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.
It’s Been a Long Summer
We take turns contributing to this lovely little Ply Magazine blog and Jacey never asks us to write about anything in particular except I’m pretty sure it should be somehow related to spinning. It’s up to us to decide what to add to the discussion. So I was looking at my calendar last week and realized that this week was my turn again and I began to panic. And I have thought and considered and wondered what to write about for almost an entire week and as of this morning I still have nothing.
Want to know why?
Well, so did I. So I went back through this summer and looked at what I had been doing this since June. Wow. Almost no spinning at all. Of course I’ve had a couple of article deadlines and I did what I needed to do for that but in May I had made a sort of master list of the things I needed to accomplish by now that had to do with my work, which is spinning. I have accomplished exactly none of it – except for the couple of articles that had deadlines of course (but even those were late).
What did I do instead?
Well, I went to Pennsylvania several times to visit my parents. My dad was having caner treatments and he was very sick so I have been consumed with worry about him since late in February. We got good news this week though. He is in remission. So don’t you start worrying too.
Pennsylvania is a good long drive from Here in Michigan. My parents live outside of Philadelphia so it takes about 11 
hours with stops to get there. So I did finish a couple of audio books!
July was filled with Brittney and Thatcher who came from Utah to visit for a month. Thatcher is the twoest two year old I think I have ever met. So not a lot gets done because the kid has energy and he loves to test the will of all of the people around him.
August was a month of focusing on my house which I hadn’t really done in a while – and maybe a little of being overwhelmed by the spinning work that I still needed to accomplish. So I ignored the work, as all healthy minded adults do, and decided to redecorate 2 rooms. I’m super happy with the result. But no spinning got done.
I mostly blame these 4 people. They wouldn’t leave me alone. Mom, mom, mom!
Get to work!
This past week I decided that I would settle down and do the work. And nothing went right. I didn’t have the things I needed, my spinners and wheels were rebelling, the kids needed stuff and there were appointments and a whole bunch of nonsense.
So here we are. September 1. Tomorrow we are taking a bit of a short vacation to visit Chicago. Just a few days. Tuesday, school begins again. Tuesday I will have the house to myself. (Well, Lousmith is home too but that’s never bad.) Tuesday I will get back to work.
Now is the time to try not to make outrageous, unachievable goals. I cannot spin 10,000 yards of 2 ply and get it on the loom and weave it by Friday….can I?
Have you ever wanted to decorate your wheel?
For some of us, a spinning wheel is a thing of simple beauty all on its own – we’re called to the various wood finishes, and we love the clean lines and traditional wooden colors. For others of us, a spinning wheel is like a blank canvas, just waiting for our artistic touches. If you’ve ever considered putting some color on YOUR spinning wheel, Bonny Acklin visits the blog today to explain how she transformed a well-traveled wheel into the gypsy it always wanted to be.
When I came home with a 1970’s Country Craftsman and said, “I think I’ll decorate her!” my husband thought I was crazy to deface such a beautiful wheel. Well, I did it anyway, and the result pleased me.
Not being a painter, I didn’t want to jump into this blindly. I knew I needed some help, so I began my search for information. I found some valuable resources on the web, and I also got some great tips from my crafty friends. My main concerns were how to prep the wood, what type of paint to use and what kind of finish I should apply to preserve my work for years to come. Opinions on how to go about this varied, so I just settled on what I thought seem most logical and least complicated.
And so the process of giving this wheel a makeover began…
First, I had to come up with some inspiration. Since it seemed this wheel had moved around quite a lot, leading a nomad’s life, I settled on a gypsy theme. I did some research on gypsies to help me get a feel for colors and design.
I was able to find everything I needed at my local arts & crafts store. I used acrylic paints for my project because they’re durable and come in a vast array of colors. I also picked up some 400 grit sandpaper, denatured alcohol and a variety of paint brushes. A word of advice: when you pick out brushes, don’t buy the cheap ones; it’ll pay off in the end.
I began by lightly sanding all areas where I wanted to apply paint with 400 grit sandpaper. After sanding, I wiped down the areas with denatured alcohol, which removes residue, allowing the paints to adhere to the surface of the wood.
The hardest part was lying down that first stoke of paint. I started with the Mother-Of-All because it presented some decorating opportunities that I felt comfortable with. Once I’d accomplished that, things fell into place.
In areas where I accidently dripped paint, it was easily removed with a cotton ball saturated with denatured alcohol. For small areas, I wrapped a toothpick with a small piece for cotton ball and dipped it in the denatured alcohol. This was the perfect tool for removing drips from hard to reach places.
Once I felt the makeover was complete, I let the acrylic paint cure for a few days. I gave the newly painted areas a once over with some wood stain. (One of my crafty friends suggested this as a way to soften the colors. If you decide to do this, be sure to use a stain that matches the finish on your wheel. Just follow the directions on the can.)
The last step was to apply a sealer to protect my work. Before going forward I wanted to be sure that the wheel was clean so I wiped her down with a soft lint-free cloth. I gave it the entire wheel two coats of polyurethane – it’s important to let the first coat dry completely before adding the second one.
Decorating this wheel was a fantastic experience that created a bond between Gypsy and Me. That sounds so silly but it’s true. She’s got a personality that’s all her own and I’m the one who gave it to her.
