Do you create your own fiber blends? Blending different kinds of fiber together can be a great first step in designing a yarn for a specific purpose, because you can choose fibers whose properties can add up to more than the sum of their parts. But if you're just getting started, blending fibers can be a bit intimidating.
Not only do you need to understand the characteristics of each fiber in the blend, but you'll also need to figure out how to prepare the fibers to make the most of those characteristics and to ensure that you enjoy the process of spinning your extra special blend. Hello there, darling sheepspotter. Welcome to episode 111 of the Sheepspot Podcast. I'm Sasha, and my job is to help you make more yarns you love.
In this episode, I'm going to point you to some resources to make you more fiber savvy and help you get started making great blends. I'm also going to talk about the one thing that determines whether any blend is a dream to spin or a nightmare. Since our theme for this month is fiber, I'm not going to talk a lot in these episodes about the mechanics of actually doing fiber prep, but I promise I will be returning to prep and prep tools in October's episodes.
If you would like to take a deeper dive into the characteristics and best uses of different fibers, I have made a downloadable PDF for this episode that lists all my favorite books and videos on that topic. That PDF. Will be available in the free resources section of The Flock under Podcast Freebies. Now, there aren't a lot of rules about blending fibers. You can really combine anything, wool and silk, cotton and cashmere, or whatever else you have available to you.
It's all fair game as long as everything in the blend can be cleaned the same way. So presumably you're going going to make your yarn into cloth, and then at some point you're going to want to clean that cloth. So the fibers need to be compatible in that way. But there is one rule if you want to make spinning the blend a happy experience, and that is that everything in your blend should be about the same staple length.
Depending on what you're using, this may mean that you'll need to cut some of the longer fibers to match the staple length of some of the shorter fibers. And I promise you that nothing bad will happen if you cut some of the fibers. Don't make this weird. I promise you will thank me when we get to the spinning stage.
So my first recommendation for getting started blending fiber is to observe this one rule and to have a pair of scissors nearby when you're blending fiber because you're going to need them. Once you've internalized this one rule, the next thing I suggest that you do is to watch Sarah Anderson's video for long thread media called Spinning Exotic Fiber Blends. There is surprisingly little information out there that's specifically about blends.
Fortunately, though, we have this gem from Sarah about creating blends featuring exotic and not-so-exotic fibers. This video is based on a class that I actually took from Sarah many years ago. She gave us all a big bag filled with lots of little bags of all sorts of fiber, wool and silk and camelid fibers like alpaca and camel, and inner coat fibers like like Kiviat, Bison, and Yak. We just grabbed a pair of hand cards and we got to work sampling. It was a lot of fun and I learned a lot.
And Sarah's approach to creating blends is so accessible. All you need is some hand cards or some hand combs and some little bits of floof and you're ready to go. So my second recommendation for getting started on blending fibers is to to watch Sarah Anderson's class. And of course, I will put a link in the show notes. Here's my third tip. The next time you are at a fiber festival, collect some small amounts of exotic fibers, camelids, inner coats, silk, to experiment.
You really don't need much fiber to get started with this. An ounce is plenty. If you don't have a fiber festival coming up, Try retailers like The Woolery in the U.S. or Fiber Garden in Canada or World of Wool in the U.K. Or the Fiber Imp sells a kit, and I believe, do they sell this through their website or do they sell this on Etsy? They sell it through their website. site. A kit called the Sheepless Fiber Sampler, which contains small amounts of both protein and non-protein fibers.
And so I will put a link to that kit in the show notes. It's a little pricey, and that's because there's a lot in it. And just the labor of getting everything weighed out and bagged and labeled is considerable. But if you decide to order the Sheepless Fiber Sampler from the Fiber Imp, please tell them that I sent you because they are actually located in London, Ontario. I have never met them, but they are in London and I'm hoping we can someday be fiber friends together. All right.
You're also going to need some sort of a blending tool. You do not need a drum carder for this, though if you have one, that's great. You can use a set of hand cards or mini cones. If you don't have either, I recommend getting hand cards first. They're less expensive and you can really do a lot with them. I have the 112 teeth per inch set from Schacht, which I love, and a 72 teeth per inch set from Clemmas & Clemmas, which I also love. Again, I will put notes to both in the show notes.
I always seek out a range of natural colors when collecting these fibers because I like to use undyed fibers in the project that I'm going to teach you how to make next week. So that's my third recommendation. Start getting blending fiber, little bits of this and that, and some tool that you can use to help you blend them. I really hope that you found this primer on how to to begin exploring fiber blends useful.
To recap, I've talked about the one and only rule for fiber blending, which is that if you want a fun spinning experience, make sure all the fibers you're working with have similar staple lengths.
I've advised you to watch Sarah Anderson's video class on blending, and enabler that I am, I have given you permission to bring your own, to begin your your own collection of small amounts of things you might like to use in your blends and to get yourself a set of hand cards so that you can start playing with them. I would love to hear about your fiber blending experiences, whether you're new to this or you've been doing it for years.
As always, you'll find a dedicated link in the flock where you can discuss this episode. You'll find a link Link in the description of this episode, right inside your podcast app. And don't forget to download the freebie for this episode because it's a really good one. It's a list of all my favorite resources on different kinds of fibers. You will find that in the flock as well. And it's linked in the show notes. The flock is free, y'all. So get in there if you haven't yet.
Darling Sheepspotter, that is it for me this week. thank you so much for listening. I will be back next week with an easy project that will allow you to experiment with blending fibers and create some really special yarn. You don't want to miss it. Until then, spin something. I promise it will do you good.