Hi, I admire your handspinning skills. I've only just started my handspinning journey and finished plying my skein. I'm unsure on how to finish my wool and I really like how your end results look. What method do you use for finishing? Any tips would be appreciated. Ilove your work xxKilian
hi! very flattered that you admire my stuff - i feel as if i'm also only just starting, though i suppose i've been spinning for over two years now so maybe not a beginner any more really. but there's always so much more to learn, it's hard not to feel like one!
but, advice:
a lot of how your yarn turns out will depend on how you spin it, whatever finishing method you use. whether it's woolen or worsted spun; how much twist you put in the singles; how much (and what direction of!) twist you put in the ply; how many singles you plied; how thick the singles were; what fibres you're spinning with; etc. etc.
something with very soft and springy wool, like bfl, with a very balanced single/ply twist combo, spun thick-ish and woolen and two-plied, will finish very, very differently to a silk/bamboo blend with a weirder wool (like gotland) spun fine-ish and not particularly balanced. the first will be soft and fluffy and bouncy; the latter will be smoother, maybe with a bit of a halo, a bit coarser to the touch, and a lot less bouncy (both wrt squishing it between your fingers, or gently pulling on the yarn lengthways).
so some of this is about experimenting! i have spun a Lot now, and a lot of different fibers, and it means i can (often) touch a prepared fiber and tell a bit about how it will finish up - at least in terms of how thick/thin i want the singles to be, how much twist, and how many plies, based on how springy or silky or rough or whatever i think the end result will be.
as with anything fibercraft related, my very unhelpful advice is: practice, experiment, try different things (fibers, spinning, finishing), and you'll learn as you go.
with that said, though, here's a rough outline of my finishing process under the cut:
Technically pre-finishing stuff:
Try and let your singles rest before you ply them (ideally 24 hours, but 12 hours is fine). This is especially important if you've put a lot of twist into them and they're highly energised, as it will help them calm down a bit and relax. (If you're impatient, that's also fine, don't fret if you ply straight away, we've all experienced that!)
If you've also got a very energised and pigtail-y yarn after plying (or if you're just doing singles), also try and let it sit on the bobbin for 24hrs before winding off. (Some people recommend letting any plied yarn sit for 24hrs or more, but tbh I have not found this to make a huge amount of difference.)
Make sure you're winding off properly, i.e. keeping the yarn under tension as you put it onto the niddy noddy, and not letting twist escape at either end. Tie the ends together when you're done so no twist can escape, and put those little figure-eight ties through the skein in at least three places (some people say two, but I have found this can cause Problems).
Soaking your yarn:
Soak your yarn for at least 20mins! I prefer at least an hour, tbh, but 20mins really is the minimum. (I have left yarn in water for like 2-3hrs because I forgot about it and nothing bad happened to it, btw, so longer soaking is fine.
If you are spinning with dyed fiber, especially hand-dyed or indie-dyed fiber, especially especially if there's a range of colours in your fiber and they contrast sharply in darkness or tone (e.g. pastel yellow and deep blue), then you might want to put some vinegar in the water too. I use white wine vinegar. I tend to not measure, but probably like 1/4 to 1/2 a cup per few liters of water...? This will help set the dye and prevent it bleeding out into the water (though letting it bleed and tone the other colours can also sometimes be fun!). You do not have to wash the vinegar out, and if you use white wine vinegar then it doesn't leave a noticeable smell in my experience.
Some people like to add wool wash or silk wash to their water. I don't do this, because I don't want to rinse it out (though apparently there's no-rinse wool wash...?, and I also don't feel my yarn gets that dirty/oily while I spin. (Plus, I do wash anything I knit with handspun as part of blocking, so it all gets cleaned in the end.) But it's an option!
Make sure your yarn is fully submerged, and give it a few gentle squeezes to try and get the air out and let it soak up water. Do not twist or wring it, and once you've given it a few gentle squeezes, try not to agitate or move it around in the water.
Temperature varies, depending on the fiber content. For most fibers, you should have it lukewarm or even cool to the touch. Some fibers, especially robust wools like merino or bfl, you can go warm to the touch, and for those two specifically I think the warmth helps with the finish. Generally, you should not be using hot water to finish your yarns (though see below).
Fun soaking variants to try: (especially for woolen yarns)
Heat shocking: Get a bowl of hot water, and a bowl of cool water. Put the yarn in the hot bowl, submerge it, squeeze it, let it soak a little, and then immediately plunge it into the cold water. The abrupt temperature change will slightly felt (or "full") the yarn, by making the fibers contract. You can heat shock a few times in a row for different effects/more fulling, just make sure your strands of yarn don't start felting together! (If you want to vary the intensity of the fullling, just vary how hot the hot bowl is; decreasing the temperature contrast decreases the fulling.) You can also gently agitate the yarn while in the hot water, if you're feeling brave. If you've spun a woolen yarn, heat-shocking can help make it stronger and more durable. Probably only try this technique with wool fibers or majority-wool blends, as e.g. silk or cotton don't really felt. After you're done heat-shocking, leave your yarn in the cool water to soak for 20mins to an hr.
