I’ve hesitated about writing this post. In the same way I hesitate about commenting on YouTube videos that claim to be showing a certain spinning technique – and aren’t. But great…

There have been many anecdotal claims about knitting being good for your health. Not only are yarns Absolutely delightful, there are so many directions you can go with knitting! After you learn how to knit, you can : read some knitting blogs, compare different knitting patterns, Knit lace, Create a

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This blog post was first published on the 27th of November, 2018. As it is currently one of my most viewed posts, I will try to update it as the Electric Eel Wheel continues to evolve. --- If you are simply looking for a visual reference to work out which Electric Eel Wheel model you have purchased, I've made this short video showing the Electric Eel Wheel progression - Eight years ago I wrote a review of the Electric Eel Wheel 4. I loved that little wheel, but it did have quite a few issues - some I managed to overcome, but others I just endured. Despite its problems, I was so thankful for the invention of the Electric Eel Wheel 4, as it allowed me to try spinning on an electric spinning wheel for the first time, at a price that was low enough for me to take the risk. I thought it would be interesting to look back at the inception of the Electric Eel Wheel to see just how far it’s come from its humble beginnings, and to show a little of what the future holds for this little machine that’s taking on the big boys. The Electric Eel Wheel Maurice Ribble, the inventor of the Electric Eel Wheel, has been committed to designing and inventing an affordable, yet extremely usable electric spinning wheel, for several years now. He felt that spinners were being exploited, and that it was time to introduce a little competition to redress the balance. I first heard about the Electric Eel Wheel when I was searching online for an affordable e-spinner - I desperately wanted an electric spinning wheel as I had to stop using my beloved Ashford Traveller as treadling was damaging my hip joint. Unfortunately, when I first looked, every electric spinning wheel was prohibitively expensive, especially as there was no way for me to find out if I would even enjoy using an e-spinner before I bought it. Image from Glacial Wanderer, January 2009 I did, however, stumble upon Maurice Ribble's blog, where he talked about his experience designing an electric spinning wheel at a more affordable price. I love looking at these early images of the Electric Eel Wheel in its infancy. It shows just how far the Electric Eel Wheel has come in a little over a decade. The romantic in me also loves the fact that it was invented for his wife, Emily, to save her from lugging a full-sized spinning wheel around to spinning and knitting groups. Image from Glacial Wanderer, January 2009 I love how home-made and functional it looks in its wooden box, but still, Maurice realised that there was a demand for this slightly inelegant-looking e-spinner when many of Emily's friends started asking him to make one for them. At the same time, Maurice also generously ‘gave away’ his design as an open-source project, helping other spinning enthusiasts to build their own Electric Eel Wheels at an affordable price. By the next year, you could buy a kit to build your own spinning wheel in a box, and if you didn't have the technical know-how, you could buy an assembled version. Image from Glacial Wanderer, February 2010 You can see that the Electric Eel Wheel is gradually rising out of the box and it's started to become a little more compact. The Electric Eel Wheel 2 Later that year, Maurice made several improvements on his original design, improving the motor life and reducing the volume, increasing the bobbin capacity, and improving the assembly process, making it easier for people that bought it in kit form to make their own. This was the birth of the Electric Eel Wheel 2. Image from Glacial Wanderer, September 2010 It was now starting to look ever so slightly more commercial, with a custom, plastic controller box to protect the electronics. It was, however, still modestly hiding away in its box. The Electric Eel Wheel 3 By 2013, there was enough demand for the Electric Eel Wheel, (in what was still a very niche market,) that Maurice was able to redesign it, using laser-cut parts bought in bulk, making it cheaper to build and quicker to assemble. Image from Ponoko.com, September 2013 The Electric Eel Wheel 3 was a much more professional and commercial-looking machine and it had finally escaped out of the box! It was starting to look a little more like the later commercially available Electric Eel Wheels. Anecdotally, I know a lady that still owns this version of the Electric Eel Wheel and it spins just as well as any spinning wheel. She does find it quite noisy though. The volume of the Eel is one of the main problems that Maurice Ribble has had to try to overcome and is continually trying to improve. Keeping the cost down meant using a cheaper motor and light, thin veneered wood, which just aren't going to be as quiet and as stable as a heavy, solid hardwood electric spinning wheel, using a brushless motor. In 2013, an Electric Eel Wheel 3 sold for $290 and you could buy a self-assembly kit for $240. That's pretty incredible considering that it was difficult to buy any kind of decent e-spinner for less than $800 at the time. The Electric Eel Wheel 4 In March 2015, Maurice took the big step of launching the Electric Eel Wheel on Kickstarter, in the hope of funding the production of the 4th iteration of his little wheel. For the project to go ahead, he needed to raise $5,000. In the end, with the help of 245 backers, he managed to raise over 10 times that. Some of those original 245 backers (myself included) helped to form a community on Ravelry where they showed off their altered wheels, shared spinning tips, showed off the yarns they had spun, and gave new spinners advice. Fundamentally, they also shared