tension/brake waaaay up. Okay, lemme stop you right there. I disagree with this popular piece of advice. Turning your tension up can create a thicker yarn, it’s true, because the wheel will pull the fiber out of your hands on its own, zipping it into the orifice before you get a chance to thin it out. However, if spinning bulky is something you’re struggling with, you’re probably already a bit on edge, a little nervous, your palms may even be a little, dare I say it, sweaty? The last thing you need is your wheel ripping your fiber from you hands, making you feel that much more like things are out of control and you don’t know what you’re doing. You don’t need to feel like that, heck, nobody does! Back up off that tension, friend. Turn it back down to where it just takes the yarn you offer. There are better ways to spin bulky – increase your skill, not your stress!
Outside of that, Elaine, here’s what I think you should do:
Start with a nicely prepared piece of commercial top. It shouldn’t be compacted or felted, stripped or pre-drafted. I know it stinks to practice on good fiber, but if you’re using crummy fiber, you’re not going to get any good out of the practice. Get something in the medium range – such as Corriedale, Shetland, Jacob, not too long or too short. Put your wheel on your biggest pulley (some folks call this a whorl, but Judith MacKenzie told me to call it a pulley, and that’s the hill I’ll die on) and think about treadling slow. Hold your fiber like you do when you spin a worsted style yarn.
Now reach into your fiber supply with your front hand (your wheel hand) to grab the fibers you’re going to draft – but wait, before you do draft, reach into that fiber supply a little deeper and grab a few more fibers. Now when you draft those fibers forward, draft them only about half as far as you normally would. What that means is that your hands will stay closer together than usual. Your yarn should be thicker.
I’m not saying this is the correct drafting length for the fiber you’re using – I’ve got no idea what fiber you’re using – I’m just saying that to teach yourself to spin thicker, don’t pull those little suckers out as far as you normally would. Play with this a bit, changing your draft a bit this way and that, and see what it does to your yarn. Play with how far into your fiber supply you reach to grab fibers and see how your yarn changes. How thick or thin, consistent or lumpy your yarn is, with any given fiber type and preparation, is in part a play of these two things. I promise.
I’ve recorded a video to help further explain the technique.
P.S. If you are having trouble breaking up your hands and feet, try an electric wheel. If you don’t have one, you probably know somebody who does.
Do you have a question you’d like to ask Jacey? Fill out the form and maybe your question will be the one Jacey answers next!
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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