Spinning Wool Locks into "Non Art Yarn" Livestream Fiber Arts Class
This topic was a little fiber arts lesson I recorded a while back for our friends in our Facebook Group . It has since been made an exclusive video content lesson for our Patreon Members at all levels. I thought this was a great questions from one of our fiber friends and wanted to make a blog to go along with it for those of us who learn better from written word.
The question for todays topic was, what can I do with raw wool locks that's not big chunky art yarn because not everybody's into crafting with art yarn. I love art yarn and like to use the chunky lock spun stuff in certain projects but it’s defiantly not something that is suitable for every project so it would be nice to have a way to spin those beautiful wool locks and use the yarn in a different way. .
What you have seen me usually do with wool locks is add them in kind of loosey goosey, as texture when I'm spinning. I try to keep the integrity of the lock together while I'm spinning it in to give kind of a tassel effect. I like a little boho fringe myself, but you know, that’s not everybody's jam and that's cool. So this particular sample of wool locks I happened to have on hand from one of our, my local wool, sample boxes. So you may have already gotten some of this if you’re a subscriber. Shout out busy you fiber farm, and this is tesswater and you can find them@busyufiberfarm.com or you can go on my local wool and find out more about them there.
Before I started spinning the wool locks I used wool combs and just laid the locks on across them and then just combed the texture out so that the curls are dispersed and were all laying in the same direction. It should be really nice and silky looking with a lovely long staple length.
These locks were technically raw meaning they were unprocessed even though they were really clean. These have definitely been cleaned, but they still have a little of the lanolin in them, which I really, really love.
I always take the ones that are in a clump and kind of hand pull them out so they are eaiser to hand processes and you’re not working from a tangled mess. You could also use wool combs for this if that’s what you had I just preferred to use hand carders. To work the fiber I just lined it up on my hand carder and then combed it till it looked like a fluffy little cloud.
In the video demo I used a drop spindle instead of a wheel and the drop spindle I used is a standard top worl drop spindle. It's got a good weight to it which I like and I think the extra downward tension helps to pull the fiber out with a nice twist while spinning.
With the naturally long fibers from the wool locks you can actually spin a very nice fine yarn. The fibers can be pulled very thin and still have enough twist to hold it together. The longer the fiber, the easier that's going to be to not pull apart when you're spinning.
I was originally going to do this on a spinning wheel, but I’m actually really glad I started this on this drop spindle because it's working out so well. I would say this is a highly recommended drop spindle spin, Between the little bit of the lanolin that's still in there and then the longer fiber lengths, this is spinning up like a dream.
Even though this is washed, the little bit of lanolin helps to really give you a nice, smooth, compact yarn because it's kind of like lotion or leave in conditioner on your hair.
So those are my tips for what to do when you end up with some beautiful locks you want to spin but don’t want to end up with chunky lock spun art yarn.
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