issues that they had with their wheels - the main problems being the sound levels and the sharp yarn hooks. The wonderful thing is that Maurice was, and is, a very active member of that group and Maurice listened to everybody. Maurice also read my blog post about the Electric Eel Wheel 4 too and took on board all of my comments. Continuing in this spirit of openness and sharing, the Electric Eel Wheel 4 is open-sourced, and if you are technically minded enough to build your own, you can find more information on how to here. The Electric Eel Wheel 5 November 2016 saw the Kickstarter for the Electric Eel Wheel 5. Maurice Ribble wanted to address everyone's issues to make an even smaller, quieter spinning wheel with a more usable sliding hook system. A lot of the people that invested in the first Kickstarter jumped on board to get the improved Eel Wheel and word was slowly spreading about this new affordable electric spinning wheel. With a target of $5,000 to get the project off the ground, the Electric Eel Wheel 5 raised over $90,000 on Kickstarter - which is pretty incredible when you consider that this is a niche product that very few people have seen in person. There is no doubt that the Electric Eel Wheel 5 and its later updates are a significant improvement on the Electric Eel Wheel 4 and its predecessors. The sliding hook system on the 5 caused a lot less frustration (once the initial issues had been resolved) and the sound levels were much improved. Here is a little video showing the 4 and 5 side by side just to get an idea of the difference in volume. You can hear that the 5 has thankfully lost that annoying high-pitched whine that irritated most people. The Electric Eel Wheel 4 noise levels measured about 68 decibels, but the Electric Eel Wheel 5 measures a much more bearable 59 decibels. (For reference, 70 decibels is twice as loud as 60 decibels.) My family are all quite sensitive to noise and so I purposely wouldn't use the Electric Eel Wheel 4 when others were in the room, as I knew the noise would be too loud for anyone to watch the television at a comfortable level. I am however happy to use my Electric Eel Wheel 5 with others in the room - albeit at a slightly lower speed than when I'm on my own. I should probably point out that the first Electric Eel Wheel 5 came with a plastic flyer spindle and sliding hooks. Quite a few spinners (myself included) started to see a wearing down of the plastic where the spun yarn was running over the plastic and so Maurice sent out replacement aluminium flyer spindles and sliding hooks to anyone affected. The Electric Eel Wheel 5.1 Maurice is constantly working on new ideas and asking members of the Ravelry forum what they want in an electric spinning wheel, whilst listening to the problems and issues that arise. It's a very unique and open business model and it's almost like later models of the Electric Eel Wheel have been designed by Maurice, but with Ravelry members as his design consultants. Most companies are incredibly secretive about new ideas and inventions, but Maurice will happily risk sharing designs and ideas that he has for future models of the Electric Eel Wheel, knowing that feedback from Ravelry members has helped the Electric Eel Wheel become the little gem it is today. I never actually got around to writing a review for the Electric Eel Wheel 5, as Maurice had brought out the 5.1 very soon after everyone received their updated aluminium flyer rods and hooks. The 5.1 had a coat of varnish on it - so it looked much more finished than his previous wheels - I did have a problem with wood chipping off both of my wheels, so this definitely takes the design up a notch. It also felt more finished and professional as the underneath was enclosed by a detachable base. Probably the biggest improvement made for the 5.1 was that the bobbins had bearings at either end - making them quieter than the Bobbins Up bobbins that shipped with the 5.0 The Electric Eel Wheel Mini Image from Kickstarter, November 2017 In November 2017, Maurice Ribble launched a Kickstarter for a new kind of Electric Eel Wheel - The Electric Eel Wheel Mini. It was one of his most ambitious spinning projects yet as he challenged himself to make the smallest, most affordable electric spinning wheel ever. Some would say that he'd already done this with the Electric Eel Wheels 3 - 5 but Maurice wanted to make a wheel that was even more affordable, to encourage many more people to try spinning for the first time. The Electric Eel Wheel Mini was sold on Kickstarter for an amazing, $50. Unsurprisingly, over 1000 people backed it. Maurice described it as a new category of spinning wheel to help bridge the gap between drop spindle and spinning wheel - the price being far closer to that of a drop spindle. Inevitably, with such a low price tag came compromises - it was quite noisy and it was so light it needed to be strapped down to stop it from vibrating too much. Changing direction to ply was also slightly awkward, but it was still an excellent introduction to spinning for a lot of people - many of whom went on to upgrade to the larger model once they were confident that they enjoyed spinning. The Electric Eel Wheel 5.2 Image from Dreaming Robots In November 2017 the Electric Eel Wheel 5.2 was released. This went up for sale on the Dreaming Robots site. Once word went out that they were for sale, 100 wheels sold out in less than a day. I love the fact that it retailed at $260, which is $30 less than the Electric Eel Wheel 3 sold for, way back in 2013. It just shows that being able to buy materials in bulk and mass-produce many elements of the wheel has enabled Maurice to pass these savings onto his customers. One of the most notable differences was the plastic flyer wheel. At the time I was very torn on the decision to use plastic for the flyer. I much preferred the look of the wood, but I appreciated that plastic helps to keep the price down when you are working in large quantities - also, the thin wood of previous flyers could warp, which would add