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.
Adventuring with Sheep
I’ve recently read two wonderful books about sheep, one written by a shepherd and one written by a spinner and knitter. Do you need a book to inspire you as spring is springing? To get you ready for the first fleece fairs? Both of these books are great company.
Debbie Zawinski had an idea to walk the highways and byways of Scotland collecting fleece from native breeds of sheep to spin into yarn and then knit into socks. Now anyone that isn’t a spinner, knitter or avid walker might think this is crazy, but those who are will think this sounds like bliss.
The book is divided into 10 breeds of sheep and each chapter tells the story of Debbie traveling to the part of Scotland where the sheep can be found, finding the sheep with the help of people she encounters, gathering a bit of fleece and spinning it. Sounds straight forward, but as anyone that travels knows, it never is.
The stories and photographs of her travels are mesmerizing. I’ve gone back and looked at the photos many times since I’ve finished reading the book. I’ve never been to Scotland and now want to go more than ever. She doesn’t gloss over her frustrations or the crappy weather in her stories, but that makes the whole book more enjoyable.
My favorite bits are the connections she forges with the people who help her find her sheep, ferrying her to islands, directing her down lanes or across fields and applying the much appreciated tea and cake while talking sheep.
It’s interesting that Debbie spins her yarn on a stick. There are no discussion of wheels or types of spindles. She uses a spinning stick and makes wonderful yarn as she walks.
The 10 sheep she visits and spins are: Shetland, Scottish Blackface, Hebridean, Boreray, Soay, North Country Cheviots, North Ronaldsay, Castlemilk Moorits, Bowmont and Cheviots. She closes each chapter with a sock pattern designed and knit out of each breed and inspired by her trek. There is an eleventh pair of socks knit with a bit of each breed.
She writes as someone who knows the joy of solitude, picking out and relishing the details of weather and landscape. This book is exactly the sheepy type of adventure I’d like to experience.
The Shepherd’s Life: Modern Dispatches From an Ancient Landscape By James Rebanks
James Rebanks is a Lake District shepherd. It’s not exactly the pastoral Lake District of painting and poem, the beauty is there, but this Lake District is also the one that has housed shepherding families for hundreds of years. It’s not an easy or lucrative life, but a life rooted in family, place and hard work.
Like his father and grandfather before him, James raises Herdwick sheep. He writes thoroughly, dissecting the seasonal work of raising sheep, the good, the bad and the bloody.
He writes in a style that is more liked linked essays than chapters, glimpses of landscape and seasons of life on the farm. He also tells his own history, that of his family and his corner of the world.
He knew from a young age that he wanted to follow his father and his grandfather and stay to work the family land. He did go on later to get a degree from Oxford while continuing to work on the farm between semesters. He writes about his life with awe and humor, about how his work and countryside are connected to a bigger world and to shepherds all over.
The book is filled with joy and love and a strength and wisdom pulled from land, sheep and family.
Both of these books have a lot in common with the spinners and fiber artists I know. They have sheep at their center. They are infused with passion, dedication and a connection to all of the people who work with fiber going back and forward in time. They are both excellent reads.
A Spinning Wheel in Good Working Order
I’m leaving today to teach some classes in Iowa this weekend for a guild. I’ve never been to Iowa. But it’s not that far away so I’ll pack the car and drive there. By driving I can stop for as many Starbucks hot chocolates as I want. But that’s not what I wanted to talk about today.
The classes I’m teaching are a breeds studay and a class about woolen and worsted. The breeds study requires either a spinning wheel or a spindle and the woolen/worsted class is wheel specific. In the notes for both classes when I list the equipment needed I specify a “spinning wheel in good working order”. Many of my teacher friends use the same language. I wanted to just talk for a short time today about what exactly that means.
Most of the time the wheels people bring to class are fine but there have been several times where the a student’s wheel wasn’t fine and then things get hard for me, the student and the entire class. If a wheel shows up in class that isn;t in good working order I often will spend a bit of time trying to get it to go. Since I am often traveling a far distance to teach I don’t have an extra wheel with me to lend just in case. So the best case scenario is where I get the wheel going with just some minor tweeks. Worst case is that the wheel has bigger issues than I can fix in class and the student doesn’t have a wheel to use. If I have brought a wheel along with me I often lend mine.
I have found that most of the time when the worst happens it’s because the wheel in question was borrowed for the class and the student didn’t try it out before bringing it.
Anyway, There are things I check on my wheel before I bring it to class and there are things that should b checked out before trying to use a wheel that you may not be familiar with. So here goes. 
- The bobbins should all spin freely on the bobbin shaft. Dont just try one bobbin. If the class calls for more than one, try them all out. Spinning freely means that you give it a push and it spins several complete revolutions before you touch it again.
