Small: Why spin with a spindle?

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Spindles and mini skeins

Spindle spinning is cool. There are loads of devoted spindle spinners out there and those of us who favour our wheels are missing out. What do they know that we don’t?

Picking up a long thread

Humans have used spindles–and even simpler sticks–to spin fiber into yarn for thousands of years. For me, using a spindle is a bit like time travelling with yarn. When I pick up my spindle I’m doing something very similar to our ancestors. That’s a powerful thing, literally picking up the thread begun by people who lived in a world completely different to mine. It’s a point of commonality–making threads to weave and clothe ourselves.

Imagine how much work went into making garments before that process became industrialised. Clothing was something people held onto and mended. The idea of clothing shops, let alone throw-away fashion would have been unfathomable.

Spindling reminds me of that.

Spindle as a symbol of female power

Archeologists find whorls in excavations all over the world. Some viking women were buried with their spindle whorls (the weight) and weaving tools.

“[T]he presence of gendered goods at Viking controlled territories is a concrete indication of female burials. These gendered goods include “(pairs of) oval brooches, disc brooches, trefoil buckles, arm rings, necklaces, caskets, spindle whorls.” (Women Traders of the Viking Age: An Analysis of Grave Goods)

Norns

The spindle and weaving tools was associated with female power in some ancient Northern European traditions.

“According to Norse mythology, aristocratic women were associated with the Norns—the mystical weavers of fate who could spin or cut off the threads of human life and destiny. High status women were, therefore, felt to have an ability to influence fate.” (Ancient Scandinavia: Viking Women)

“She had the body of a Venus… with arms”

Venus: without arms

How is it the dumbest AC/DC lyric reminds me of spinning? Well. You know Venus. She’s the armless statue in Paris’ Louvre Museum. People like to take selfies with her. There are people out there who wonder what the Venus de Milo was doing… when the statue had arms. Some people believe she may have been spinning.

“One idea in particular piqued the interest of Elizabeth Wayland Barber, a professor emeritus at Occidental College who wrote the book Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years. Perhaps, Barber thought, Venus was spinning thread. Spinning in ancient Greece had associations with fertility and sex — fitting for the goddess of love and reproduction. Women created thread, seemingly from nothing but a bit of fluff, similar to the mystery of birthing babies. Also, women on Greek vases depicted spinning are actually prostitutes occupying themselves as they wait for clients.” (Smithsonian Magazine)

The idea of a spinning Venus de Milo was tested by Virginia Postrel who hired San Diego-based designer and artist Cosmo Wenman to create a 3D model of Venus spinning. She talks about that process in a 2015 Slate article.

Cosmo Wenman’s Venus Spinning, arms imagined

The model he made is now in a museum in Switzerland–just in case you want to check it out.

Simplest spinning tool

On a more practical note: spindles come in all shapes and sizes, and they are the simplest spinning tool. You can put twist into yarn using just a stick. I love that you can make your own spindle with a few dollars worth of supplies. I’ve made a spindle out of my childhood Tinkertoys.

spindles, fluff and yarn

It’s simple. It’s easy. It’s accessible. Spindle spinning doesn’t have a financial barrier for entry. You don’t need a niddy noddy, lazy kate or a ball winder. You don’t need accessories. Just spin and make yarn.

You can make any kind of yarn on a spindle–two-ply, three-ply any ply, fancy yarn or not. You don’t need certain types of spindles or to make any adjustments to make different yarns. Also, I as I pointed out a few years back, spindles are perfect for spinning on the go.

Stand and spin

My back has been bothering me recently. Sitting at my wheel can make it worse. I realised another great thing about spindle spinning: standing and spinning. Although after awhile my shoulders do get a little tight. Take breaks.

Spinning on a spindle reminds me that not every project needs to yield tons of yarn. We don’t always have to set out to spin a sweater’s worth. Spindles are perfect for making mini-skeins for small projects.

mini skeins

Many spindle spinners do spin lots of yarn for big projects. Check out the Spindlers Ravelry group and prepare to be impressed. Lots of inspiration.

I’d love to hear from people who like to spindle spin. What is it about this kind of spinning that appeals?

Carding by hand–la technique

 Rachel Wolcott

 Blog

Millet’s Woman Carding Wool

“The purpose of the carding process is to align, thoroughly, all the fibres and to spread them evenly across the carders. This process is essential for the production of a woollen thread and is often employed in preparation for a semi-woollen and semi-worsted yarn.”

