Script for
Episode 149:
Big Spins: Sampling and Setting up
How do you set yourself up for success when embarking on a big spin? That's our topic for today.
Hello there, darling Sheepspotter! Welcome to Episode 149 of The Sheepspot Podcast. I'm Sasha, and my job is to help you make more yarns you love. In today's episode, I'm going to talk about what I do before I really settle in to spin the singles for a project that's 16 ounces or more. In particular, I'm going to focus today on how I ensure that I have enough fiber to complete my project, how I sample to ensure that I'm going to love the yarn I end up with, and how I keep records of all my plans and schemes in order to ensure that my yarn is as consistent as possible.
I've done a good number of big spins by now, and I've learned some things about how I relate to them. One is that I just can't stay interested in a large project unless there is color involved. Early in my spinning days I spun quite a lot of sweater quantities from fleeces. I enjoyed those spins and I learned a lot from them, chiefly that I cannot stay interested in white or naturally-colored fiber long enough to spin and knit a whole sweater. It's not going to happen. I need color to keep me excited about a project.
The other thing that I've learned about myself--and I've finally learned to work with this rather than against it--is that I will get bored in the middle of a big spin and want to spin something else. And I just let myself work on whatever I want to work on, in the moment. So I always have a bunch of projects on the go. I used to think that my inability to stick with one project at a time was some kind of moral failing; I've since learned that lots of painters, for example, deliberately set up their practice so that they are working on several different paintings at once. That way, when you get stuck on one thing you can go work on something else, and often you'll learn something from the second painting that will help you solve whatever's got you stuck in the first one. I think having multiple spinning projects on the go can work the same way.
The fact that big spins tend to take me a long time means that I've adjusted my process over the years to accommodate that; I'll get to that in a bit. But my overarching piece of advice is to know yourself, know how you like to work, and create a process that is really dialed into the way you want to work. There's no "right way" to do this spinning thing, other than the way that makes you happy. So I urge you to pay attention to your preferred ways of working and build in anything you need to remain happy throughout. I'll touch on how I do this throughout this episode.
Let's talk about sampling and then about ensuring that you'll have enough fiber, since they are related.
Whether you're spinning first and figuring out what to do with your yarn later, or you want to spin for a particular purpose, I recommend that you start by just sitting down at your wheel with some of the fiber you plan to use and just experiment with it. You could do this in a super-systematic way, where you spin the fiber a bunch of different ways, then ply and wash your samples and see which one you like best (a process I describe in episodes 15 and 59). Or you can just spin for a while until you hit on a spinning method that feels comfortable and easy (remember, you're going to spin a lot of this yarn, so prioritize fun) and that gives you a yarn you like. Either way, ply the yarn, be sure to finish it, and make enough for a good-sized swatch so that you can test out the yarn in fabric. And be sure to save and label samples of both your finished and unfinished yarns.
Use what you learn in this process to evaluate the yarn. If you like the yarn and enjoy spinning it, and you're going to spin first and plan what to do with it when it's finished, you may be ready to start spinning your singles right away. If not, make whatever adjustments you need and spin and ply another sample. Again, finish it, swatch with it, save samples, and evaluate. You may need to do this a few times.
If you're spinning with a pattern in mind, there's something else you need to do in the sampling stage, and that is knit a gauge swatch. The result will tell you whether you need to tweak the yarn and sample again. Again, you may need to do this more than once. Just suck it up and do it. It will save you time in the long run and more importantly it will prevent you from spinning and spinning and spinning and ending up with something you don't love.
At the end of your swatching process you should have figured out a few crucial things:
How you can spin this fiber into a yarn you like that's fit for purpose and fun to make
How to set up your wheel to spin that yarn
The diameter of the singles you need to spin to achieve the plied yarn you want
The amount of twist in your singles and your ply
This may sound like a lot of work up front and, actually, it is a lot of work. But I absolutely love this part of the process. If I let myself be guided, always, by what's fun and easy and just let myself play around and collaborate with the fiber, I know I'll eventually get to a yarn that I'll enjoy making and using. And isn't that what it's all about?
Once I've done all my sampling and settled on the yarn I plan to spin, I can use a finished sample skein of that yarn to determine how much fiber I'll need to spin the yardage I need (either a ballpark amount, if I'm going to find a pattern later, or a specific amount if I'm spinning for a pattern I've already chosen).
Here's how to do that:
Determine how the length of the skein in yards(see episodes 22 and 95 for info on exactly how to do this)
Weigh the skein in grams.
Divide the length in yards by the number of grams to get the length per gram, and multiply that by 454 (the number of grams in a pound). That will give you the yards per pound of your yarn
Lets say you have a 20 yard sample skein that weighs 10 grams. Your yards per gram would be 2. Multiply 2 by 454. Your yards per pound would be 908. If you needed 1800 yards for your sweater, that would mean that you'd need around two pounds of fiber. But get some extra so that you're sure that you'll have enough for the yardage you need plus any swatching you need to do along the way, especially if you haven't chosen a pattern yet, because you will need to knit a swatch when the yarn is finished to determine your gauge.
Finally, let's talk about taking notes and record keeping through the process. This is an example of a place where I've needed to build in that self-knowledge I was talking about at the top of the episode. Because I pretty much know that I will abandon this big spin in the middle and then come back to it, I've learned that I need to make really good notes when I'm getting started. I do this in a few ways.
First, I fill out a spinning record card. This is an 8.5 x 5.5 inch piece of cardstock on which I record all the information about the spin. There are spaces for fiber information on one side and for spinning information on the reverse. There are also places where you can attach samples of your singles, your unfinished plied yarn, and your finished plied yarn. I offer these as a freebie in The Flock; I'll put a link in the show notes so you can download the PDF and print and cut them or have them printed and cut for you. I try to make one of these for every spin, and I keep it with the fiber so I can find it easily.
Then I take a small manila shipping tag, cut notches on either side, and wrap a sample of my singles around the card. I put a plyback sample through the hole in the tag. I keep this in the toolbag I hang from my wheel. Every time I start spinning the singles after a break, whether that break is 10 minutes to refill my water bottle or 10 months, I start by comparing the singles I'm spinning to the one on the tag. This helps me maintain consistent diameter throughout the spin.
Finally, I also create a page for the project in my spinning notebook, where I keep basic information about the project and have room for longer notes. There is some space on the Spinning Record Cards for notes but I sometimes need more space and this way it's there waiting for me if I need it.
Once I've created my record card, shipping tag, and notebook page, I'm ready to start spinning my singles. Next week's episode will be about how I do that.
How do you get started with a big spin? What are the steps you take to set yourself up for success? Let's talk about it! Share your process in the dedicated discussion thread in The Flock. You may have discovered something in your practice that could really help someone else in the community get unstuck, or get up the courage to start their very first big spin. There's a link to the discussion thread in the show notes, which you'll find right inside your podcast app. Just open up the description for this episode, click the link, and you'll be taken right to the thread.
Darling Sheepspotter, that's it for me this week. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back next week with more on big spins and look forward to talking to you then. While you're waiting, spin something! I know--and you know--that it will do you good.