- When treadling with no yarn or tension, the wheel spins freely and treadling is almost effortless.
- The treadles are actually attached to the footmen and those attachments don’t look like they will fall apart at any moment.
- All bolts and screws are tightened and will remain tight oveer the length of the class.
- All front feet are present and accounted for. (This pertains to especially Schacht Wheels that have adjustable feet.) I check this before I leave for a class and then again before I put my wheel in the car after a class.
- If the drive band hasn’t been changed in the last 6 months and it’s cotton, change it.
- If it’s scotch tension, make sure there is a scotch tension brake band attached along with a spring or other bouncy option.
I thnk that’s it. It looks like a lot but it really only will take about 5 to 10 minutes to get it all in order and make sure you’re all set.
Let me know if you have any questions!
While I have your attention, I still have a couple of spots left in one or two of my Plyaway classes so if you can get to Kansas City in April, sign up!
Singles on a Sock Machine
Guest blogger Cindy Craft is here to share her experiments with using a Circular Sock Machine to knit single ply socks. She also uses a flatbed machine for color work using singles. If you’ve ever wondered about knitting machines, we think you’ll be very inspired by her post!
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I’m a hand spinner. I spin every night; it’s the way I wind down at the end of the day. As a result, I make a lot of yarn – there are several blanket chests in my house full of handspun yarn. I knit with my handspun yarn but I spin much faster and much more often than I knit. Several years ago it occurred to me that unless I wanted to die with a small mountain of handspun yarn, I needed to find a way to use my handspun faster.
A sock in progress on Cindy’s CSM.
Circular Sock Machines had been on my radar for many years, but I was reluctant to buy an antique as they’re expensive and not always functional, so I had never purchased one. Then one day I was vending at a local sheep shearing show and a vendor a couple of booths down had a CSM that they were demonstrating – and not just any CSM but a new CSM! So I marched down with a small skein of handspun to see if it would knit on the machine. It did, and within a month we had our own CSM and I was happily using it to knit socks out of my vast supply of handspun.
The resulting Navajo Churro socks.
On one of the Ravelry CSM forums I encountered someone who was knitting socks on their CSM from handspun singles. This blew my mind, because I had always been taught to ply my yarn for knitting. I had always thought it might be possible to use singles for weaving but never for knitting – there would just be too much biasing of the knitted fabric. I figured I’d give it a try; even if it was a disaster I wouldn’t have invested more than a couple of hours to make the socks. The resulting socks were just fine. If I looked carefully I could see that the loops were not quite even but the resulting fabric wasn’t twisted or misshapen.
If you look at the photo to the right, you can see that the right side of the knit loops is narrower than the left side but the shape of the socks themselves is even and not twisted. These socks were made from handspun singles of 50% wool of unknown breeding and 50% alpaca that I processed from raw fiber. This photo was before washing.
To the left is a photo of three different pairs of socks I made using singles yarns on the CSM. In this photo you’ll see three socks all made from handspun singles and knit on the sock machine. These are all socks that I have been wearing and washing by hand for at least a few months. The striped sock is made from a BFL x Romney fleece and was dyed – there is almost no biasing of the stitches present in that sample. The blue sock was made from a Dorset x Southdown. It might be 50/50 or 25/75 as it came from a fleece from a local flock but I don’t know which sheep. There’s lots of biasing in this sock to the point where you can actually see the stitches twist on the sock. The third sock is undyed Romney with a bit of sparkle blended in. This is the oldest of the three socks and you can see some of the wear in the right hand corner. This pair is starting its third year. I spun and knitted these socks in very similar ways – the only real difference is the wool type used.
When I started using singles for socks it got me thinking about using singles for other knitting projects. At the same time, using the CSM got me thinking about using a flatbed knitting machine to speed up my knitting. I’ve been knitting singles on a flatbed for the past couple of years now, and I have found the biasing to be nearly imperceptible. Below are a couple of photos of items knit on the flatbed.
The black and white hat is made from a black Shetland fleece, and I think the white is probably some of the Dorset/Southdown cross fleeces I got in 2014. I am hard pressed to see any biasing in this knitting. The blue and white mittens are made from the 2015 Dorset/Southdown cross fleeces, and the biasing is more visible in this knitting. Perhaps the all over pattern in the black and white hat helps to disguise any biasing that may be present.
Do you knit with singles? Have you ever used them on a knitting machine? What have your experiences been?
Meet Cindy: Spinning is at the core of what I do but yarn is not a finished object so I’m always exploring new ways and tools to use my yarn. You can see more of the ways I use my yarn at our website, www.subitofarm.com.
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