to the noise levels and the vibration of the wheel itself. The frame had bearings built into the front and back for the flyer spindle to sit in to help quieten the wheel further. The back panel hinged downwards to make it easier to change the bobbins. I loved these design features and you can see that Maurice was increasing his focus on improving the quality feel of the wheel significantly, while still keeping it at a price that was affordable for a large number of spinners. Image from Dreaming Robots site The spindle was also made from one piece of solid steel - the earlier flyer spindles were made from two pieces of aluminium screwed together and some people found (myself included) that the rods weren't completely straight - which added to the wobble of the wheel. (Mine would go for a little walk when I used the aluminium spindle at high speeds.) Making it from one piece of steel lengthened the life of the spindle and reduced the chance of having a 'wobbly wheel'. Quite a few people on the Ravelry forum requested a faster wheel so that they could ply faster and spin shorter fibres more easily. The 5.2 spun at a maximum of 1400 rpms, which is 40% faster than the previous model. The sliding hooks also changed, making them significantly easier to move than the ones on the 5.1. I must say though, I was a little uneasy about how they looked, but aesthetics are probably a little more important to me than most. There is a regular discussion on the Electric Eel Wheel Ravelry forum on the aesthetics of the Eel and how important keeping the price down is, compared to how the wheel looks, and the functionality of the wheel. Personally, I would rather pay a little more for an attractive, quiet wheel, but opinion is very much split on this issue. Making the Electric Eel Wheel as affordable and as enjoyable to use as possible is at the forefront of Maurice's design concept and I cannot fault him for that. The Electric Eel Wheel Nano After the success of the Electric Eel Wheel Mini, Maurice took the feedback he received from his tiny wheel and made a radical decision - to design the new updated version completely out of plastic. As it was a complete redesign, and even smaller than the Mini, this tiny spinning wheel got a name all of its own - the Nano. At first, I think quite a few people were quite uneasy at the thought of having a completely plastic spinning wheel, but as images and footage of the wheel began to come out, people started to come around to the concept of a tiny plastic spinning wheel. The primary reason for making the Electric Eel Wheel Nano was to make an affordable, yet easy-to-use electric spinning wheel. By using modern, injection moulding techniques, it's much easier and cheaper to make a thousand wheels out of plastic, than it is out of wood. Also, by making the frame out of plastic rather than several pieces of wood, there are far fewer variables - making for a quieter wheel with fewer vibrations. Image from Kickstarter, November 2018 The Kickstarter for the Electric Eel Wheel Nano launched on the 15th of November 2018 and it reached its target in less than an hour. By the end of the campaign, there were 4,351 backers pledging $498,671 in total. It successfully exceeded its goal by 3,324%. Due to many people bulk buying, the total number of Electric Eel Wheel Nanos sold was 5,381! That's some achievement and had a massive impact on the number of people learning to spin in 2019. The Nano has a much more open design than any of the previous Electric Eel Wheels, allowing you to see how much yarn is on the bobbin very easily. It's also significantly quieter than the previous Mini and quieter than the 5.0. Changing direction is done with the flick of a switch, which is a real improvement on the previous Mini. The basic Kickstarter package was just $60. I'm in the UK and so with shipping and tax, this would have cost me a total of £80. Even for an entry-level spinning wheel, that is incredible! The Electric Eel Wheel Nano 1.1 Image from the Dreaming Robots Website In the Spring of 2020, Maurice brought out an updated version of the Kickstarter Nano. This version had an improved motor, the yarn guides were a little more user-friendly and the motor pulley rod was changed to prevent slipping. It retailed at just $110 and was by far the cheapest spinning wheel around. The Nano 1.1 has a bobbin capacity of around 55g and a maximum speed of 1000 rpm. The Electric Eel Wheel 6 Following the success of the Electric Eel Wheel Nano, there was a real demand from Nano owners for a full-sized, production version, with a faster motor and a foot pedal to turn it on and off. The Nano was built with affordability at the heart of its design. With a bigger budget and fewer price constraints, Maurice was able to design the Electric Eel Wheel 6 to be faster, quieter, and with a greater capacity than any of his earlier wheels. The Electric Eel Wheel 6 has a bobbin capacity of around 225g and a maximum speed of 1800rpm. The Kickstarter for the Electric Eel Wheel 6 launched in May 2020, with a goal of $30,000. The Kickstarter campaign eventually raised well over $445,000 and meant that over 1800 people could afford to buy themselves a production-level e-spinner. The original Kickstarter Electric Eel Wheel 6 sold for $199 and is now for sale on the Dreaming Robots website for $289.* (*Affiliate links - if you click through and make a purchase, I will receive a small percentage of the purchase price at no additional cost to you. Any income from my blog goes a small way toward funding future blog posts.) When I received my Kickstarter Electric Eel Wheels 4 and 5, I made videos to demonstrate their volumes. I made the first video because I felt that the EEW4 was uncomfortably loud and the second because I was pleased with the improvements that Maurice had made to the volume of the wheel. When I received my Electric Eel wheel 6 it seemed only fitting to make a video to demonstrate the further improvements Maurice has made to the Eel's volume, and to show how much quieter it is than the previous models - Unfortunately, I've modified my Electric Eel Wheel 5 to use bearings so I can't do a true side-by-side comparison but hopefully, this video demonstrates the difference having bearings in the flyer and bobbins, using a brushless motor and making it out of injection moulded plastic instead of laser cut plywood makes. In simple terms, the Kickstarter Electric Eel Wheels have halved in volume with each iteration. The Electric Eel Wheel Nano 2.0 Image from the Dreaming Robots Website In the spring of 2022, Maurice Ribble launched the Kickstarter for the Electric Eel Wheel Nano 2.0 and this is the Nano model that is available to buy today.