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.
Guilded: Creating Community Through Cloth
Words and Photos by Sarah Thornton
There’s a piece of cloth in my office: a shawl, about 22×72 inches, with twisted fringe, woven in a simple 4-shaft twill. The weft is a 2-ply white wool – nothing too special, rather coarse in fact, and somewhat unevenly spun and plied. The warp is a mirrored gradation of blues, from dark on the outer borders to light in the middle sections – all handspun of varying colours, textures, and grists. The drape is, well, to put it kindly, more that of a heavy blanket than of a shawl. But none of those details matter to me. This shawl is more than it appears.
My team wove the shawl in July 2018 at a Sheep to Shawl competition held as part of the Salt Spring Island Fibre Fair. The fair was a 2-day event of classes, vendors, and demonstrations, and the competition was a key part. Salt Spring Island is one of the Gulf Islands of British Columbia, situated in the Salish Sea between Vancouver and Vancouver Island. The island is known for its sheep, Garry Oak meadows, artisans, and local food. Their Saturday Market attracts tourists all summer long. It’s a 35-minute ferry ride from Victoria or an hour from Vancouver and is an all-round delightful place to visit.
Planning the Shawl
At the Victoria Handweavers and Spinners Guild, we heard about the upcoming event and decided we had to field a team! Our Island guilds are a friendly bunch, and we love getting together at various fibre fests and spinning events throughout the year. This time, we’d throw some friendly competition into the mix.
We needed a theme for our team of 5 people – the section for “team spirit” was a significant amount on the score sheet! Brenda and I brainstormed – we love blue and knew we would need to work quickly to finish a shawl in the 5-hour limit. I definitely wasn’t thinking of the online fundraising website or the 90s music folk rock duo, but between the two of them, the Indigo-Go Girls was born. We had a name and a theme! Now, what should the shawl look like? We knew our weft would be white – we’d seen a small sample of the fleece – and an indigo warp would set off that white weft well. We solicited donations of blue handspun skeins from other guild members, and Jennifer and Brenda planned and made the warp. Plain weave is fast but isn’t too eye-catching, so twill it would be. I have to admit, I’m not much of a weaver, so when I asked for lightening bolts… But Jennifer did a great job with the interpretation, I thought! Other guild members donated time to sew our aprons. July approached. Even though we’d done lots of planning in advance, we hadn’t actually managed to practice at all. Generally, a successful sheep to shawl team will have some sense of how long it takes to produce the kind of yarn they want, but somehow getting together eluded us. Our team had challenging work and travel schedules, but we all knew each other and had seen each others’ spinning and weaving, so we hoped we could manage and adapt on the fly.
Arriving for the Competition
My fiancé and I took the opportunity for a short vacation and rented a small cottage for 4 nights. A teammate and her husband joined us for 2 nights. The reality of the ferry schedules meant all participants had to stay on the island the night before the competition.
Bright and early on Saturday morning, we delivered all the equipment to the Farmers Institute hall – 4 spinning wheels (3 to use and a spare, just in case!), a drum carder, a loom and bench, various extra tools, and the display boards explaining our process. Also important, the bluetooth speakers and tablet to play our spinning tunes! (We did check with the judge and other teams about having the music, and they all knew they could ask us to turn it off/down at any time). At the last minute, we found the bobbins for one of the wheels which had been packed into a different box for transportation – crisis averted.
Each guild had a cordoned off area in the hall. We all had 5 team members – one weaver, 3 spinners/plyers, and one gopher/fibre prep person. The rules were clear – no more than 3 people could be spinning at once, and the gopher could only step into a weaving or spinning role if the original person was taking a break. We donned our costumes – denim aprons with the team logo embroidered onto the pocket, blue chalk in our hair, glittery blue nail polish (for some!), and denim capris/shorts or skirts.
The three teams approached the judging table for last-minute instructions and drew numbers to choose a fleece. All 3 were Cheviot crosses, and unfortunately, all had issues, though each in a different way. Ours seemed to have short coarse hairs sprinkled liberally throughout, which we didn’t take the time to remove at first. Ah well, had we known how quickly we could work (remember that lack of practice?), we could have done a better job!
Jumping Right to Work
Just before 10 am, the whistle blew and my teammates jumped right to work. But before joining them, I jumped to the tablet and pressed play to start the playlist! “Greased Lightnin’” filled the air – it was time to get going! Next came “Wake me up before you go-go,” and then the spinning and weaving tunes started (see full playlist below).
