Transcript for
Episode 98:
How I learned to stop worrying and learned to love predrafting
Predrafting: it's a hot-button topic among spinners. In this episode, I'm going to tell you all about how I learned to stop worrying and love predrafting.
Hello there darling Sheepspotter! Welcome to episode 98 of The Sheepspot Podcast. I'm Sasha, and my job is to help you make more yarns you love.
Believe it or not, predrafting, by which I mean any technique spinners use to make the process of drafting easier before they actually start spinning, is a controversial topic among spinners. And for years I was firmly against it. I was actually a little disdainful of predrafting and those who predrafted. I took it as a point of pride that I could spin a big ole chunk of top without stripping it down. I officiously opined that stripping combed top messed up the prep, and that stripping was fine for color management but really we should all just learn to manage our fiber supply properly and pre-drafting wouldn't be necessary. I'm not proud of any of this. Let's face it: some spinners can be judgmental and on this point I was definitely one of them.
Well, you live and learn. As I spun for longer and my stash got bigger, fiber just sat around in my stash for longer and I found myself spinning compacted fiber more often. At the time I was spinning and knitting a lot and was having a lot of trouble with my right thumb. And slowly I found myself predrafting more, to loosen up the fiber and make it easier to draft. And I honestly felt a little secretive about this, like I was somehow cheating.
After a few years of furtive predrafting, a few things shifted. The main thing was that I started teaching other people to spin, and I learned how much predrafting helps newer spinners learn to draft faster and get better results. As a teacher, predrafting is kind of a no-brainer, because it both helps people manage their fiber supply more easily and because it actually teaches your hands what drafting feels like. Maggie Casey compares it to learning to spin on a drop spindle with park and draft in that it's a way to break the process of spinning down into smaller steps and make it less overwhelming. And that's my whole spinning pedagogy right there: breaking the process down and helping people focus on one thing at a time. I had this technique that could make learning to spin easier, so of course I was going to use it and teach it to my students.
This realization—that predrafting actually is a useful tool in certain situations—let me relax about it, and that in turn led me to a surprising discovery: I actually love the physical act of predrafting. I just find it really soothing and fun. And now I do it more often than not, because I enjoy it.
In the rest of this episode, I'm going to define predrafting, explain how to do it, and tell you about when I do and and don't predraft. Finally, I'm going to tell you my only hard-and-fast rule about how not to predraft.
What is Pre-Drafting?
Any technique you use to loosen up compacted fiber to make drafting easier:
attenuating the fibers lengthwise until they begin to slip past each other
"fluffing" fibers by shaking or snapping them
pulling compacted fibers by pulling them apart, e.g. when widening a strip of fiber
More broadly: any technique you use to make managing your fiber supply easier:
making a wide strip of fiber into a less-wide strips
any other way of making a large mass of fiber into a smaller one, e.g. when dividing up a batt before spinning
How to pre-draft
To loosen up compacted fiber, like hand-dyed combed top, by attenuating it:
First, check the staple length. You want your hands to be a little bit farther apart than the staple length, but not much. I like to hold the fiber in my left hand, a bit more than a staple length from the end of the piece I'm working with. I usually brace that hand against a table top or my leg.
With your other hand, pull gently and slowly, until you feel the fibers start to slide against each other, and then stop.
Move your hands down a bit more than a staple length so they're both holding fiber that hasn't yet been predrafted.
Hold one hand steady and pull with the other hand, again until you the fibers start to move. Then stop.
Fluffing: hold one end of a strip of the fiber and snap it with a flick of your wrist. Sometimes this is all compacted fiber needs to loosen it up.
When you're working with very short fibers, try pulling the fibers sideways, gently, to open them up, rather than attenuating them lengthwise.
To divide up your fiber in order to give yourself a more-manageable fiber supply
if you're working with a long strip of fiber and you want to work with a thinner strip, hold the strip of fiber up vertically, then poke your finger through it a few inches down from the top. Using quick, firm movements, tear up to the top, then all the way to the bottom.