* It launched on Kickstarter for $95 and now retails on the Dreaming Robots website for $125. With a Kickstarter goal of $20,000, and assisted by 3,402 backers, Maurice's campaign finally raised a total of $385,896. The Nano 2.0 now uses 5v instead of 9v and is powered by a USB cord making it even more portable than the previous model. (It can be powered by most pocket-sized phone charging batteries or plugged into the USB phone socket in your car or laptop.) The motor is 10% faster than the previous Nano 1.1 and the bobbins now screw together securely instead of being friction-fitted. (The original bobbin ends could occasionally pop off when the bobbin was full...) The plastic yarn guides move more smoothly than the earlier wire yarn guides and the flyer is moulded as one piece instead of having the arms screw in separately making them less likely to become unbalanced. The Competition You only have to look at the number of new Electric Eel Wheel forum members every day on the Ravelry forum and on the Facebook group to see how much talk there is amongst spinners about the Electric Eel Wheel and how information about it is slowly spreading by word of mouth; whether it's amongst spinning friends, or over social media. Everybody loves a bargain and everyone loves to share information about bargains with their friends. Telling everyone that you just spent $1,200 on a new spinning wheel might be considered a little vulgar, but plenty of people were telling the world about the $60 spinning wheel they'd just backed on Kickstarter. The big e-spinner companies still aren't taking the Electric Eel Wheel seriously and continue to make big claims about their own electric spinning wheels - the Ashford site describes their e-spinner as the smallest, lightest, and most versatile electronic spinner ever, and the Hansen website describes their e-spinner as the lightest, most compact, technically advanced e-spinner that is commercially available today. (Incidentally, the Ashford e-spinner weighs 2 kilos, the Hansen weighs 2.2 kilos, and the Electric Eel Wheel 6 weighs 1.4 kilos.) Since I wrote this blog post in 2018 there have been a few more smaller e-spinner companies entering the market but the Electric Eel Wheel is still holding its own as by far the best value-for-money e-spinner on the market. I believe that with the current performance of the Nano 2 and the Electric Eel Wheel 6, the big companies have got some serious competition on their hands, that they can't afford to ignore anymore. --- Future Electric Eel Wheels Maurice Ribble is fundamentally an inventor who found a gap in the market. He's constantly working on new ideas and designs. He compares the design process of the Electric Eel Wheel to mobile phone companies, constantly working on future iterations of the device - improving it and upgrading it so as to maintain interest in the product and to keep the product fresh and innovative. Now that Maurice has cornered the market in affordable e-spinners, he's considering developing a much more high-tech version in the future, to accompany his entry-level-priced e-spinners. One request that is often made on the Ravelry forum is for the Electric Eel Wheel to have some kind of auto-flyer, similar to the WooLee Winder, so that spinners don't have to constantly keep stopping to move the sliding hooks. Maurice is working on his own level winding system for a Pro version of the Electric Eel Wheel and it is very much in development. It will have a built-in graphical screen to help display a menu system and an advanced motorised tension system. Unfortunately, with all of the other fibre-related products that Maurice has planned over the next couple of years, we'll have a while to wait and see what other pro features will be on this new wheel... If you've found this post interesting or useful, please pin this image to Pinterest. It makes a big difference to me and helps other spinners find it too. At this point, I normally suggest similar fibre-related blog posts, however, my list of spinning content is becoming a little unmanageable... If you'd like to read more blog posts about spinning and fibre preparation, please take a look at this page here where you will find links to all of my spinning and fibre articles. Thank you for reading, and happy spinning! --- Related Posts Electric Eel Wheel Nano Orifice Reducer with a built-in Twist Keeper and Other Modifications Beta Testing the Electric Eel Wheel Yarn Counter Using the Electric Eel Wheel Yarn counter to sample yarn gauges and ply the yarn I want Testing the LWS Autowinder for the Electric Eel Wheel 6 Free Handspun Yarn Labels Spinning Dog Hair DIY Hackle DIY Mini Wool Combs 3D Printed Modular Lazy Kate Yarn gauge reference tool for hand spinners Spinning Supercoil Yarn Using Waste Fibres ---------- Please be sweet and share the love. Leave a comment, subscribe to my YouTube channel, like my Facebook page for regular updates or follow me on Pinterest, Bloglovin' or Instagram