Thwacking: Technically a post-soaking variant. Get your skein of yarn after it's soaked and you've gotten the worst of the water out (see below), find a hard, clean, waterproof, and relatively smooth surface (bathroom tile or kitchen counter work well for this) and just. Smack your yarn against it. Just smack the shit out of your yarn, like you're trying to whip the surface. Remember to hold the skein in different places, so it all gets equally thwacked. This also helps with fulling, and will additionally make the surface of your yarn a bit fluffier. I'd recommend this for woolen spun yarns, but is also fun to do with worsted-spun wool yarns, because it makes them fuzzy! Again, use your judgement about how much thwacking you do (though note this felts yarn much less aggressively than heat-shocking, so is safer if you're nervous about getting hot water near your precious handspun). Again, works best with wool fibers or majority-wool blends, though presumably other animal fibers (e.g. alpaca, angora, camel) would be fuzzed up by it too.
Drying your yarn:
Take your yarn out of the water. Let it drip a bit. You can gently squeeze it to get the worst of the water out, but do not wring or twist it!!
Optional step: If I am not being lazy, I get a towel out and put the yarn on the towel, and roll the towel up, and stomp on it to get some of the water out the yarn. I do feel like this affects the surface of the yarn though (i.e. fuzzes it up a bit), so I'm going off it a bit as a technique. Microfibre towel might be better? Some people use a salad spinner for this, but I don't own a salad spinner. :(
Snap your yarn! To do this, put both your hands inside the loop of your skein, and then pull them apart sharply so the skein is suddenly under tension, i.e. pulled between your two hands where it's wrapped around the outside of them. (Note: depending on how wet your yarn is, this may lightly spray you and anything in your vicinity. I'd recommend removing glasses first. As me how I know.) Apparently you only need to do this once, but I like to be thorough (and it helps dry the yarn with the spraying!) so I do it a few times, rotating where my hands are on the skein. This helps to set the twist.
Hang your yarn up to dry somewhere. And you should hang it; ideally, don't drape it over something like a drying rack, or lay it flat. Make sure whatever it's going to drip onto is waterproof (because it will drip). Don't have it too close to a heater, but having it near to a heat source (not open flame!!!) can be good to get it to dry faster.
I like to rotate my skeins as they dry, so the same bit of the skein is not always at the top of the hook. Idk if this does anything. In my heart I feel this makes them dry faster, but in my head I'm pretty sure it's just a little ritual I have.
If your yarn is particularly energised (or if you've spun singles), you might want to hang a weight from the bottom of the skein while it dries. Probably nothing heavier than a mug, and usually something a lot lighter! Even a small weight (I have a tiny incense cauldron that's only like 10g I've used) can help. Lighter weights for more delicate fibers is the general rule, but use your judgement - if a fiber is very delicate, no weight at all, and if it's more robust, put the weight on and look at what it does to the ply of the yarn (i.e. how much does it stretch out? How much fluffiness/body does it lose?) and make sure you're okay with that as a finish. Some people will advise you only use weights for really robust wools like merino and bfl, and I do think those fibers often benefit from a bit of weighting. But I think it's fine for other fibers or blends too, though often not necessary unless, again, it's singles or very energised plied yarn (especially some kinds of art yarn that involve e.g. core spun or opposing plies or whatever). (Though I personally wouldn't use it with e.g. silk, angora, cashmere, maybe camel and yak. These fibers have less bounce to begin with than wool, and several of them are very short staple. I've never tried weighting them, but I think it could make them very ropy by stretching them out, or even pull them apart.)
Make sure your yarn is really, really dry before you put it into storage. Be careful to check especially where the ties on the skein are (and to not tie them too tightly, either); those often stay wet for longer than the rest of the skein. You do not want damp yarn in your stash going mouldy.
Store in a skein ideally, not in a ball. Hold your skein around your hands like you're going to snap it, and then twist one hand until some twist builds up along the skein. Then bring your hands together sharply - the skein should coil round itself. Thread one end of the loops around your hand through the other, label it, and done!
as i said above, take all of this and experiment! try different things! i settled on this after spinning uhhh. i think like i'm nearly at 100 skeins now? (or at least i'm down to my last 4 safety pins of the 100-pin pack i bought for labelling them...) i think spinning really is one of those crafts where the only way to learn is with your hands.
this is. the third time i’ve been sick in the past month or so. over the past maybe six weeks, i’ve spent at least four of them sick. and i’ve had to work through much of it, including international travel :(
time to spin some advent calendar fiber and pray for a christmas respite miracle, i guess. maybe with a glass of red wine and some mediocre sci fi!!
went wild garlic picking today! a bit late because it’s all flowered now, which means it’s not as garlic-y, but that’s fine - i’ll just add some regular garlic in when i’m blending it all up.
oh my god i just want this spin to be OVER already and i want this knit to be OVER already and i am so so close for both of them pls lord let it be over. i am bored now. wanna get onto something new…
the view from my home office this morning (though i can’t take credit for how beautiful the garden is! not my garden). can’t wait til the roses come out…
