With knitting growing in popularity, many knitters are learning the joys of knitting with their own homemade yarns. Drop spindles are inexpensive and easy to use, and a great introduction to the ancient art of handspinning.
Picture yourself knitting or crocheting with kid mohair, silky and soft, or with a blend of the finest lambs wool and cashmere. Does the image make you wince because you know you can't afford that kind of yarn? Nonsense! All you have to do is learn to spin.
Long before the spinning wheel was invented, people made yarn and thread using various kinds of spindle. A spindle is simply a stick with a weight on one end, but for such a simple tool it has many different variations. The drop spindle is the type most often used in Western Europe for spinning wool and flax. Learning to use a drop spindle is simple, and before you know it you can be spinning your own luxury yarns.
The Drop Spindle
You can use almost anything as a spindle, even a dowel stuck through a ball of modeling clay. It's best to start with a purchased spindle; however, because you can be sure the balance and weight are appropriate for a beginner. An unbalanced spindle can be annoying to work with, especially when you're just learning. But don't worry; you can buy a drop spindle for less than $15.
The drop spindle consists of a shaft--the dowel part--and a whorl, which is the weight. At the top is either a hook or a notch.
For the beginner, a spindle that weighs around three ounces is a good idea. You can spin a good worsted weight singles (unplied strand of yarn) on a three-ounce spindle. On a heavier spindle you spin thicker yarns; on a lighter spindle you spin thinner yarns. Eventually you'll want to own a selection of spindles, but for now you just need one three-ouncer.
Whether you buy a high whorl spindle or a low whorl is up to you. I learned on a low whorl with no problems, but I know spinners who swear the high whorl spindle is easier to use. Once you can spin on one type you can spin on both, though, so just pick a spindle you like the looks of.
The choice of a hook or a notch at the top of the spindle is a harder decision. If you choose a top whorl spindle you'll always have a hook, but bottom whorl spindles can have either (although most have hooks). I like to start out my students with notches. With the notch you're forced to learn to quickly make a half-hitch, which is a good skill for anyone who works with yarn. But the hook is certainly easier to work with. Again, it's up to you and the kind of spindle you like.
What You'll Need
Besides your spindle, you're going to need some wool. Even if you don't intend to spin anything but mohair or alpaca, you should learn to spin with wool. It's much easier and much cheaper. Once you're comfortable with the basics you can experiment with other fibers.
Buy prepared wool ready to spin for your first tries, too. Later on you can work with fleeces right off the sheep if you like, but for now you just want to get a feel for the basic activity of spinning. Roving is the most common form of prepared wool; it resembles a rope of fiber. While roving comes in many types, such as finger roving, pencil roving, and sliver (pronounced sly-ver), the type is not important.
You'll soon learn that all wool is not the same. Different breeds of sheep produce different types of wool--sometimes incredibly different. As a beginner, start with wool from a breed such as Coopworth or Romney.
The last thing you'll need is about two feet of store-bought yarn--yeah, that stuff you're going to want to throw away once you can make your own!
Getting Started
Before you can do anything, you need to attach a leader to your spindle. A leader is simply a piece of already spun yarn--in this case, store-bought--that you tie to your spindle and attach the wool to. Tie one end of your store-bought yarn underneath the whorl. If you have a bottom whorl spindle, the leader will be tied on the short piece of shaft; if you have a top whorl, the leader will be tied to the long piece of shaft. Once it's tied securely (use a square knot), bring the other end of the leader over the whorl and through the hook at the top. If you have a spindle with a notch instead of a hook, make a half-hitch around the notch. Now tie a slip knot at the very end of the yarn.
Your spindle is prepared. Time to look at your wool. You probably have fairly thick roving, so pull off a piece several feet long and pull it into at least two strips. When the strips are the right thickness they won't seem densely packed, but they'll still hold together well.
Tease out the end of one of the strips and string it through the slipknot on the end of your leader, tightening the loop onto the wool. Double the fiber over so that when you begin spinning, the end of the fiber will be twisted into the yarn. This will keep your newly spun yarn from separating from the leader.
