It's amazing how many different types of fiber can be spun on a hand spindle or a spinning wheel -or an electric spinner. I have seen and heard of people spinning wool, silk, cotton, linen, mohair, angora, dog hair, cat hair, cashmere, camel down, llama, alpaca, guanaco, buffalo down, quiviuk, soy fiber, cornsilk fiber, polyester fiber fill, human hair, pill bottle stuffings, shredded newspaper, nettle fibers, and dryer lint (on a bet), and I'm sure there are others. In general beginners start with wool, because wool is relatively cheap and abundant and also very cooperative about being spun. Some of these other fibers are less cooperative, and some of them downright uncooperative. So let's just start with wool.
Let's not start with any old wool, however. Let's start with a medium to fine fairly long staple wool, in white or a natural color, or if it really floats your boat, kool aid dyed. Let's start with some nice clean wool, that has been carded or combed into batts or roving. If you have a fleece that someone gave you, keep it for later.
hand spindle - A stick with a hook and a cylindrical weight on it. The weight doesn't actually have to be cylindrical but usually is, because it spins better that way, because it's balanced better. The weight is called a whorl. The word whorl is cousin to the word whirl. The weight can be at the top end of the stick, whereupon the spindle is called a top whorl spindle, or it can be at the bottom end, and called a bottom whorl spindle. There are actually other kinds of hand spindles too, but we'll stick with these for the time being. The hand spindle is also called a drop spindle, not because you drop it, though in fact you often do as a beginner, but because it gets its momentum partly from gravity. The longer the drop, the longer you can keep spinning before you have to pick it up. wind your spun thread on, and set it spinning again.
A spinning wheel is a labor saving device invented in the Middle Ages, when someone figured out that the spindle doesn't have to be vertical to work as long as you can keep it spinning. They turned the spindle horizontally, attached it to a drive band, attached the drive band to a wheel, and the wheel to a foot treadle. The first wheels did not have a spool but had a metal spike sticking out to the side, and you spun “off the point” of the spike. Eventually that spike got worn to a very sharp point, and that's what Sleeping Beauty pricked her finger on. A few modern wheels use this spike, which is called a quill, but most have a spinning part and a spool which rides on it. This assembly is called a flyer and spindle. They have whorls, too, but in a spinning wheel, a whorl is one of the grooves or channels in which the drive band can ride to control the relative speed of the flyer. There are two types of drive band arrangements -double drive and Scotch tension. Double drive wheels have the brake band wrapped around twice, one part going to the wheel and flyer and one part to the spindle. This arrangement creates a steady ratio between the flyer and the spindle. The Scotch tension has one drive band that goes to the flyer, and a separate brake band that goes to the spindle and slows it down. This produces a variable relationship between the spindle and the flyer. There are other variations on this theme as well, but I'm not writing a book here. An electric spinner is a modern development for further labor saving. You don't even have to treadle. There's usually a hand switch to turn it on and control the speed, and often a foot pedal to slow it down or start it up again. It looks and sounds rather like a sewing machine motor.
Wool is described by its color, its gauge, its crimp, and its staple length. It is also sometimes described by saying what breed the sheep is, though that doesn't tell you everything you want to know. Or it might be described as first shearing, or lamb fleece, or yearling, or second shearing.
Color. Yes, wool comes in colors other than white, despite the best efforts of wool breeders for generations to breed for white. Commercial producers like white because the fleeces can all be thrown in together and will dye to the same color. Handspinners flocks tend to have colored animals. As you might suspect the colors are basically different shades of brown or gray, sometimes so dark as to be almost black. Black wool is seldom a true black, usually a very dark brown.
Gauge:In describing wool, that is an indication of how thick the individual hairs are. The higher the number the finer the wool. You don't always want the finest wool. A medium wool is better for learning with because it's easier to spin.
Crimp is the little kinks in the individual hairs. Finer wool usually has more crimp, though not always, because crimp is a breed characteristic, too. The crimp helps the little hairs to catch and hold on each other as they slide past, and also makes the finished yarn springier and more full of air, or “loftier”.
