Spinning a Yarn

The weather has turned much colder in the last few weeks.  Our highs have hovered in the 30s and our lows have dipped into the teens overnight.  The days have become noticeably shorter as well and the sky is now dark by 5 pm.  This leaves a lot of indoor time for winter projects like crocheting hats and spinning new yarn.

I do have a few pounds of roving that I wanted to process, so I picked up where I left off last spring with a roll of white merino roving.  I spun the roving into thin singles and then double plied them into a soft worsted yarn.

The next step was to wind this bobbin of yarn onto a niddy noddy to make it into a skein of yarn.

A niddy noddy does two things.   First it keeps the yarn organized and untangled as it forms large loops that will become the skein.  Second it is a way to measure the length of the yarn so you have an idea of how much yarn you have to work with for a project.

From the niddy noddy, the new yarn gets plunged into a cold bath for a few hours to help set the twist in the yarn.

Setting the twist happens when the yarn fibers expand in the water.  The twist relaxes a bit and the yarn takes on a more even appearance.  I am careful not to agitate the yarn while I soak it because I don't want the fiber to felt.  After a couple of hours I gently squeeze the water out of the skein and hang it to dry for a few days.  Once it is completely dry I twist the yarn into a skein.

At this point the yarn is ready to become anything.  I can dye it any color I would like or just use it the way it is to make whatever I can dream up.  I don't have a set plan for this yarn yet.  I think this winter's goal will be to spin as much roving as I can to create a little handspun stash of yarn for all my future projects.  It will be nice to have a variety of my own handspun yarns to work with once I work my way through my fiber stash.