Archive for category: Frontpage Article

Mix Moodboard (Summer 2022)
 
Much of the time we’re happy spinning along doing our regular thing, but sometimes we just want to mix it up! What about you? What do you like to mix up in your spinning?
 
Do you mix fiber, preparation, draft, color, types of yarn, or types of crafts? If you do, we want to hear about it. Do you mix woolen and worsted in your spinning? Between preparation and draft? What about mixing woolen and worsted plies? Why would you do it? How does it look and feel? What do you make with it?
 
What are your favorite fiber blends and do you have special ways of spinning them? Do you make your own blends? What process do you use to create a new or unique blend? Do some breeds mix better than others? How do you sample your blends? How do you keep track? Are there fiber-mixing tools you use that you can’t do without?
 
Have you experimented with mixing twist direction in singles or ply? What did you find out? What effect does reversing direction have on yarn and cloth? What about mixing dye to create unique colors in dyes? How do you plan? How do you keep track?
 
Do you have tips on dyeing blends that are mixtures of animal, plant, or synthetic? Have you mixed natural and chemical dyes in a single yarn? What was the result? Do you mix fibers or colors at the wheel? How does it look? Why do you choose this method over carding or combing? Are you a shepherd? How do you choose which breeds to mix for your flock? What has been your greatest success? Do you know the history of a now-favorite breed that started as a mix of 2 classic breeds?
 
We’re looking for patterns that mix it up, too: weaving with some knitting, or knitting with some crochet, or adding layers of handspun as embellishments. Anything that mixes this and that, we want to hear about it!
 
If you can help answer any of these questions or have a good idea for an article, please let us know! If you’ve got an idea for a fantastic project, let us know that too! Whether it’s your first time proposing an article or your 100th, we want to hear from you!
 
Submit your ideas here
Proposals of articles and projects are due by June 1, 2021. We’ll get back to you in July, and final pieces are due December 1, 2021.

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.

words by Jacqueline Harp and photos by Joseph Harp

When a fiber artist chooses to separate and process a dual-coated fleece by hand, it is like unlocking two fleeces from one. A dual-coated fleece is an intertwined combination of a short-stapled, soft, downy undercoat and a protective, longer-stapled, coarser, hair-like outercoat.  Once these integrated coats are separated, you will have two very different fibers requiring different preparation and spinning techniques, which will result in two very different yarns. One yarn is going to be airy, woolen, and softer and can be worn next to the skin. The other yarn is heavier, worsted, and tougher and can be made into outerwear.

Interestingly, in industrial textile milling, the process of mechanically separating dual-coated fleeces is known as “dehairing” or “fiber separation.” A mill utilizes a dehairing machine to divide a fleece’s outercoat from the undercoat. The mill will then use the newly separated undercoat to produce soft knitting yarns while using the outercoat for yarn durable enough for rug making. Typical mills, however, only take large batches of fleece – usually hundreds of pounds. Even an artisanal mill will have a minimum order requirement. A handspinner is generally working with a single fleece, which doesn’t meet the large thresholds for mill processing. Sending a small order of fleece to be “dehaired” at a mill could be cost prohibitive.

The good news

From the comfort of your own home or studio, you can easily separate a dual-coated fleece using the most basic fiber processing tool known to humanity – your hands. Fiber tools such as combs, carders, flickers, or hackles can be used to separate a dual-coated fleece, but not all fiber artists will have these items readily available. If you don’t work with raw fleeces often, you may not want to invest in hand tools you will only use occasionally. Here is how to separate your dual-coated fleece, in four easy steps, using only your hands:

1) Take an individual lock of wool and secure the cut end of the lock between your thumb and index finger.

2) With your other hand, pinch or wrap the tip of the lock between your fingers.

3) Once your lock is in this position, hold the cut end firmly while you pull the tip away from the base of the lock until you have pulled the lock completely apart. This may happen with a single pull or you may need to repeatedly and gently tug the tip several times to separate the outercoat from undercoat.

4) Repeat steps 1–3 until you have the desired amount of separated fibers.

It is a simple process, and your technique will improve with practice. Start slowly until you get the feel for it. The instructions work for both left and right handers.

Additional tips

Let’s start with an easy tip. Make sure to set up containers for the separated locks before you start. You want to avoid undoing your efforts.

Make sure your work area is well-ventilated and easy to clean. Even washed locks can still contain vegetable matter and dust that can be inhaled and tracked around. By anticipating the need to clean up after the process, you can aim to make less of a mess in the first place.

Depending on personal preference, you can hand-separate raw locks or washed locks with equal success. Raw locks will still contain lanolin, which can be a bit smelly and greasy, but the lanolin makes the fibers more slippery and therefore easier to pull apart by hand. The fibers from the separated raw locks can be washed later using your preferred fleece scouring method. Washed locks, on the other hand, will be clean and smell nicer but can be a bit harder to separate because the slipperiness caused by the lanolin is gone.

If your locks (washed or raw) have started to felt, don’t panic! There is still a chance for the locks to be hand-separated successfully if you carefully tease the lock apart. Gently tugging and pulling the ends of the felting lock should release the fibers from each other enough to be separated.

Final thoughts

Dual-coated sheep breeds can be found all over the world. Shetland, Icelandic, Karakul, Navajo-Churro, and Soay are five breeds of dual-coated sheep whose fleeces are relativity easy to acquire from North American flocks. To demonstrate the hand-separation process, I used lovely milk-chocolate locks from a dual-coated Icelandic yearling-ewe fleece sourced from North America. The technique for separating dual-coated fibers explained here can be used for other non-sheep, fiber-producing, dual-coated animals, such as qiviut, bison, yak, and cashmere goat.

A dual-coated fleece has much to offer to those looking for a project that can inspire and surprise. It is rewarding to take a raw fleece to an unusual and unexplored place. So what are you waiting for? Start towards the next destination in your fiber arts journey.

Jacqueline Harp is a freelance writer and multimedia fiber artist who spins, felts, weaves, crochets, and knits in every spare moment possible. She is also a certified Master Sorter of Wool Fibers through the State Univ. of N.Y. (Cobleskill) Sorter-Grader-Classer (SGC) Program. Her Instagram handle is @foreverfiberarts.

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.

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.