My first foray into the world of hand spun yarn

Now if your like me and simply cannot even consider leaving the house without something to knit/crochet on the bus and dream about art yarns and the next project, then this is totally for you. As some one who has been an avid knitter and all around general crafter for a long time then spinning your own yarn is something that was eventually going to come up. Personally living on a students budget I cannot hope to own my own spinning wheel, so I started searching the Internet for more cost effective options. Though there are others you can use I found that the one that works best for me is the top whorl drop spindle. You can buy these ready made on Ebay for as little as seven pounds, but I wanted to try and make something that was thrifty and easily made, as most of the tutorials I found online still required specialist tools and equipment. I ended up making mine from a few things that I had lying around the house :

- A pencil with a rubber in the top

- A circular piece of cardboard

- An old fish hook ear ring

- PVA glue

- Brown packing tape

As my drop spindle is not the topic of this blog post then I shall leave this little tutorial for another day (if people so wish it) and get on with what I'm meant to be talking about.

First off you need to choose your fibre. I got mine from forestfibers on Ebay. I can definitely see myself using this seller again. They have a wonderful selection of pre drafted fibres in a variety of really stunning colours. The wonder of buying pre drafted fibres is that you don't have to go through the process of picking and carding the fibre.

Once you have your fibre you need to prepare it for spinning. Unless your going for the record for worlds chunkiest yarn your going to want to separate it into eights. Once you are ready to spin you need to create what is called a leader yarn. This is a loop of already spun yarn that is attached the the pencil part of the drop spindle and then looped through the hook at the top. Then you take your un spun fibres and loop them through the leader yarn. 

To actually spin the roving into a yarn you take the drop spindle and press it against your leg and run it from the top of your thigh down to your knee and let it spin. As the spindle spins you slowly let more and more of the roving drop so that it twists it self into a strand of yarn. Once you have spun the amount of roving that you let fall you detach it from the hook and wrap it around the body of your spindle while holding it tight so that it doesn't ravel back on itself.

Once you have spun all your roving you need to take it off your spindle. Normally there is a special tool you can use to wind it to a desired length, but since this was about spinning my own yarn while spending as little as possible i decided to stretch my feet out and wrap it around my feet. No matter what you use to wrap your yarn around you want to try and make it as long as possible and keep it stretched.

Now comes one of the most crucial steps when spinning your own yarn. To keep the twist and make sure your yarn doesn't un ravel into it's natural state you are going to need to soak your yarn. I took a small amount of basic washing up soap and added it to a sink of luke warm water. Your water needs  to be slightly warm but not too warm or else your yarn runs the risk of felting, which we don't want. Once you have soaked your wool for between 10 - 20 minutes you need to rinse your yarn to remove all the soap bubbles and left over residue from your yarn.

Once you have fully rinsed your yarn you need to dry it, however, you need to stretch and dry it at the same time to make sure that the drying sets your twist. Most people do this by hanging their yarn from something and weighting the bottom part down to fully stretch it out. For me personally I chose to use my washing horse as the distance between the metal poles happened to be just the right size. I then left the yarn there until it was dry all the way through and then I balled them up as I made two balls of equal size so that I could ply them together. To make a two ply ball of wool I just followed the directions for spinning wool but you thread both balls through the leader yarn and when you spin it on your drop spindle you spin it in the opposite direction that you did the first time, so in this case to ply it I spun it from knee to thigh instead of thigh to knee.

So as you can see I didn't produce that much wool but I didn't want to bite off more than I could chew for my first attempt at spinning. In total it took me two days from start to finish and I definitely think that this is going to be something that I will be doing in the future. Not only do you get much more creative control over the yarn that you use in your knitting and crocheting, but also I found that the biggest reward from spinning your own yarn is the feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction that you get from knowing that the yarn you are using was made by your own two hands. 

Happy Spinning! When in doubt, Shoot the ground x