With the fibre processed it is time to move onto spinning our alpaca fibre. As alpaca is soft and airy and has natural drape, I wanted to keep as much of those qualities. For this reason I will spin the fibre into woolen spun.
Yarn is spun either worsted or woolen-spun. When spinning worsted you don’t allow the twist to enter the fibre until it is drafted out with the hand not holding the fibre. This creates a smooth dense yarn woolen-spun on the other hand allows the twist into the draft zone and the fibre is pulled back with the fibre hand allowing the twist to enter the length then allowed to be drawn onto the bobbin. This creates a light weight airy yarn. This should provide me with the nice light bouncy yarn I desire.
For me I find it easier to spin woolen-spun style when my spinning wheel is set up for Scotch tension. This means the drive band is on the whorl, and the brake band is on the bobbin as you see in the picture below. I’m using the second slot on the whorl which is a ratio of 9.5 to one. Meaning the flyer revolves 9.5 times for each full rotation of the wheel.
I want a three ply yarn that is a sport weight. To control my drafting to the correct size, I take a piece of three ply commercial yarn the size I want and pull it apart. This single will become my control card as I spin.
The first few times I spun woolen I did struggle a bit. You need to allow enough twist into the draft zone to be able to pull back against it allowing the twist to travel the length of the fibre. Too much twist makes it impossible to pull against it. There is no magic bullet here, it is practice, practice and more practice.
The other hiccup is that alpaca fibre is very fine. You need enough twist to keep the fibres together as you are pulling the fibre supply away from the wheel. Too much twist especially with alpaca I’ve found the single can snap or easily become wire like.
I tend to set up the brake band on my bobbin a tad tight and increase the tension as the bobbin fills. When starting out you may want the bobbin tension a bit light until your feet, hands and yes brain are working in unison. Once you have mastered the backward draw to draft out the fibres you can tighten up the tension.
When spinning this alpaca because it was so fine, rather than pulling way back with my fibre hand I pulled back a shorter distance supporting the single with my left hand. In other words a supported long draw. When allowing enough twist into the fibre to pull back an entire arm length I found the single would break near the orifice.
Spinning woolen really becomes very rhythmic. The draft zone seems to almost regulate itself to spin a consistent single. Be sure to periodically stop to advance the single to evenly fill the bobbin and check the size of your single to your control card or yarn sample.
Once you have spun your three bobbins let them sit for a few days before you ply them together. In our next session we will go through plying the yarn.
Be sure to stop by our YouTube channel for the video to accompany this article.
Other videos
Washing Alpaca
Picking and Carding Alpaca
Plying Alpaca
Until next time happy spinning!