Now you're ready to spin.
Spinning
The big thing to remember is always twist your spindle the same direction, to the right. If you start twisting it the other way, you'll untwist your spun yarn, the wool will pull apart, and your spindle will fall to the floor. Your spindle's going to hit the floor pretty often anyway for various reasons (another reason to get a sturdy three-ounce spindle), but as long as you twist to the right you'll be making yarn.
Stand up. Hold your spindle by the shaft in one hand (which hand doesn't matter; I'm right handed and use my right hand, but you may find it more comfortable the other way around), and hold the leader in your other hand. Pinch your fingers down over the slipknot. The rest of the roving should be out of the way; many spinners wind it loosely around their wrist, some drape it over their arm and let the end hang. You'll find your own way once you've had some practice.
Give the spindle a sharp twist--to the right--and let it go. It may bounce around a little on the end of the leader, but it should keep turning. If it doesn't, try it again. You'll be able to feel the leader twisting up; that's the twist that's going to turn the roving into yarn.
Replace the hand holding the slipknot with your other hand, and move your other hand back along the roving. Now open your fingers on the slipknot just enough so that some of that twist runs up into the roving. Congratulations! You've just spun your first few inches of yarn!
Yes, it's that easy. Keep moving your hands backwards along the roving, letting more twist into the wool. Your hand in front adjusts how much twist you let into the roving so should be tighter on the wool than your hand in back, which is around the wool loosely. Use both hands to tug any thicker spots in the roving apart just enough to make them consistent with the rest of the roving. This is called drafting, and it'll become second nature before you know it.
Keep an eye on the spindle. When it slows down, pinch the fingers of your back hand together to stop the drafting process, and reach down with your front hand to give the spindle another sharp twist (to the right). Just keep going until you've spun so much yarn the spindle is down to the floor. Then pick the spindle up, unhook the leader, and twirl the leader and your newly spun yarn onto the spindle shaft, leaving enough yarn free to run up under the hook (or half-hitch to the notch), and then do the whole thing over again.
That's spinning. It may seem awkward now, but practice is the key. It's just like learning to drive a car--a lot to keep in mind at first, but with a little practice it all becomes automatic.
Joining a New Piece of Roving
At some point, you're going to draft your roving too thin and it's going to break. That may or may not happen before you come to the end of your first strip of roving and want to keep spinning with a new piece. Either way, the solution is the same.
Split the end of the roving in half and do the same to the unspun end of your yarn. Put the ends together, tangling them a little to help them "grab," and keep spinning.
Troubleshooting
If your yarn is tightly kinked and feels hard to the touch, you're not drafting fast enough and your yarn contains too much twist. You may not be able to keep up with your spindle when you're first learning--that's fine. You can let your spindle spin without drafting for a few seconds, then stop it (set it down on a table, don't just let it hang or it'll start to spin backwards) and use the pent-up twist as you draft out the fiber. Remember, drafting is just the process of adjusting how thick your roving is and then letting it be twisted into yarn.
If your yarn tends to drift apart at the slightest pressure--and if your newly spun yarn is always breaking and sending your spindle crashing to the floor--you aren't putting enough twist into the fiber. You might not be twisting the spindle often enough, or you might have accidentally twisted it the wrong way (remember, always to the right).
If your yarn is lumpy--and it will be--with thin sections followed by lumps of thicker sections (called slubs), rejoice. You're spinning novelty yarn. With practice you'll learn how to draft more efficiently so that you won't get slubs, but that means no more novelty yarn. Believe it or not, eventually you'll have to learn a special technique to spin slubs--and you're doing it the easy way now! Save your first yarn, by the way. It'll make you feel so much better in a few weeks to see how you've improved at spinning, and that slubby, uneven yarn really will make an interesting texture when knit.
Setting the Twist
When you've spun all you can on your spindle, or you're simply eager to see how your yarn has turned out and want to look at it, here's what you do. Holding the end of the yarn to keep it from untwisting, wind the yarn off the spindle and onto the back of a chair, onto a niddy-noddy if you have one, or simply around your bare feet held about a foot apart. By doing this you're making a skein. When you reach the leader, pull it off of the yarn you've spun (you may have to untie it; sometimes you can just pull it out) and leave it on the spindle. Tuck both ends of your yarn into the skein to secure them.
