It often takes extra work for a dyer to create a perfectly smooth gradient of handdyed top. Here are a few strategies for spinning gradient yarn.
Most handspinners aren’t just handspinners. Being a spinner is certainly enough, but most of us either come to spinning from another craft or take up another craft to use all that handspun yarn.
For spinners and cycling fans, it’s an exhilarating, challenging, and gorgeous three-week event: the Tour de Fleece. Or France, for those who require two wheels.
To make the loftiest, finest handspun yarn, a supported spindle can’t be beat, so it’s time to pull out a Tibetan spindle or a tahkli and practice spinning supported. Here is some of Heather’s expert advice, which appeared in Spin Off Winter 2016.
As a color-timid spinner, I have two problems: I need to learn how to plan color combinations that are neither nauseating nor cloying, and I don’t know what the finished product will look like.
They tell me that one quick way to set a Shetlander’s teeth on edge is to talk about hap shawls. It’s why I wince at a chai tea latte with milk: in India, where “chai” means tea, it’s always tea with milk.
Schacht adapted their spinning wheel to have the option of two treadles. In no time at all, the double-treadle model outsold the single-treadle by a mile.
Margaret Stove has taught spinners around the world how to wash and spin ultrafine wool. But outside the spinning community, she may be best known as the designer of the shawls that were New Zealand’s gifts to Prince William and Prince George.
Inspired by an article about the Shetland hap in the upcoming Spin Off Fall 2018, I’ve been thinking about spinning for lace, Shetland shawls, and Margaret Stove.
I asked some of my colleagues how they imagined a world without yarn.