Staple length is how long the fleece was when it was cut from the sheep. Different breeds grow hair at different rates. Generally as a beginner you will want a staple length of 2 or 3 inches. You measure staple length by taking one obvious lock of wool, like a lock of hair, and measuring it from the cut end to the tip end.
What you don't want in a fleece. You don't want lots of dirt. You don't want urine or the other stuff. You don't want very short staple wool. You don't want a mixture of coarse wool from the butt, with soft wool from the back, with dirty wool from the belly. You don't want lots of burrs, thorns, grass, leaves, hay and similar, called collectively vegetable matter, or vm. There will be some in the fleece, after all these are animals. They haven't been raised in a parlor and given a daily bath. But you don't want lots of vm, because you have to get it out before and sometimes during spinning. Luckily the cleaning, carding and combing processes take most of this stuff out. There will also be some lanolin in the wool. You want some there, but not as much as Mother Nature endows the sheep with, though there are people who will disagree with me on this. You also don't want wool with really stuck-together tips. This condition is called cotting, or codding, and essentially what happened is that the wool tip-ends turned into felt all by themselves. Those felted ends can't be spun, and will have to be cut off.
In the interests of making things simple for the student, start with a commercially prepared wool. This has already been washed, carded, or combed and is now sitting in batts, or roving, or top, all ready for spinning so the beginner can concentrate on just that.
Washed means washed. Usually in very hot water with a strong detergent and NO agitation. Hot water, strong detergent and agitation produces felt, so keep that fleece very calm. Usually it takes 2 to 3 washings and rinsings (in equally hot water) to wash a fleece. Then it's laid out flat to dry in a shaded airy place, often on a sheet or screen.
I'm not going to go into detail about how to wash a fleece here.
Carded: Cards are sort of like a wire hair brush, or maybe more like really big dog brushes. There are hand cards that one person can use to prepare the wool one little handful at a time, which takes as long as it sounds like it would. The wool prepared this way is rolled into a fat cigar shape called a rolag, which is a Norwegian word. If you do it with cotton you get a little skinny one called a puni. Commercially carded wool is prepared on huge drums that have similar teeth on them to the teeth on the hand cards. Smaller versions turned with a hand crank are available for the hobbyist.
Batts: When the wool is pulled off the drum cards it is in long rectangles called batts, as in batting, like quilts. To use the batts, you pull off a strip and start spinning.
Roving: Roving is essentially a long fat loose rope of carded fiber. You get it by pulling the batts in strips through a hole. It's just a convenient way to store the fiber. To use the roving, you break off a chunk, in any convenient length, and tear it vertically into narrow strips. How narrow depends a lot on the fiber and what you intend to spin from it. Fat strips makes fat yarn. Thin strips tend to make thin yarn. Again, this is not a rigid rule. There aren't very many rigid rules in spinning.
Combing. There is a different process for preparing wool for spinning, called combing. The combs come in pairs also. Most combs look like a thick heavy paddle with nails sticking out of it. It's a dangerous looking object. One comb is anchored to a solid object and a handful of wool is stuck into the teeth of the comb and you swing the teeth of the other comb through the wool, thus gradually pulling it straight and catching any junk and short fibers behind the teeth. Then you pull the wool out of the comb, and through a little gadget with a hole in it, called a diz, and make a sort of mini-roving called top. Top: Top comes from combed fleece. Top is very smooth.
Worsted: Wool which has been carefully combed to be aligned as much as possible, and is spun tightly and smoothly from the end of the fiber, not from the middle. Wool spun this way makes a very smooth yarn that wears well but is not quite as warm and soft as woolen. Do not confuse this with the knitting yarn called worsted. That is a size category, not a spinning type.
Woolen: If you spin from batts or roving or rolags, the fibers are only more or less aligned with each other. They will form air pockets, and make a soft springy yarn with a lot of “loft”, that being the air pockets I mentioned. Beginners usually start with spinning in woolen style.
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Modified: 2006-02-09
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