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“I don’t want to spin mud” - This is a very common phrase uttered amongst hand spinners and it refers to the frustrating phenomenon of buying the most beautiful, multi-coloured blend of fibres, and then spinning a yarn from it that, from a short distance, looks like a murky brown or dirty grey colour. I’ve done it myself. I bought three hundred grams of World of Wool’s Fairytale blend called “Over the Rainbow” and took it away on holiday to spin. Image copyright World of Wool It’s gorgeous, and if I’d spun it using a drafting or preparation method that would have kept those colours separated, I would have achieved a beautifully variegated yarn… Unfortunately, I blindly drafted it all and then spun it from the end using a short forward draw. My resulting yarn came out a slightly disappointing dirty green colour. I achieved this muddy result due to optical blending - when two or more small areas of colour are repeated, very close together, the eye doesn’t perceive them as separate colours, but instead blends them together. Plotting the colours from Over the Rainbow on a colour wheel If I’d actually stopped to think about it, basic colour theory would have told me that any blend that contains colours from all the way around the colour wheel will inevitably turn out to be just a little bit brown or grey, if it’s not spun with the intention of maintaining larger areas of each colour, so that the eye still sees each shade in its original hue, when it’s spun and plied into the final yarn. Helpfully, World of Wool lists the individual colours in the Over the Rainbow blend. When you see them separated out like this, it’s not surprising that my finely drafted singles ended up a dirty green colour. Without the red, I probably would have got a fresh green, but throw in its opposite colour and things begin to turn brown. Since my first and only experience of “spinning mud,” I’ve been very cautious to only buy blends made from analogous shades - colours that sit relatively close together on the colour wheel, so that if they were all mixed together you wouldn’t get grey or brown, but a heathered, richer shade of the sum of all the colours. I’ve been playing it safe. Well, my fibre preparation skills have improved quite a bit over the last few years, and so I’ve decided to play around a little and experiment with a few different methods of spinning a multi-coloured blended top. Since the unfortunate incident with the Over the Rainbow fibre blend, I’ve learned that the two most popular methods deployed to avoid spinning mud are to either spin from the fold, or to tear off strips so that you are spinning from a reduced number of colours. I’ve got a couple of other methods that I’d like to try, but basically, I’m just going to have fun playing around with coloured fibres to see what I come up with. I’ve had the idea for this post for some time now, and when I was taking a look at the secret “Mill Members” page of John Arbon Textiles I found the perfect fibre blend for this project. This is “Midsommar” by John Arbon. It seems to be made up of turquoise, black, orange, red, and a tiny dash of yellow and white. Just the fact that it contains quite a bit of both turquoise and orange tells me that there’s a good chance that my yarn will end up brown if I’m not careful. A quick way to get an idea of what kind of optical blend I would get is to blend the colours digitally beforehand… The central rectangle selection of the fibre image has been blurred in Procreate … and yes, it looks like there is a very good chance of ending up with a dull grey/brown. This could be challenging. Each single will later be chain-plied with relatively short chains to finish it, as this is the easiest way of increasing the chance of getting the different colours to pool with themselves. The control - lashing onto a hackle I’m going to begin by intentionally blending the fibres together by randomly throwing them onto my hackle and then dizzing off a thin roving. This will give me a yarn with quite a thorough blend of colours, and it will be useful to compare my later yarns with. If I were to draft out all of the blended top, and then spin from the end, I imagine that I would get a very similar colour effect. Here’s the hackle blended yarn. It’s quite an attractive, heathered brown shade, and I love how, when you look closely, you can see the turquoise and orange shades. However, there’s no denying that it’s a long way from the bold, contrasting blended top that I started with. Control yarn knitted sample #1 Spinning from the end, without pre-drafting With my first method, I drafted from the very tip of the blended top. Normally, I would predraft my fibres, but that would only thin out each colour, forcing me to spin from all of the colours at the same time. Working from undrafted top allowed me to spin for a while on the individual colours, before moving onto the next colour along. It took a little more concentration, but I think it was quite effective. I love the tweedy subtlety of this yarn - the orange and turquoise flecks are dotted around the mostly warm brown background. Control yarn and yarn spun from the end of undrafted top. #2 Spinning from the fold To spin from the fold, I pulled off a small section, that was just 10-15cm long. (I did try longer lengths, but the fibres tended to bunch up in my hand after a little while.) I then opened up the top and spread it across my index finger so that I could see as many of the different bands of colour as possible. I then spun from the centre of the fibres, effectively spinning the blended top from the side, so that the colours were mostly spun one after the other, rather than combined with each other. The resulting yarn appeared to be the most colourful, with the most barber poling, and the least colour mixing of all of the yarns. As I'd pulled off a shortish length of blended top, it also gave me the shortest individual lengths of colour variegation - which explains why there is so much more barber poling in this yarn than in any of the others. I can definitely see why this is a popular method for avoiding optical blending, as it was very little extra effort, once I’d worked out my preferred technique. Control yarn and yarn spun from the fold Personally, I think this spinning method would look better with a blended top that is made up of analogous shades as the colour changes were much more sudden in the knitted sample, than