Spinning Woolen Yarn from Rolags

hey friends so today we're going to talk about spinning now i have carded a whole bunch of wool and i have my little rolex sitting here in a pile i like to keep them close by and i also have the most important coffee but before we do this i want to take a moment just to talk about this comment right here from a friend of mine on tiktok yes i do have a really really cool job i think my job is the coolest job i get to work from home i get to work with soft wool i get to create things with my hands i spin i knit i weave i get to wear sweatpants i'm my own boss you know the spouse has a little bit to do with that as well but um you know the only people that i really have to answer to are my spouse and myself so yeah i have one of the coolest jobs there is and it took me a while to get here but lots of practice and lots of learning and finally just taking the plunge and doing it was what made that all possible for me so moving on we're going to take one of our little roll eggs here and we're going to pull just a little bit of yarn or a little bit of fibers out of there now these are going to be a woolen spun and so i'm just going to give some twists in this because i'm working with a turkish drop spindle and we've talked about these before and so i'm just going to load this yarn [Music] right into the hole and get her set up and i'm going to give it just a few more twists while i've got it on the spindle and draft out just a little bit more give it a little bit more twist there we go so now i've got enough space where i can make my half hitch which all i do is i just loop it over my finger bring the yarn here on this place and then just drop that loop right over top so it fits into that little notch so now that we've got this nice and hooked up we are going to just give it a spin and we're going to draft out some fibers now if you look at the area where i'm drafting it creates a little triangle in here and since this is a woolen sponge i actually can let go that the triangle is not going to travel too far or the twist is not going to travel too far up into my yarn and i'm using a little bit smaller spindle just because i want a little bit finer yarn and then i will apply it later and turn it into probably about a three ply yarn we'll wind some of this up here now if you remember what i taught you before was over two under one and we'll build that nice little cop on top of the spindle there okay now i've got enough room to do my little half hitch again we'll give it another twist and we'll give it a nice draw a little bit more twist so one of the things that i really love about woolen spun is you can actually do a fairly long draw on this whereas with worsted you can't do quite as much of a draw and i could actually draw quite a bit of this out let the twist travel up and continue to spin it and the other part about a woolen sponge that's nice is if you put a little twist in there and you have some inconsistencies you can pull just a little bit and it starts to even itself out in the yarn that can't necessarily be done with a worsted fund because worsted spun will typically all those fibers bunch up together and they don't like to separate out so now that we have that cop wound on we're just gonna keep going same direction now another difference between woolen spun and worsted spun [Music] is that your end product is going to be fluffier so woolen is fluffier than worsted and that's because of the way the fiber is light you can see probably how fuzzy that yarn is now when you apply that those little fluffs are going to create space in that yarn and it's going to continue to create that space and leave that space so it may feel a little bit spongier as you go and in a war stood that will feel fairly hard when you touch the cop or you know your wool that's on your spindle and if you want a nice fluffy sweater or um you know mittens or scarf or hat or something like that you're gonna have better results with a woolen spun than you will with the worsted sponge you can get nice and soft lofty yarns however woolen sponge is going to trap that heat in just a little bit better and it's going to add just a little bit more softness to your garment so maybe if all you've done is worsted spun with all the fibers aligned in one direction try out a woolen spun with roll eggs they're super easy to learn with they are very portable and i just really enjoy having a pile of them next to me and just working away at a really nice woolen spun yarn so as you can see as i'm drafting you saw that little triangle that's in there but i'm also using my fingers to control the amount of fibers that are coming out of the end here and as you practice you'll get more consistent with your drafting what i'm doing is i'm preventing the twist from traveling up into my mass of fibers now there's other ways to prevent this as well you can give it a spin lay it back here and if you create a bend your twist will not travel past that bend or you can pinch and your twist won't travel now if i were to let go and give a little bit of tension that twist travels right up into that mass of fibers and that's too much i don't want that to happen so we're going to pull it back and we're going to work that twist out of there and then give it just a little bit more now it may seem like it looks a little extra fluffy and it may look like there's some slubs in there but as we get it wound onto the cop or if you're working with the spinning wheel onto a bobbin i will show you here this yarn is actually very consistent and you can kind of see on the bottom there how consistent that yarn is so practice practice practice sometimes you gotta slow down in order to speed up don't worry about going fast right now we're in the learning stage the other thing is is if you find a technique that works for you and it gives you the end result that you want then that's the technique that works for you there is no one right way to do all of this stuff if it works and it gives you it gives you the end result that you want then that's the right way some people may be able to try to teach you a different technique that might be a little bit more efficient but truthfully at the end of the day find what works best for you all right everybody have a great day

Channel: It's Just Timber

Views: 1,739

Keywords: fiber art, spinning, weaving, knitting, wool, cotton, handspinning, handspun wool

Id: 4Evs1idQd8M

Length: 10min 10sec (610 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 09 2022