—Eileen Chadwick, The Craft of Handspinning

Why use handcards when you can use a drumcarder? Handcards are easily portable and great for blending colours. They are also perfect to make rolags, which are, I believe, the best preparation for longdraw woollen spinning.

Gradient of natural colours. Carded by hand

I like my handcards, especially for making rolags. Yes I could use my drumcarder, but for a recent project where I wanted to achieve a gradient effect for a woollen yarn, I stuck with my handcards. Rolags seemed like the way to go for a nice woollen yarn. Carding up rolags is not particularly time consuming once you get the hang of it. You will quickly get a feel for how many rolags you need to spin a bobbin of singles.

Here’s a short video of me demonstrating how I card.

I’m not saying this is the way. It’s the way I was taught by an experienced guild member and reflects the technique Chadwick described in her book.

A couple of tips for handcarding success:

Don’t overload your cards with fiber. Handcards aren’t designed to take big quantities. Go for 5-10 grams at a time.
Easy does it, don’t grind your cards together.
Don’t worry that all the fiber doesn’t transfer from one card to another. It’s not supposed to.
If your forearms get sore, you’re doing it wrong. Stroke one card gently over the other.
Check out Eileen Chadwick’s carding how to: pages 33-37 of The Craft of Handspinning.
finished project!

But is it yarn?

 Rachel Wolcott

 Blog

Art yarn?

Ah the allure of Art Yarn. Behold its super-chunky sparkle, its beads, its coils and luscious locks. Resistance is futile. Or is it?

When I started to spin I announced to Sal that all I wanted to make was art yarn. I probably told her I wanted to explore colour and texture. I was making it up.

Sal told me something like this: If you’re ever planning to make anything like a sweater or a wearable garment you should think about making less-arty yarn.

She had a point.

These days I think about hand spun yarn completely differently. What I used to consider art yarn, I now classify as novelty yarn.

Most of the time I’m experimenting with new materials and techniques. I’m spinning to weave or to knit. My use of art yarn is sparse. That’s partly thanks to my fairly boring sartorial habits. Sal tells me that’s a trend now! Yay!

So what about art yarn?

Last month Alison Daykin gave my guild a talk on art yarn (see below). Beforehand I was curious what she would have to say and it got me thinking. What is art yarn? Is it yarn for yarn’s sake? Is it a novelty item? Does anyone actually use it?

I still make a lot of art yarn, but I call it handspun. Like most spinners I’m experimenting with colour, texture and gauge. Most of it isn’t sparkly or bejeweled. The excitement is in the color or the materials.

Here’s some sport weight yarn I made for a weaving project.

Blue yarn

The blue colorway is a combination of natural coloured and dyed fleece.

The red is a blend of acid and natural-dyed fleece as well as natural coloured. To me these are rich in colour and texture. I’ve made little aesthetic decisions throughout the making process.

Red yarn

Is it art or is it yarn?

These are some examples of what are more commonly considered to be art yarn. There are the dyed locks, the thick/thin look and some bouclé-like yarn.

Bouclé, sort of

Thick thin

Yarn or art? Both?

Lexi Boeger sees it this way: “I believe the onus is on the buyer to look at the yarn and be able to determine an appropriate project to use it for. This puts more work on the buyer, but ultimately it will make that person also more creative..” (See Spinartiste)

Boeger goes on to say that art yarn can help the knitter (or weaver for that matter) think beyond the pattern and become a designer. My reading of that is: art yarn can be a starting point. It asks the question: what can you make with me?

It’s worth pointing out that Lexi Boeger isn’t making art yarn anymore.

Locks

JazzTurtle has a long list of patterns that can use art yarn. But to me art yarn is perfect for weaving–especially saori weaving, which is all about experimentation and personal expression. It’s not really concerned with pattern or convention.

This saori-inspired piece uses some art yarn. For me this piece was a big departure from the norm. Here are colours and textures far from my comfort zone. It marks a step in a creative journey, but I’m not sure the path ends at art yarn.