in any of the others. It is still a very pretty yarn though. Here's a video of me 'spinning from the fold' in a little more detail. #3 Splitting the top vertically into a reduced number of colours, and then breaking each section up to distribute it throughout the yarn The Midsommar top, was really quite well blended, which made splitting it vertically challenging. My goal was to split the blended top into sections that contained just one or two colours, but unfortunately, some of the colour sections were so thin that I was either spinning from sections that barely needed any drafting, or it just wasn’t possible to divide it into sections that wouldn’t turn brown. It was also a little more effort than the previous 2 spinning methods. It did give me quite long sections of colour though, compared to some of the other spinning methods. Control yarn and top split vertically yarn This yarn felt much more designed than the previous yarns. Although I spun the colours randomly, for speed, I could have arranged them into a gradient, or had longer or shorter colour changes if I had a specific project in mind. This method definitely has a lot of possibilities. This was one of my favourite yarns, so I made a video of how I made it. #4 Drafting onto a blending board and then spinning from 3 rolags. In this method, I drafted the fibre onto the blending board, trying to keep each coloured layer the same. I then pulled off 3 rolags from the blending board, drafting them off as I rolled. In retrospect, I think it was quite optimistic of me to hope that carefully putting down 4 layers of fibre on top of each other would ensure that all of the individual colours would stay together during spinning. As you can see, they mostly merged together, with the odd pop of colour here and there. Control yarn and 4 layers drafted onto a blending board yarn The resulting yarn was quite subtle, with the odd fleck of colour on a mostly brown background. #5 Drafting thickly onto a blending board and then spinning from 1 large rolag After realising that adding lots of thin layers resulted in a lot more blending of colours, I decided to try something slightly different. This time, I only slightly drafted the fibres onto the blending board in just a couple of layers. I then pulled all of the fibre off in one, large rolag. Whenever I've seen anyone using a blending board in the past, I've always wondered why they don't pull off just a single rolag, instead of splitting it into two or more. I'd never tried it myself, but as this was definitely a time to play and experiment, I decided to give it a try to see what difference it made. The resulting rolag looked like it had so much potential and promise, but sadly, it was probably the least fun to spin. The fibres, being wound thickly, took much more effort to draft. It was also impossible to stop the colours from blending as they all seemed to want to be drawn out of the centre of the rolag at once. If I were to class any of the yarns as a fail, this would be it. Control yarn and yarn spun from a single, fat rolag There is a hint of orange in the cast-on edge, and the odd pop of colour here and there, but it's overwhelmingly brown. It was an interesting learning experiment, but I won't be trying it again. #6 Opening up the top so that the individual colours lie next to each other in a single layer, and then drafting off four rolags Well, we learn so much more from our mistakes than our triumphs, and for my third attempt at using the blending board, I worked out a method that really worked for me. I'd already learned that the more layers I draft onto the blending board, the more likely they are to blend together during spinning, so this time I decided not to draft the fibres on at all. I simply opened up the blended top so that I could see as many of the individual colours as possible, broke it off and then carefully attached it to the blending board with my blending brush. Having already learned that one thick rolag was definitely not a good idea, I drafted off four separate, thin rolags. The thin rolags were a little more delicate, but the fibres drafted smoothly from them, the colours blending from one to another easily. This turned out to be one of my favourite yarns, not just in appearance, but by how easy it was to prepare and spin. It was a joy, and I ended up spinning more of this yarn than any of the others. Control yarn and yarn spun from a single, undrafted layer Aesthetically, it's quite similar to the yarn that was spun from the fold, but the colours are just a little bit more muted and the colour changes appear a little less sudden. #7 Opening up the top so that the individual colours lie next to each other in a single layer on the blending board, and then drafting off with a diz After my success with a single undrafted layer, I decided to see the difference dizzing the fibre off would make. The fibres were laid down on the blending board in the same way as method 6. Just in this animated gif, you can see that several colours are being pulled off at once, which is definitely going to result in a lot more optical blending. This was one of the more subtly coloured yarns that I spun. Control yarn and yarn dizzed off from a single layer There's a definite place for this understated yarn, and the pops of colour add interest to what is still quite a reserved yarn. #8 Opening up the top so that the individual colours lie next to each other in 3 layers on the blending board, and then drafting off with a diz The only difference between this and the previous yarn is that I laid the fibre on the blending board in 3 layers - attempting to colour match as I laid down the fibre. The fibre for this yarn was a little easier to diz off as it was laid more thickly on the blending board. Control yarn and yarn dizzed off from 3 layers It's still quite similar in appearance to the previous yarn, there are just slightly more areas of colour. #9 Tearing out each individual colour and arranging it in a gradient on the blending board, then drafting off 4 rolags This