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Maybe you’ve just learned how to spin and now you are struggling to create consistent yarn. Or perhaps you’ve been spinning for a long time and are ready to refine your technique. These tips will help you create a more consistent yarn.
Tip One: Know Your Staple
If you are experiencing problems with inconsistent yarn, it is often related to drafting. Whether you’re a new spinner or an old hand, it is always valuable to go back and check the staple of your fiber and adjust your hands. For newer spinners, it is a question of building up muscle memory. For experienced spinners, it is easy to fall into hand habits and default movements.
Remember, aim to hold your hands roughly 1 to 1.5x the staple length. If your hands are too far apart, you will wind up with thin spots where your fiber drafted too much. If your hands are too close together, you might be wearing out your hands by fighting to draft your fiber from both ends. This can result in thick sections in your yarn.
Also try to reach the same distance into your fiber supply each time you draw fibers into the draft zone. The deeper into your fiber supply you pull from, the more fibers in your drafting zone and the thicker yarn you will make.
Tip Two: Rhythm, Rhythm, Rhythm
Rhythm is everything in spinning. Consistent yarn requires the same number of twists in a particular length of yarn, throughout an entire skein. If you’re like me, rhythm doesn’t come naturally.
First, try to practice treadling your wheel with nothing on it; no fiber, no yarn. Treadle while watching a movie. Treadle while having a conversation. The more you practice treadling, the more regular you will become, even if you don’t have a strong internal sense of rhythm. When you practice treadling, you are increasing your muscle memory and reinforcing the neural network. The less you have to consciously think about treadling, the easier it is to find rhythm.
If all else fails and you can’t find a natural rhythm, don’t give up. You can always count. You read that right. Count your treadles for each time you draft. Even if you can’t keep a steady treadle, you can make sure you’re still getting the same amount of twist each time you draft. A funny thing happens when you manually count treadles; often, your rhythm and your muscle memory kick in when you least expect it.
Tip Three: Sleep on It
All this practice sounds fantastic, but there’s one more thing you need to bring it all together – a good night’s sleep. Research has shown that sleep is necessary for the consolidation of information. Basically, during sleep, the brain retraces the neural pathways used for a particular task and determines which pathways are the most efficient. By reinforcing certain pathways, the same information is more likely to travel along those pathways, saving the brain resources. If you’re feeling frustrated after a spinning session, set your work aside and come back to it the next day. You’ll be amazed at the difference it can make.
Hello! If you have found your way to this little corner of the internet, I take it that you are at least somewhat interested in learning how to spin yarn. Well, new friend, you have come to the right place!
The title sounds like something the “Spinning Police” would say, doesn’t it? No, I’m not here to give you a ticket, but maybe an idea instead.
As I trace my steps in the world of spinning, I realize it is not a straight progression. I think that’s okay because just as I have been told over and over again that there is no absolutely correct way to spin, I believe there is no absolutely correct way to learn how to spin. But the end is the same – the delicious accomplishment of turning fibres into yarn!
Let’s take a peek at the incredible process of bringing a sweater pattern to life for the pages of PLY Magazine!
As featured in PLY’s December 2023 newsletter, the Ask Jacey column answers a question about commercial yarns and how they can help create art yarns!
Have you ever blown out the elbow of a favorite sweater? Or knit up an entire sweater only to find you have to wear a turtleneck under it? When choosing a fleece to spin into a sweater, lots of people reach for one end of the spectrum or another: a Merino or associated crossbreed, or something that makes a nice hard-wearing barn sweater like a Romney. However, both of those approaches leave us with a sweater yarn full of compromises. Fortunately, there is an alternative.