Weaving with art yarn

[Sal here. I’m going to horn in on your post for a minute]

I would argue that handspinning is technology, and as such there is an intrinsically practical component to the resulting product. Some yarns take a good deal of skill to make well (bouclé for example), or have aesthetic consideration in their colors or textures (as yours do above), and this intersection of technical skill and aesthetic consideration I would call “craft”. Calling something “art yarn” is almost oxymoronic. Yarn for yarn’s sake, as you say, really makes no sense— like building a chair that you can’t sit on. But I know plenty of people who spin and never do anything with the yarn because they don’t knit or crochet or weave, and are perfectly happy that way. I suppose there is a Venn diagram we could make that shows the people who like to build chairs, but don’t actually sit down. I think one could certainly make yarn that’s an end in and of itself, and it could be considered art instead of artisanal, but I think the intention behind it is key, because it would be subverting the concept of yarn. The rest, as you say, is novelty yarn. I’m curious what your guild speaker had to say on the subject. And if they have any good patterns.

[Now back to our regularly scheduled blog post ;)]

Fancy Yarn and permission to spin

When Alison Daykin came down from Derbyshire to talk to the Mid-Essex Guild about art yarn, like Sal I was curious what she had to say about art yarn. One reason for that curiosity was I suspected [knew] many guild members were dubious of art yarn. Many–not all–take the view that art yarn is what you make when first learning to spin. “Don’t worry,” they tell new spinners. “You’ve just made art yarn!” And then everyone laughs.

Alison Daykin described what she makes as fancy yarn, not art yarn. Fancy yarn, Alison explained was any kind of yarn you made that’s non-standard–core spun, bouclé, crepe, thick/thin–that has some irregularity in the making. That irregularity could be introduced in any or all of the steps for making yarn: prepping fiber, color blending, spinning and finishing.

According to Alison, fancy yarn isn’t anything new, in fact Mabel Ross, author of The Encyclopedia of Handspinning, was an early advocate of fancy yarn. However, when Alison started spinning in the late 80s/early 90s she felt spinning non-standard or fancy yarn was discouraged. She was taught that the point of spinning was to churn out yards and yards of yarn that looked like it had been made in a mill.

“I wanted to make different yarn and I felt inferior, because I didn’t want to spin plain yarn,” she said. But after taking a course on spinning and dyeing for tapestry weaving from Bobbie Cox, Alison felt she had, “Permission to spin whatever I wanted. Once you know the rules, you can break them.”

Art yarn, Alison said, is a term that grew out of a trend of making yarn out of recycled materials like plastic bags and cassette tape. She did not see the point in putting yarn in a bowl or hanging it up to admire.

“If I can’t use the yarn, then I’ve wasted my time. Use it to make a garment look different. If you use a little yarn in a piece, it can look lovely. Art yarn has got to be practical as well as beautiful,” she added.

Un-ironic Holiday Sweater, Part 3

 Sally Williams

 Blog, Uncategorized

“Buck” from Classic Elite Yarns

This is going to be my second holiday sweater. Two features have really drawn me to this sweater: one, the colorblocking, which will visually make the sweater look smaller even though it’s oversized, and two, the prancing deer motif, which gives the sweater a lot more movement than the traditional standing deer fair-isle motif. It’s active and sporty in appearance, while also being big and cuddly. That’s a lot to pack into one garment!

I have some taupe commercially made yarn from Araucania for the lighter part of the body, and I wanted to create some forest colored hand-spun for the darker parts. There is a lot of forest here in Oregon, and I wanted to really do justice to the depth of color and variety in conifers that we have around here.

Blue Spruce

This is a blue spruce that’s growing in front of our house. The new growth is a beautiful sage-y blue green, and the older growth is more of a yellow green. The Douglas firs around our house are more of a cyan, and there is a dramatic difference in shade between where the sun strikes the needles and the ones in shadow. I ended up blending five distinct color ways, and then blending those color ways further to create this yarn. I ended up deciding on a fat two-ply to match the weight of my commercial yarn, rather than a three-ply, because I wanted to leave enough variation in color once it was knit up.

Handspun two-ply

Here is my swatch. The commercial yarn has some striation to it, which goes really well with my handspun, and also has some pink undertones to it, which compliments the greens nicely.

Swatchy goodness

It’s being knit on #9 US needles, so it’s coming along quickly. I’m debating on whether or not to add some knit-in pockets. I think what I love most about this project is that it’s a representation of the trees in my neighborhood, in the summer, when it was pretty hot out, and I’ll be able to keep a little bit of that summertime feel with me once winter comes. It’s a little put-up job, like a jar of pickles or some jam.

View of summer from our screened-in porch