was by far the most time-consuming method of avoiding optical blending, but I think it's one of the most attractive. As the Midsommar blend was really quite well blended, I found myself pulling off very thin strands to arrange them on the blending board in such a way that they wouldn't all merge into brown. I did actually fill the blending board with a gradient twice - the second time took significantly less time than the first, so I imagine that this is a technique that would get quicker with practice. Having learned that thinner rolags are better for preventing colour blending, I pulled off four quite delicate, but very attractive rolags to spin from. Looking at the singles on the wheel, I love how the colours are very distinct and transition beautifully from one to the other. This resulting yarn looks like it might have been spun from a hand-painted top - but for a fraction of the price! Control yarn and yarn arranged in a gradient on a blending board Here, you can see that this yarn, unsurprisingly, has the longest of all the colour repeats. Like the yarn split vertically, this method has a lot of potential variations. This video shows me separating out the colours in a little more detail - ----- Gosh, I’ve learned so much, just allowing myself to play with fibre this past couple of weeks. I would highly recommend it! I’ve also fallen back in love with my blending board, now that I’ve learned different ways of using it to avoid spinning mud. As you can see, I've made four videos of the techniques that I think worked best, and you can find them, and other fibre-to-yarn videos on my YouTube channel here. If you've found this post useful, please pin it to Pinterest - it makes a big difference and really helps other spinners find it too. At this point, I normally suggest similar related blog posts, however, my list of spinning-related content is becoming a little unmanageable... If you'd like to read more blog posts about spinning and fibre preparation, please take a look at this page here where you will find links to all of my spinning and fibre articles. Thank you for reading, and happy spinning! Some of my Other Spinning Related Posts Spinning into Focus Linear Blending a Gradient Hackle Blending a Long Gradient Blending and Spinning a Rainbow Yarn 2 Ways Chain-Plying at the Wheel Versus Making a Chain-Plied Ball How to Measure Handspun Yarn Using an App Free Handspun Yarn Labels Spinning Dog Hair DIY Hackle DIY Mini Wool Combs 3D Printed Modular Lazy Kate Yarn Gauge Reference Tool for Hand Spinners Testing the Electric Eel Wheel Yarn Counter Prototype Spinning Supercoil Yarn Using Waste Fibres Unbiased Review of the Daedalus Sparrow Testing the LWS Autowinder for the Electric Eel Wheel 6 Spinning a Complex Fractal 3 Ply Yarn ---------- Please be sweet and share the love. Leave a comment, subscribe to my YouTube channel, like my Facebook page for regular updates or follow me on Pinterest, Bloglovin' or Instagram

Craft me Happy is a craft blog full of inspiration, techniques and helpful advice. It features knitting, spinning, resin, jewellery making and more.

Gentleman knitting woolen caps at The Blue Mosque ( Sultanahmet Camii ) Istanbul, Turkey. 8/6/2007

Here are a few of our favorite finds that show off knitting through the decades from our Knitted Romance Pinterest board!

1860s CDV photo of Princess Louise (1848 - 1939), who was a member of the British Royal Family, the sixth child and fourth daughter of Queen Victoria and her husband, Prince Albert. Photographer is Hills & Saunders out of Eton & Oxford, England.

How could I not have spun paper? It seems only natural to combine two of my grand passions to make beautiful and intriguing cloth.

As a preface, this blog post has been several months in the making and is one of my longer blog posts. I talk about my experiments, mistakes and learning process in perfecting my technique for spinning chiengora. If you’re just a little bit curious about how to spin dog hair, I've made a short video that summarises my final, start to finish process for spinning dog hair here - If you’d like to learn more, read on... Spinning Chiengora As a spinner, I love trying out new or unusual fibres, and one fibre I've been very intrigued by is dog hair or chiengora (so-called because of its similarity in appearance and texture to angora). There are usually one of three reactions when someone mentions spinning dog hair. People are either repulsed at the thought of wearing something that might smell of wet dog, they just think it’s extremely weird, or they love the idea of having a memento that is made purely out of the fur of their beloved pet. Spinning dog hair is certainly not a recent fad. Items dating back to pre-historic Scandinavia were found to be made from dog hair, and dogs were the main providers of protein fibres to the Native American Navajos before sheep were introduced to the continent. The best dogs for providing fibre for spinning are long-haired, double-coated dogs that have definite shedding phases, when they primarily shed their undercoat. Anyone that has ever owned a double-coated dog knows that underneath the stiff, wiry guard hairs, lie much softer, finer, downy undercoat hairs. It's these finer, hidden hairs that are just perfect for spinning into a luxurious yarn. If you had the dog, the opportunity and the skill, why would you not turn the shed hair into an extremely warm, luxurious yarn, instead of throwing it away? Popular dogs for spinning into yarn are:- Samoyed Siberian Husky Alaskan Malamute Great Pyrenees German Shepherd Dog Norwegian Elkhound Newfoundland Chow chow Old English Sheepdog Bernese Mountain Dog Golden Retriever Collie This is actually my second attempt at writing a blog post about my experience spinning dog hair, but my original post started to turn into more of a - how not to harvest dog hair - that I decided to wait until an opportunity to spin a better source of chiengora fibre arose. If you're looking to spin your own dog's hair, I would highly recommend taking a look at a forum on