Bonny Acklin learned to weave, knit and crochet as a child but really didn’t do much with fiber until her kids were grown. She had always crafted with acrylic yarn. Then one day, a friend took Bonny to her LYS… that was the beginning of the end. She became intrigued with all the wonderful, and very different types of yarns and fibers available. One thing led to another and before long she was dyeing wool and spinning her own yarn. This has become her passion: beautiful colors and lovely soft fiber.
If you’re interested in decorating your wheel or if you already have, check out Bonny’s Ravelry group, Decorate Your Wheel.
Permission to Experiment
Today fiber artist Joanne Seiff joins us for a guest post on figuring out the rules… and then breaking them! Let your experimentation run wild – some of our articles from the Bulky issue might be just what you need to break out of your rut and do something different with your spinning this month!
Giving ourselves permission to break the rules is a luxury.
Often, when I teach spinning, I hear a newbie say “Am I doing this right?” or “Am I following the rules?” I usually call the entire class to attention to address this issue. If we focus on human history, we have to acknowledge that as a species, we’d have gotten way too cold (hypothermic even) and died out in the wilderness if there were only one way to spin. Ever since we stopped exclusively wearing animal skins and started producing textiles, folks have been spinning.
This may be simplistic, but it’s also important. New spinners — and even experienced ones — need to be open to the idea that there are many good paths to producing useful and even beautiful yarns. Yet, in our rule and habit-bound lives, this can be a hard approach to take. Once you learn how to do something, it’s human nature to repeat it, to seek reassurance through the familiar path to success. That’s why so many spinners have a ‘habit’ yarn. It’s the yarn that we spin, again and again, without trying. It’s thick or thin, even or lumpy, but when we’re unconsciously spinning, it’s our standard. It happens without thinking about it.
Many of us don’t experiment with something new because it’s risky. We resist experimentation because something might go wrong; we might waste money, time, or fiber. We spent a lot on that hand-dyed 4oz braid of roving; why mess it up? There’s only 10 minutes to spin; why waste it on sampling an art yarn or a lace weight? Or — this prize-winning fleece is only 2 lbs! If I try spinning a variety of yarns, it will all disappear before I’ve made anything!
These are all legitimate concerns, but one of the reasons why I cherish run of the mill, ordinary medium wools is to avoid feeling like this. I won’t break the bank if I produce 400 yards of super-bulky yarn. I won’t ruin anything if I spin for ten minutes and it doesn’t look exactly the way it looked yesterday. Lastly, if I buy a big Romney fleece from a farmer or 10 lbs of white medium wool roving, there is plenty to spare if my experimentation doesn’t work out.
Don’t get me wrong – I don’t like waste. I try to use every last inch of handspun. However, I have a big stash and I’m not afraid to use it. Recently, my twins showed interest in knitting. We rushed upstairs to my yarn bins to choose their favorite colors. In no time, we were handling yarns, finger knitting, and discussing designs. Each had their own little scrap of “knitting” when we were done. That yarn was not wasted— it inspired future knitters. I felt just the same about the roving and the drop spindles I’d made when they wanted to spin. That yarn, roving and spindles? They were made to be loved, used and enjoyed.
It’s all too easy to ‘over cherish’ our stash. I find myself holding onto that last bit of fleece I got on my honeymoon, a glorious hand-dyed skein I spun, or a bit of luxury fiber so precious that it’s too good to be used. It can be hard to break free of this mindset. Yet, the hand spun qiviut and tussah silk scarf I made for my brother-in-law or the alpaca and silk mitten, scarf and hat set I made a friend are just as cherished now that they are in use, keeping someone warm. Those folks will wear those rare fine fibers out while enjoying their winter woollies. Isn’t that the way it should be?
Last year, when I knit my twins’ winter mittens, one of my boys insisted that his mitts be handspun, dyed green, with a white stripe, and “that gray Shetland wool from our friend Margaret’s sheep.” Who can resist making handmade mitts for a three year old who appreciates it? I couldn’t. He’s worn them for 7 months (Canadian winters are long!). They show no sign of wearing out. He’ll outgrow them in time to order something exquisite from the stash. I’m waiting to hear what’s next.
In winter, my preschoolers and I beat back the doldrums of another snowy day by starting a dye pot. We threw in some stained white napkins. Sadly, they were a polyester blend, so while the dye took, the napkins didn’t absorb most of it. I faced throwing out a perfectly good pot full of dye. In the rush to use something –because it’s hard to stash an already half-used pot of dye- I threw in two balls of medium white wool singles that I had handy.
I broke all the rules. I didn’t soak the yarn first. It wasn’t plied. It wasn’t in skeins. It wasn’t a project sized amount. In the end, it didn’t even use up all that dye. No matter.
Sometimes the best indulgence is in allowing myself to break the rules and see what happens. What occurred? Nothing. The yarn didn’t break. The dye took up beautiful and evenly. The strangest things can happen when we allow ourselves to see what will emerge.
Those single skeins of red and purple just might be next year’s mittens, or booties for a friend’s new baby. There’s no telling where these experimental journeys, this delicious chance to create and this indulgence in exploring new fiber might lead.
Joanne Seiff is the author of Fiber Gathering and Knit Green. She writes, spins, knits and designs in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Check out her work out on Ravelry—her designs might sing in your hand spun!
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