I do tons of sewing, and a fair amount of knitting, but I also do other crafts.  One of those is handspinning.  I was lucky enough to be gifted an Ashford wheel several years ago, and although I don’t use it all the time, I have become at least minimally competent.  I recently dyed some of my handspun.  This new yarn was made from a wool fleece that I picked up at a wool festival a few years ago.  Luckily, the fleece was already washed, so I didn’t have to do that.  I prep my fleece using hand cards, turning it into rolags.  Once carded, it gets fed right into the wheel.

The yarn that I made is 2-ply, meaning that two strands have been plied together to make the finished yarn.  The strand that gets plied is called the single.  Once you have two bobbins filled with single, you feed them through the wheel again.  To ply, you turn the wheel in the opposite direction from when spinning the single.

Before using, the yarn needs to be blocked; this is similar to what is done with knitting. The yarn is essentially lightly washed and then allowed to dry. This helps to even out and set the twist of the yarn. Once that is done, I will be ready to knit with it as I am leaving it the natural color.