Now find some more of that boring old store-bought yarn and cut three pieces about three inches long each. Tie the pieces (using granny knots so they'll be easy to untie later) loosely around different sections of the skein. This will keep your skein from getting tangled. Remove the skein from the chair, niddy-noddy, or your feet and hook it over your arm.
Fill the bathroom sink with hot water--not boiling, but good and hot. Don't add soap or anything else. When the sink is about half-full, turn off the water and only then put your yarn into the water. Yes! I'm telling you to put wool yarn into hot water!
Set the yarn on the water and let it sink gently, patting it down a little to help the process. Now don't touch it. Let it soak.
After fifteen or twenty minutes, unstopper the sink and hold the yarn away from the drain so it doesn't clog it. When the sink is empty, press the yarn against the side of the sink to get some of the water out, then pick it up in both hands and squeeze more water out. Don't wring it, though, or you might end up with felt. Fold the yarn in a towel and press down so more water is soaked into the towel.
Now you've set the twist. Hang the skein of yarn to dry--if it's sunny, you can hang it outside. Once it's dry, it's ready to use.
Using Your Yarn
The yarn you've just made is a single strand, called singles. You can use singles for knitting or crochet, although knitting with singles isn't really recommended (the stitches tend to pull on a bias in unpredictable directions). To best use your handspun yarn, you'll want to ply it.
Before using or plying your yarn, you'll want to wind it into a ball. Untie the store-bought yarn from around your skein first of all. If you have a ballwinder or a nostepinne you can use them, but otherwise you can just start winding the yarn around a finger, slip it off your finger, and continue to wind. But one big warning here: you'll want to have the skein hooked around your (clean, bare) feet or have someone else hold it around their hands; otherwise the skein will get tangled and it'll take you a million years to untangle it.
Once your yarn is in ball form, you can use it. Or you can spin another spindleful of yarn, set the twist, let it dry, and wind it into a ball too, and then you can ply the two balls together.
Plying
Plying goes a lot faster than spinning, don't worry. Put the balls of yarn into two coffee mugs or small mixing bowls so they won't roll all over the room while you're plying. Hold the two ends together and tie them to the end of your leader. Hold the spindle and yarns just like you do when you're about to spin roving, although you should keep the two strands of yarn separated between two fingers (so they won't tangle together before they're plied).
Twist the spindle sharply--to the left! Yes, you ply backwards from the direction you spin, and that's why you always want to make sure you spin your yarn with twist to the right. Allow the two strands of yarn to twist together, but be sure to get plenty of twist into them. The yarn may look well plied, but it's amazing how much twist it really needs.
Once you've plied all your yarn together, it's done. You don't need to soak it again. Wind it off the spindle into a ball and it's ready for anything. Make sure you admire it a while, too. Doesn't it look beautiful? It looks like real yarn you bought from a store, doesn't it? Plying takes out some of the twist in both singles, and smoothes out some of the slubs and uneven sections.
Some Final Advice
Spindle spinning isn't hard, although it is time-consuming, but some people just never get the hang of it. If you've given it your best shot and practiced and practiced, but you still just can't get your yarn to look anything like yarn--or if you're doing pretty well but you hate the whole process--don't give up yet. Spindle spinning is nothing like using a spinning wheel. Before you use the rest of your roving as garden mulch, ask around at your local yarn shop or knitter's club and find someone with a spinning wheel. Have them give you a quick lesson (they'll be amazed at how much you already know from spindle spinning). You may love it! But don't throw out your poor spindle, either, because you may just decide to give it another try later.
Now about that mohair or lambs wool/cashmere blend yarn you imagined back before you knew how to spin--you can make your own now. And it won't break the bank, because buying the fiber and making your own yarn is a lot cheaper than just buying the yarn. Plus, of course, you have the satisfaction of knowing that you made that sweater or scarf from your own handspun yarn. That's something to brag about!