If you're working with a batt, you have lots of options: you can pull it in to strips, or chunks. For a very dense batt, I often pull it into strips and then attenuate them lengthwise the way I would combed top. If you hate making joins, you can even attenuate the entire batt into one long strip this way. This takes practice, but it's a great way to get better at predrafting. Check out episode 60 for lots more ideas about how to prepare a batt for spinning and a review of Jillian Moreno's video class, 12 (Plus!) Ways to Spin a Batt
Some possible reasons not to pre-draft
If you're working with combed top and you strip it down, you are going to make the fibers somewhat less aligned. So you are changing the preparation a little bit and if your trying to spin a perfectly worsted yarn you might notice a small difference in the yarn. Or you might not. In Maggie Casey's video class on predrafting, she actually tested this by spinning two yarns, one with predrafted fiber and one without, then made swatches of each. She couldn't tell the difference and neither could her spinning group. Just saying. I'll link to Maggie's course in the show notes and if you've never predrafted and want to see what it looks like, I highly recommend checking it out.
If you're spinning a hand-dyed multicolor top, be aware that attenuating your fiber lengthwise will make a difference in how color shows up in your final yarn. Predrafting makes the shift from one color to another longer and more gradual than if you don't predraft. So if you want more abrupt and dramatic shifts in color, don't predraft. Also, be aware that stripping your fiber lengthwise will mean that you'll have shorter lengths of each color. This is how fractal spinning works.
Some more reasons to predraft
We've already talked about how predrafting makes drafting at the wheel easier and can give you a smaller amount of fiber to manage. Here are some other reasons to predraft.
It allows you to spend more time with your fiber.
You can learn a lot about your fiber and how it's been prepared by predrafting it. Predrafting will help you identify your staple length and get used to the feeling of drafting that fiber before you sit down at your wheel. Think of it as analogous to swatching before starting a knitting project.
It saves wear and tear on your hands because you're not fighting with your fiber to get it to draft.
It can help you with consistency by making the drafting process easier.
Lots of combed top is easier to draft from one end than the other. You can figure this out when predrafting.
It's a chance to take anything out of your fiber that you don't want in your yarn. If you're working with a roving with VM in it, or a hand-dyed braid that's got some felty bits from being handled during the dyeing process, you can take those our during predrafting and not have to stop while you're spinning.
My One Hard-and-Fast Predrafting Rule
Don't make your fiber so thin during predrafting that you don't have to draft while you are actually spinning. Everything you read or watch about predrafting will tell you not to do this, but no-one really tells you why. The only thing I could find on this is from a blog post by Abby Franquemont from 2007. And it is brilliant.
"When you spin, you aren't using a tool to turn a material into a product. You're not using a spindle (or wheel) to make wool (or other fiber) into yarn. I know, I know- this sounds completely bogus, and this next part sounds like a cheesy bumper sticker, but here goes: visualize yourself controlling twist. Twist is a force of nature, and you are its boss. It wants to eat your fiber. Are you going to let it? Eventually. But you're going to feed it in a controlled way, because you are the boss of it (or you will be) and you know what's best."
You need, Abby says, to learn to "spar" with twist and learn its moves. And that means actually drafting, not just feeding fiber willy-nilly into your orifice. So, repeat after me, don't make your fiber so thin during predrafting that you don't need to draft when you spin. Otherwise, predrafting is a tool. Use it when you want!
As always, there's a post in The Flock, Sheepspot’s free online community for inquisitive hand spinners, dedicated to comments on and discussion of this episode. I would love to know when and how you use predrafting in your spinning, so I'll link to that thread in the show notes, which you can find at sheepspot.com/podcast/episode98.
That's it for me this time. I'll be back next time with another episode on drafting. While you're waiting, go ahead and spin something! You know it will do you good.