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Meagan Condon

Trash in; trash out

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The art of saving your scraps for another project

words by Meagan Condon

Something many experienced fiber teachers, myself included, try to relate to new spinners is… if something in your fiber supply isn’t working… if you have neps in your worsted preparation… if you have a lock that doesn’t want to spin right… it is okay to toss it! No one ever listens the first time. I remember when I first started spinning, I didn’t want to waste a single tuft of fiber. Fiber is an expensive and precious commodity! I couldn’t bear the idea of tossing anything, even if it was trash fiber. It could have more straw than fiber and I’d still sit down and pick out “the good parts.” That boat has long since sailed for me, and I’d like to help you christen your own boat and explore ways of handling fiber scraps that will improve your spinning projects and clear out your studio.

Rule #1: Trash in; trash out
Let’s say you want to create a smooth worsted yarn. You select a nice braid of BFL/silk which you probably paid a nice price for. As you begin to spin, you get to a place in the fiber preparation that is compacted and the fiber preparation is badly disturbed. What do you do? Still spin right past it? What if I told you it had a few neps? Better yet, what if it also had some vegetable matter? All of these problems interrupt your worsted yarn, create a weaker yarn structure, and take away from the value of your yarn. If you paid that much for your fancy fiber, you want to make the best yarn you can. Rather than incorporating those “trash” portions into your yarn, toss it!

Toss it doesn’t mean trash it necessarily…
Just because a bit of fiber isn’t right for a particular project doesn’t mean it can’t be used in some other fashion. In my studio, I keep a bag of fiber scraps. Sometimes these are tufts I cleaned from my drum carder or blending board. Sometimes it’s a not-so-nice portion of a top I’ve spun. Sometimes it’s a section of fluff I experimented with.

What doesn’t go in the bag? Dust and fiber from the floor and beneath the carder, portions of a fleece too gross for me to spin, fiber less than a 1-inch staple, and anything too tangled to work with.

Make yarn
After I’ve filled or sometimes overfilled the bag, I dump the fiber onto the floor, give it a rough sort, and then card it into a scrappy batt or “trash” rolags. The tricky part about these scrappy projects is they can contain any type of fiber, any staple length, any diameter. Medium wools get mixed with fine wools. Longwools get mixed with angora. You name it, it will be all together in this one project. On top of that, you’re using the less-desirable bits instead of the prime fiber. That means your yarn will pill. It will be a weaker yarn. It may even be ugly, itchy, or lumpy. Be aware of that going into the project. I usually don’t get too invested in my scrappy yarns and I don’t expect the finished projects to last a lifetime. I usually spin it as a woolen yarn to deemphasize the inconsistencies of the preparation and use in a project that won’t get much wear & tear and that won’t have tears shed when it does wear out. 

Felt it
Does the idea of making crappy yarn kill your soul? You can always felt that fiber instead.

  • Wrap your scrappy fiber around a bar of soap and turn it into felted soap.
  • Paint a felt tapestry with your different colored scraps.
  • Needle-felt some bobbles to include in your next art yarn.

Experiment
Use your scrappy fiber as a chance to experiment. Try a new preparation or spinning technique. Always wanted to try super coils? Now is your chance! Coreless core spinning? Bring it on! Carding a gradient out of anything? Try it. Just remember, since you are not dealing with prime fiber, if you run into trouble as you experiment, some of your frustration may come from the fiber and not your technique. Take it with a grain of salt and ask yourself along the way – is this something I’m doing or is this a result of my fiber?

What about all the fiber too icky to spin?
If it is too icky to spin, it becomes packing material for shipping things, stuffing for pillows, and (worst-case) compost. Remember, there will be more wool, better wool, stronger wool. As your stash grows, you’ll have more fiber than you can spin, so don’t waste your time fussing with the trash bits.

You have permission to scrap the scrappy bits.

Let me say that again.

You have permission to scrap the scrappy bits.

While you spin, when you get to that not-so-nice bit of fiber, tear it out of your fiber supply and fling it to the floor. Not only does it feel great, but you can pick it up later for your scrap bag. Just because it isn’t going to be in your current project doesn’t mean you can’t use it in other applications.  

wool from different breeds of sheep demonstrating different lengths of fiber
Meagan Condon

Three Tips for Making Consistent Yarn

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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

examples of different breeds of wool showing different lengths of locks from short to long

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.

dog sleeping
Jillian Moreno

Spinning Confession: I Write On My Bobbins

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bobbins PLY

Yes, you read that right. I take a brand new piece of equipment that costs between $30 & $50 and write on it. With a Sharpie. And it keeps me sane. My spinning tools are just that, tools that I use to make yarn.

It took me a long time to finally break down and write on a bobbin. I remember exactly when, too. It was at SOAR in a Kathryn Alexander class on energized singles. We had to spin some singles Z and some singles S. I tried to keep S on one side of my chair and Z on the other, but they kept rolling together.

Kathryn sees my struggle, comes over and says, “Just write on them, with a pencil, S or Z”.  I did and have never looked back.

All of my bobbins have been weighed and marked with their empty weight. With that information I can weigh my bobbin mid-spin, subtract the empty weight and know how much yarn I’ve spun so far.

I mark my bobbins for direction of spin, especially when I’m making crepes or cable yarns.

The orange sticker on the Schacht bobbin in the photo is a note to tell me where in a multi-color, multi-ply, multi-yarn project this bobbin belongs.

Storage bobbins get all of the writing love. The one in the photo reminds me that it weighs .65 ounces empty, the yarn on it is Vegetable Medley (from Into the Whirled) and I spun it to chain ply. When I pull it out of my spinning basket I know exactly what it’s for.

I often mark my bobbins with the name of the project, article, sample that the yarn is destined to be since I work on several projects at the same time.

Writing on my bobbins saves me so much time, stress and mental space. I rarely  have to play the ‘what’s on this bobbin’ game.

Now I just have to get better at erasing all the project info off of my bobbins when I’m done with the yarn!