This competition allowed the use of a drum carder, so that was our prep tool. Three of us started pulling fleece apart, and Beatrice loaded the carder and started cranking. Within just a few minutes the first carded batt was ready, and Lindsay and Christine got down to the spinning.
Jennifer and I continued sorting fleece, and Beatrice got going on the next batt. As soon as the spinners had 1/3 bobbin each, I started to ply. I quickly handed off my bobbin to Jennifer, who readied her weaving bobbin and got to the weaving. A cheer went up as she threw the first pick!
The minutes flew by. At one point, the whole room was singing along when Darius Rucker sang “Wagon Wheel” – the tunes helped keep our energy high. Some competitions allow for a team break, but not this one! We swapped out as needed for bathroom, food, and fresh air breaks, and we were making good enough time that I took a few minutes to check out the competition as I ate a sandwich. As the hours accumulated, though, we all began to flag. But then Jennifer said our shawl was long enough! She had more than enough weft to finish the last few inches. So as she threw those last few picks, we spinners cleaned up and prepped our table for fringe twisting. It must have been quite a sight – 5 of us intently bent over the shawl, twisting fringe on both ends at once, from both sides. And then we were done! A full 15 minutes before the final bell rang at 3 pm.
The Results
After the final judging was completed, we received second place – while we did finish the fastest, our spinning was a bit less consistent than the winning shawl and our shawl only just met the minimum length requirement (it shrank over 15% after coming off the loom and waiting for judging). We were finally able to chat with our fellow participants and see the beautiful shawls they created. And then we headed off for a swim in the lake (Jennifer) and much-deserved cold drinks!
All 3 teams created cloth – a shawl of minimum size 18×72 inches – but we created more than just cloth. We created community. Each team consisted of 5 members during the competition, but many more guild members participated, from providing warp yarns to cheerleading and interacting with the public who came to watch the event. We also created an amazing teaching tool in the shawls we made. How often are we, as spinners and weavers, asked how long it took to make a particular item? How long does it take to spin for a sweater? For a shawl? The answer is always “it depends,” but with the competition shawl, we now have a tangible piece that gives us a metric. We know that all the carding, spinning, plying, weaving, and fringe twisting took 5 people 4.5 hours, so 22 hours total. And that wasn’t working extremely carefully – our technique definitely leaned towards fast rather than good! We learned a lot. We now have an estimate of how quickly we can work, so we know to take more care and time at the beginning with the carding and that we have some extra time for getting the spinning consistent.
On a personal note, the cloth we created is very special to me. I moved away from Victoria in the fall of 2018, leaving my guild and friends of 11 years. My teammates decided I could have the shawl we made. I am so happy to have a warm reminder of our very fun day on Salt Spring Island. And I still get “Dream Weaver” stuck in my head whenever I see the shawl!
The Playlist
- Greased Lightnin’ – John Travolta
- Wake me up before you go-go – Wham!
- It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Don’t Have the Go-Go Swing) – Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers
- Don’t Go Breaking My Heart – Elton Jon and Kiki Dee
- You Spin Me Round (Like a Record) – Dead or Alive
- Spinning Wheel – Blood, Sweat, and Tears
- Spinning Around – Kylie Minogue
- Spin Our Wheels – Sloan
- World Spins Madly On – The Weepies
- Spinning Like a Top – The Devil Makes Three
- Spinnin’ N Reelin’ – Creed Bratton
- Roving Gambler – Hart Valley Drifters, Jerry Garcia
- Jolly Roving Tar – Great Big Sea
- Dream Weaver – Gary Wright
- Weave Me the Sunshine – Peter, Paul, and Mary
- Weave On – Serj Tankian
- The Goddess and the Weaver – Spiral Dance
- Wagon Wheel – Darius Rucker
- Wheel in the Sky – Journey
- Wheels on the Bus – Raffi
Sarah Thornton is an ocean scientist by training and educator by vocation. From 2007–2018, she lived on Vancouver Island, getting involved in all sorts of fibre pursuits. She now lives in Vancouver and teaches knitting, spinning, and college biology and competes in sheep to shawls with her new fibre community.
The Palindrome Experiment
Words and Photos by Rachel Simmons
I remember the first time I heard the word palindrome. I was in the 4th grade, and I thought it was awesome. I mean, could “straw warts” really read the same backward as it does forward? The answer is yes. And that makes me happy in a strange inner region of my brain. It makes me outwardly happy, too. Just say it out loud – “straw warts.” I bet you’re smiling now.
