Tail Spin Part 2

Okay, so let's finish preparing the fiber. The locks are obviously long so by using that same fiber as my base, I can keep it fairly thin. But I need the fibers going more or less the save direction. That's what hand carders are for. Basically, they're brushes for fiber. Here's mine...

So, you just simply dump a bunch of fiber on one card and start carding.

Uncombed but picked fiber

Combed you can see how the fibers lay more or less parallel.

Take the fibers off the cards. Normally you would roll them from the long side for woolen spinning, but I want them to be more worsted which means they lie in the same direction so I'll roll from the short end.

And voila! Faux roving to use as my base for tailspinning. To the wheel Batman!

So spin a few yards of just plain yarn, then lay out your individual locks for easy access since you'll be using both hands quite a bit.

Start by splitting your fiber up the middle, going for roughly in half. Make sure you have over-twisted a bit to make the next steps easier.

Pick up a lock, bringing the tail forward over your finger and press it up between the fibers, holding the back section firmly in that hand. Now use your other hand to wrap that tail around the front section of the fiber...

...like this. I do this because it secures the tail better without having to over-spin your yarn. The goal here is a nicely balanced tail spun yarn.

Now, flip the lock up parallel to your yarn and let the twist flow into both sections, securing the tail and taking out the extra twist you put in before placing the lock.

You can see here that its not really tight even though I am holding it with some tension.

Repeat until you run out of locks or patience, whichever comes first. Just remember the goal is pretty AND balanced. I don't hang weights on any of my yarns, they stand on their own merits and I'm getting close to perfectly balanced yarn with this method.

 

 

 

 

Tail spin

It's not what you think. There's a method of spinning fancy yarn and I'm obsessed with learning the technique. It's called 'extreme tailspinning' and trust me...it's extreme.

You start with the locks from a long wooled sheep, take those individual locks and spin just the tail of the lock into the base yarn, letting the lock hang free. It's spectacular. It's also really hard. Because you're spinning just the cut end of the lock into the yarn, it tends to get way overspun, so much that when you unwind the yarn from the bobbin, it kinks up into a tangled mess. So my challenge has been to spin the yarn without over spinning.

After a few attempts with some undyed locks, I finally got my head around it and figured out my own method. It takes some serious prep work so let me walk you through it.

First, I purchased a pack of locks from the local farmer's market.

It's hard to see in this picture but they're dyed some lovely autumn colors, golds and reds with some purples and blues. Very pretty and silky.

So when washing and dying locks, they don't all hold their shape. There's a certain amount of handling required and you end up with blobs of fiber. So the first step is to separate the locks from the fiber that didn't hold it's shape. The jumbled fiber I pick open into individual fibers for combing to use as my base yarn.

Here's a couple of locks on my knee. You can see the curly end on the right. This will hang down from the yarn. The fluffed out end on the left will be spun into the yarn

Here's a basket of locks ready for spinning. You can see the colors better. The entire process takes patience but since my patience with fiber is unlimited that's no problem for me.

 

All the fuzzy bits I put in a bag for carding to be the base yarn.

So in case you're curious, I've already been about an hour just on fiber preparation. And I'm not ready for spinning yet!

Stay tuned for the next stages of the process...