Feb 25, 2012

how to hand-spin wool without fancy equipment

I have some raw fleece laying in a bag, waiting to be used...
I have no fancy wool combs, no spindle...
I had one light-blue dye, some red and green, but no yellow.

I washed the fleece (picked out the big bits of plants). There wasn't much dirt - getting clean fleece is one of the advantages - if you have a friend with flock of sheep hanging out on their fields.



I used some laundry soap made for wool garments...then I dyed the fleece (together with 200 g of white yarn I had in my stash)
using combination of gazillion methods described on the internet.
I didn't have yellow, so I used curry powder mixed with water - worked wonders on the white fleece...


I used my old comb - it takes ages, but it works (probably not as well as some professional wool thingies but it worked.
I made my spindle out of paper-clip (used as a hook for the top), handle of one old pinwheel I keep in my penholder on the table and lid from an old cardboard box.
again - nothing fancy, and the paper disk kept coming off, but after I secured it with some yarn it worked just fine.
I plied the yarn, using one or two videos from youtube and it was the easiest part of all.
here are all today's products...and there's another batch of dark brown fleece, washed, drying in the kitchen.
I'm officially addicted.
I know my yarn is far from perfect but I love the structure and colors and mostly the process it went through.


1 comment:

  1. You did a wonderful job. I really need to bite the bullet and do something with my roving (I fear my drop spindle).

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