What does this have to do with spinning? On the surface, nothing. However, when you combine spinning with the goal of making cloth, you can create a palindrome warp for weaving. At least that was my goal in this experiment of wooliness. I am not sure if you’ve ever experienced the disappointment of the chaos that can come from randomly warping a multi-color yarn, but this technique avoids the weird mud through careful measurement. Many handpainted skeins of yarn have repeats, which means that if you can measure out the repeat, you can use it to create vertical color pooling in your warp.
This simply means, as long as you’ve measured correctly, the colors out to your warping peg turn back on themselves as you head back to your loom. (This would also apply to the down and back journeys on a warping board.) By taking advantage of a hidden symmetry, you can preserve the beautiful painterly effect of your handpainted yarn in the cloth you create. An excellent resource on creating cloth with palindrome skeins is from Syne Mitchell, in both her book Inventive Weaving on a Little Loom as well as her article on Weavezine.[1]
It is not hard to find a skein of yarn at your local yarn shop that can be used for a palindrome warp. Many (not all) hand-dyed yarns naturally have this repeat because of the way they are dyed. The real question was if I could create a palindrome skein of yarn by spinning a painted braid of fiber. My belief was that I could create this wonderful, mysterious color repeat through spinning in order to create a cloth with vertical color pooling that preserved a hand-dyed fiber’s beauty. I will state right up front that I was somewhat successful in this first attempt, but a first attempt was never expected to yield perfect results, right? I did learn a lot from this experience and have a lot of new ideas for future directions, as well as a very pretty skein of yarn.
My thought was that I could ensure a palindrome repeat by taking a braid of fiber and spinning it down the side from end A to end B and then flipping the braid to continue spinning from end B to end A. This would create a colorway that could fold back on itself. I am sure someone much cleverer than I has already given this technique of spinning a name, but I will call it the back and forth string cheese method. Using my Ladybug, on a 6.5:1 medium speed whorl, I got to work. The fiber I used was the repeating colorway Southdown by Hilltop Cloud.
A lot worked with this idea, but a lot didn’t work, too. First, it was a little cumbersome trying to manage the length of an entire 4 oz. braid as I spun. The length never shortened, either, because I never spun across the fiber, only down the side. In addition, this length created a really long repeat. I tried cheating by thinking a repeating colorway in the braid itself would shorten my repeats, but this did not actually help due to the variability in color group sizes. For example, the yellow color at the top of the fiber was much smaller than the one in the middle, and thus essentially was its own color group that could not be matched with a middle yellow. However, it is a lovely visual of how a colorway can turn back on itself. In future efforts, if I try this string cheese method again, I will have to considerably shorten the length of fiber I am using in order to shorten my repeat length.
I spun the fiber as a single that I then chain plied.
This, too, presented some issues. I introduced too much variability. First, there was the variability in spinning the single. For example, perhaps I lingered in one spot too long and altered the length of a color group. The color runs were a little short to take full advantage of chain plying, too. This yielded unwanted barbershop poling within my skein. I could not create exactly the same size loop on every ply, so this also affected the length of the color runs. In future attempts, a 2-ply yarn may give me more control over which colors land where, making the overall effect of the yarn more successful. I am also considering singles yarn – perhaps a better place to start though a trickier beast to warp. However, using a rigid heddle loom is fairly forgiving with yarn abrasion and I could try sizing the singles yarn prior to warping for added strength.
As a proof of concept, I warped a small section of yarn on a 10-inch SampleIt rigid heddle loom. The yarn itself was a worsted weight at 10 WPI, and I used a 7.5-dent reed. I warped 30 ends and wove a plain weave pattern. This is where the length of my repeat in the yarn became a little unruly. Ideally, a repeat should happen in a normal skein that can be wound in a 1.5–2 meter loop. The repeat would then be on the scale of inches. My repeat was on the scale of feet. My yarn could fold back on itself at 13 feet. That’s a little long. However, this proof of concept trudged ahead regardless of its lankiness. To see the whole sample, I had to use my front steps of my house.
I was able to match general color groupings. The color pooling was not as clean as I would like, but the cloth has distinct areas of color dominance. In the warp, the shift from the darker colors to the yellow was the most obvious vertical color pooling. I sampled with both a dark and light and medium tone weft to experiment how to create the cloth to make the warp threads visually come forward or recede back. I wove the weft at approximately 11 picks per inch for each of the 3 colors. The dark weft allowed the colors to show stronger than the light weft, but the light weft did show the yellow quite well. The medium tone hid the warp colors almost completely and would not be a good choice for a palindrome final project/spin, though it did create a pretty cloth in its own right.
