Learning Center for Fiber Art and History

woman learning about fiber arts on her computer

woman holding yarn while looking at her computer and learning new skills

Do you already know your way around a spinning wheel?

Understand the ins and outs of weaving?

Have knitting wrapped around your little finger?

Have your knowledge of mummified textiles all wrapped up?

Maybe there is more to learn!

You’ve come to the right place to polish your skills with these spinning tips, historical articles, and more.

Historical Textiles

Here is your link to learn more about historical textiles. With a passion for fiber and a university degree in History, it’s natural that I love to research about ancient textiles.

Spinning Videos:

Spinning From the Fold: Sometimes a very long fiber is difficult to control in handspinning. The yarn tends to have thick and thin spots, where the long fibers enter the drafting triangle with blunt ends all at once. One way to make spinning long fibers easier is to spin from the fold. The fibers are half as long, there is a tidy drafting triangle over your index finger, and it’s much easier to control how much fiber goes in than when spinning long locks from the tips.

Spinning Mohair Lock Bouclé : A very lumpy, interesting novelty yarn, this boucle uses shiny mohair locks to best advantage. It’s a great technique for any curly or long fleece, such as Wensleydale, Cotswold, Lincoln longwool, Border Leicester, Suri alpaca, or Mohair. Dyed locks are stunning spun with this technique.

Chain Plying: This technique makes it possible to spin a three-ply yarn from a single strand of spun yarn. It isn’t necessary to have three bobbins of yarn– they never seem to come out even in the end, anyway. This method of plying also preserves color changes in a variegated yarn. Whether it was dyed in the wool or dyed in the yarn, plying from two different ends or from different bobbins would result in a merled yarn, with the different colors twisted together. Navaho plying will maintain a single color.

(I owe a huge apology to any Native Americans viewing this site. I misspelled Navajo, and this term is inappropriate for the technique anyway. “Chain Plying” is the usual term as of 2022. I will try to edit the video, but I think it will have to be entirely remade to correct this.)

Comments are always welcome here at SlowYarn! Tell us what you think, share your ideas, or comment on the content. Or you can contact me directly at Kelley@SlowYarn.com.

Thanks!

–Kelley

All text, photos, and graphics are the property of Kelley Adams, unless credit is given to an alternative source.