You know those blends of wool, silk, and some short downy fiber like cashmere or yak, in which the silk has a long staple, the undercoat fiber has a very short staple, and the wool falls somewhere in between? I'm going to be honest, I kind of hate these blends, but mills and dyers love them. And they're very tempting because they are so lovely and soft.
So in today's episode, I want to talk about these commercial blends, why they can be challenging to spin, and I want to suggest a few ways to approach spinning them. Hello there, darling sheepspotter. Welcome to episode 114, 114 of the Sheepspot Podcast. I'm Sasha, and my job is to help you make more yarns that you love. So remember the one and only rule of fiber blending if you want your blend to be easy to spin?
Let me hear you say it because I've mentioned it in all of the the last three episodes. So what is it? What's the one and only rule of fiber blending? That's right. Staple length is everything. The closer the staple lengths of the different fibers in your blend, the easier that blend is going to be to spin. So when you're creating your own blends, you can manage this, and we talked about this last week, you can manage this by cutting the longer fibers to match the length of the shorter ones.
With commercial blends, though, you don't have that option. You're more or less at the mercy of the mill, where they blithely combined wildly different staple lengths into a single blend with nary a thought to your spinning experience. So why does staple length matter so much? There are two reasons. First, different staple lengths make it difficult to figure out a distance of draft that is going to work well for all three staple lengths.
And second, fibers of different staple lengths require different differentaments of twist to hold together. And I talk about why this is in episode 66. The other thing about these blends that makes them challenging to spin, aside from the staple length, is that both the silk and the undercoat fibers in these blends are usually quite slippery. So the fibers just don't want to grab onto each other.
Maintaining control of your fiber supply and your drafting, thus, is a lot trickier than when you're just spinning plain old wool. And all of these factors can make spinning these blends difficult. It is not you. It is the fiber. These blends present challenges because of the characteristics of the fiber and the physics of spinning. In the rest of this episode, I'm going to offer some suggestions that may help you if you have some of these blends in your stash.
So the first tip I'm going to suggest is really just a mindset shift, as if it were always easy to shift your mindset. I know it is not always easy to shift your mindset, but so the first thing is a mindset shift. And that's just lowering your expectations. Your yarn may not be as consistent as usual. you may have a harder time managing your fiber supply than usual and you may find that you have to concentrate more than you would if you were spinning something else.
Remember it's not you it's the fiber. So stop expecting it to be easy give yourself some grace and just let the yarn be what it wants to be. These blends feel delicious so just try to enjoy the process. Tip number two is to experiment and sample different ways. So these blends tend to be pretty pricey given that most undercoat fibers are quite expensive, but hear me out.
With any new-to-you fiber or blend, I truly believe that it is worth setting aside some fiber for sampling and experimentation, even if it's just five or 10 grams. And I detail the process that I use when I'm sampling a new fiber or a blend in episode 15 of the podcast. So if this topic interests you, give that episode a listen. Basically, when I'm doing that kind of sampling, I try a bunch of different drafting methods, distances of drafts, and preps. And I'm going to say more about that next.
And I'm just spinning small samples, plying them from a plying bracelet. So it's quite quick to make these samples. And then I label each sample with a Tyvek wristband, marking on it with a Sharpie, how I have spun that particular sample. Then I just wash them and let them dry and see which ones I like the most and which ones I most enjoyed spinning. And that last bit is really important.
I may get a lovely yarn with one method, but if I hated every second of that spin, I'm not going to consign myself to misery for the rest of the braid. So the sample that wins is going to be an acceptable yarn and your mileage may vary everybody has a different idea of what an acceptable yarn is um that was also fun to make. So remember, spinning has one job. It's to make you happy. So don't force yourself to use techniques with fiber if it's agony. It's just don't do it.
Finally, consider changing the fiber prep. Just because this blend came to you as comb top does not mean that you have to spin it that way.
You may find that it's easier to work with carded into rolegs or spun from the fold which gives you something very similar to what you would get if you carded it into rolegs it might be that you get the best results spinning this fiber putting it on your hand combs and spinning directly from the combs let yourself think outside the box a little bit and commit to making your fiber work for you.
So to sum up, get your head in the right place before you start and then just keep experimenting with spinning method and prep until you find something that works for you. So that is it for me this time, my friend. Thank you so much for listening. This is our last episode for the month of July. I am going to be off for the month of August, so we're going to be rerunning some of our best episodes on spinning fundamentals during the month of August.
If you are a newer spinner, these episodes are for you. And if you aren't a newer spinner, but you know a newer spinner, I would be eternally grateful if you could point them towards the podcast, because I know these episodes will be useful to them. As always, there is a discussion thread in The Flock, Sheepspot's free online community for inquisitive hand spinners, where you can comment on and discuss this episode.
I would love to know about your experience spinning the kinds of blends I've talked about today and what's helped you spin them. You'll find a link to the thread and everything else I've mentioned today in the show notes for this episode, which you'll find right in your podcast app. So, real-time current Sasha will see you in September. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy spending some time with past Sasha. And I hope as well that you spend some of August spinning something,
because I know it will do you good. Thank you.