The end goal, of course, was a beautiful cloth. This little sample I created had its own beauty, and more importantly, it made me even more excited to achieve my palindrome dreams. It is close but not quite what I wanted in my cloth, nor did it allow me the freedom that a better executed skein would allow. While this is the end of the first attempt, I will continue to try (and document) my efforts to create my own form of “straw warts” through spinning.
Rachel Simmons lives in Huntsville, Alabama with her 3 small boys and her very patient husband. She loves all things fiber, most things chocolate, and some things pink. She maintains her own modest fiber blog at http://www.yarntyouglad.com.
[1] https://www.weavezine.com/spring2008/wz_sp08_SyneMitchell.php.html
Low-tech wool (and other fibres) prep
Words and Photos by Joanne Seiff
When was the last time you took a lock of raw or washed wool, teased it out into a cloud, and immediately spun it up? When I was taught to spin, back in the dark ages – the mid-1980s – we called this teasing the wool. This low-tech approach was part of how we explored spinning. In retrospect, perhaps this was called teasing as a product of its time. Beehives and teased hairstyles were old-fashioned then but not ancient history. People knew how to tease hair, too.
I was taught this as a kid, volunteering in a living history context. Offered a pile of dirty or minimally washed wool, I sat at the feet of an adult who was spinning. One or two of us teased each lock of wool into a cloud, allowing much of the vegetable matter to fall out onto the ground. An older kid might then take the teased wool and card it, making it into tidy rolags for the spinner. We were all busy, feeding the orifice and producing a higher quality, cleaner yarn.
I still explore basic fiber prep with my hands whenever possible. Whether you choose to spin raw or washed wool, worsted or woolen style, there are ways to prepare your wool without the use of any tools, just your hands. This allows a chance to really experiment and learn about a particular breed and fleece choice up close, giving a chance to sample and study what will work best. It also connects us to the many generations of spinners who lacked fancy tools. In the end, you might choose cards or combs to complete your processing – but you’ll know why you did it!
Part of the allure of teasing your wool out, one lock at a time, is that you can ensure an entirely woollen preparation, with locks in every direction like a cloud. If you hold it up to the light, you can see the jumble clearly.
Or you can do a semi-worsted approach, by gently spreading and teasing out the lock but keeping the fibers neatly aligned in parallel to the wheel or spindle.
Teasing a fleece dyed in the lock can allow for color experimentation and close-up examination before undertaking a faster prep method, such as with a drum carder.
Sometimes you’ll find your fiber really doesn’t need anything more than teasing to make it ready for spinning. If you’re seeking a textured single or an art yarn, teasing may provide you with the process you need. A bonus is that if you set yourself up with unprocessed fiber and a basket for the teased fiber beside it, you may be able to get yourself through a marathon TV or audiobook binge – complete with something mindless to do with your hands!
On a more philosophical level, starting with raw fleece and a spindle – and no other tools – allows you to examine how things can be done entirely by hand. We are products of our time. Many of us love all the available gadgets that come with spinning. There are odes online to flick carders, hackles, blending boards, cards, combs, drum carders, and commercial processing. Although sometimes expensive, these tools are available to many spinners. We can try every kind of technique. However, people have been spinning all over the world for thousands of years, often with very little equipment. Did it keep them from spinning?
Absolutely not.
The next time you take a hike, look at the hedgerows. Do you see a wisp of wool caught on a bush? Do you collect downy fibers from plants, wondering if they can be spun? There’s also something magical about helping out at a sheep shearing, returning home with a fleece, digging into the bag on the porch, teasing a lock at a time, and spinning the yarn up before it ever comes indoors.
Teasing allows you a nearly instant way to find out the potential – a chance to immediately imagine what your newest acquisition might be. Separate out a lock of wool, a bag of alpaca seconds, a cloud of cashmere, or a cotton boll. Find out what you can do – solely with your hands. Practice getting in touch with fibers with your fingers. You may be surprised at what you learn.
Joanne Seiff has written 3 fiber-related books: Three Ply,Fiber Gathering, and Knit Green. She writes, edits, spins, knits, designs, and teaches in Winnipeg, Manitoba. See Joanne Seiff’s designs on Ravelry and on Lovecrafts.com – her designs might sing in your handspun. Read Yarnspinner, her blog, at joanneseiff.blogspot.com, to learn more!
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