The Basics of Spinning Yarn

Spinning yarn can be more involved than you’d think but the steps in wiriting sound fairly simple. Just in case you ever thought of making your own yarn here is an overview of the principles involved.

1. Collect the wool or hair – it is even possible to use pet hair to spin yarn!
2. "Picking" the fiber is sorting through the hair or wool fibres to separate the usable from the unusable.
3. "Carding" uses a pair of paddles with rows of small, bent-wire teeth to comb the hair so that the fibres run parallel to each other. Sometimes the picking process will make the hair fluffy enough that it doesn't need carding. If you want to blend your hair or wool with another fiber in order to modify the properties of the resulting yarn, you need to card them together.
4. “Spinning” twists the hairs together to form a ply (single strand). Two common spinning tools are the drop spindle and the spinning wheel.
5. A drop spindle has a weight at one end of a shaft. (In a web article that I saw some time ago but can’t find now to reference, the author mentioned that her first drop spindle was a pencil stuck into a foam rubber ball!). You set the spindle turning in the same way that you would spin a top. A spinning wheel has a foot treadle to keep the wheel turning continuously but with both tools, it's the rotation that supplies the twist.
6. Two things control the thickness of the yarn the amount of hair twisted into an individual ply and the number of plies in your final yarn. A single ply will coil back on itself and is very difficult to work with. You generally need at least two plies to make a workable yarn. You make yarn by spinning two or more plies together, in the opposite direction from which they were originally spun. For example, if your individual plies were spun clockwise, when you ply them together to make yarn, spin the spindle or wheel counterclockwise.
7. Wind the plied yarn into a ‘hank’ by wrapping the yarn around and around, hand to elbow, the way you might coil up a long extension cord or phone cable. Tie the hank loosely in about four places with lengths of string or other smooth yarn to keep the hank from getting tangled.
8. Submerge the hank in very warm, soapy water. Don't scrub the yarn or change the water temperature or it may felt, just let it soak for 10-15 minutes, then drain. If the water was very dirty, repeat the soaking process.
9. Rinse the hank by submerging it in clean water that is at least as hot as the water you soaked it in. Continue the submerge-and-drain process until all traces of soap are removed. Carefully squeeze as much water as you can from the hank, never wring it. Roll the hank up in a towel to blot out more water.
10. Hang the damp hank somewhere out of the way with good air circulation until it is completely dry. Don't use anything made of metal, which may rust and stain your yarn, It can be a good idea to hang a small weight from the bottom to straighten the hank. When the yarn is completely dry, wind it into a ball and it's ready to use.