Ravelry called - "Spinning Dog Fiber - aka Spinnin' Chien." I picked up a lot of tips on fibre preparation there and a lot of the information I'm sharing here came from the extremely helpful forum members there. Tips for harvesting and storing dog hair Dog hair for spinning should always come from brushings rather than clippings. Ideally, you just want to spin the finer undercoat, so clippings will always contain a lot more guard hairs. Cut ends can also add to the prickly nature of the yarn. If your dog sheds once or twice a year then the best undercoat fibres are brushed out at the beginning of the shedding, as fewer guard hairs are dropped at this stage. Don't be afraid to be selective about which brushings you keep and which you discard. It's much better to have a small amount of luxurious yarn than a large amount of mediocre, itchy yarn. Unfortunately, I don't have a dog myself, but many double-coated dog owners tell me that you get varying qualities of hair from different parts of the dog. Like a sheep or alpaca, you get much softer, finer hair from the back, neck and sides. The legs, tail and stomach yield shorter or coarser hair and so it's better to discard these hairs if you want a more luxurious, wearable yarn. Storing the fibres well is crucial. Make sure that whatever you keep the hair in is breathable - like a paper bag, cardboard box or old pillowcase. Try not to pack it in too tightly as this will increase the risk of it all matting together. --- My first (disappointing) attempt at spinning dog hair Five years ago, we were at a friends' house and I was admiring their pet cockapoo. I flippantly said that I would love to spin its fur - knowing nothing about spinning dog hair at the time. Well, a year later they confessed that they'd been saving all of their dog's hair - in the hope that I would spin some cockapoo yarn for their 13-year-old daughter to knit with. Cockapoo image from Wikipedia Bless them, they'd been diligently putting all the hair into little black dog-poo-bags and knotting them tightly when they were full. They'd tried to get as much as possible into the plastic bags to save space, so the hair was really well packed in. Having read a lot more about spinning dog hair since, I now know that keeping dog hair packed into a plastic bag for long periods of time is really not ideal as the hair can sweat and start to matt over time. Trust me, unwashed-year-old dog hair, kept in a plastic bag is particularly smelly! I also don't think that a cockapoo is the ideal dog for spinning. It's a cross between a cocker spaniel and a poodle and any dog crossed with a poodle is quite likely to be low shedding and single coated, so I was really not off to a good start. Well, I washed it, carded it and spun a knittable yarn, but it was quite clear that any yarn I produced was definitely going to be too itchy to wear. It was just too full of guard hairs and clipped ends that it felt more like string than yarn. I spun enough for our friends' daughter to knit a Christmas stocking for their dog and then disposed of the remaining dog hair as quickly as possible... --- My experience spinning Malamute Last year, a local lady posted on Ravelry, asking if anyone would be willing to spin some long-haired malamute fibre for her. After my failed attempt a few years ago, I really wanted to redeem myself, so I offered to spin a hundred grams or so for her - purely as a learning experience and to add a little variety to my own yarn stash. I told her to save just the brushings and to keep it stored in a breathable container. I now know that I should have also asked her to be a bit more selective about the fibres that she saved - but that was another lesson I learned! Well, she turned up at my door with two pillowcases full of soft, malamute hair. There were probably 500 grams in there - all from one season's shedding! As you can see, there is a real mixture of fibres in there. Just touching it, I could feel that it was so much softer than the cockapoo hair I'd spun previously, but at first glance you can see that there are also a lot of guard hairs in there. Underhairs come in a variety of shades and they're frequently a slightly different shade to the protective guard hairs. At first glance, it looked like these malamute guard hairs were mostly black, or white with black tips. I later learned that there were also a lot of white guard hairs in there as well. Sorting and washing the Malamute fibre I spent a couple of days sorting the dog fibres. I pulled out the darkest sections as these contained the most guard hairs. I also removed the shorter, coarser hairs, and sections that were overly matted or full of dander as these were not going to be pleasant to spin. I must admit to being quite ruthless, but I quickly learned (from colour, appearance and texture) which fibres were going to be the softest. I'm sure if I was a dog owner as well as a spinner, this process would be much easier as the fibres would be more efficiently sorted at the grooming stage. I also now know that it would be much better to save just the softer hairs from the first brushings - when the dog first begins to shed - as these contain fewer guard hairs. The malamute that donated the hair must have been very well looked after, as the hair was quite clean and smelled only slightly 'doggy'. I decided, however, to wash it anyway. Opening up the fibres as I went, I placed the lighter sections of fibre in a large delicates laundry bag, ready to be soaked. I was intrigued to see how well 'Soak', my favourite wool and delicates washing liquid, would clean the malamute fibres. Soak isn't necessarily recommended for washing pre-spun fibres, but I wanted to minimise agitation of the malamute - which could cause felting, so I thought it was worth a try. I made this animated gif to show just how much dirt came out of what I thought was pretty clean dog hair after three. thirty minute soaks and one rinse. This is the wet malamute fibres after they've been for a gentle spin in my washing machine at 400rpm for 15 minutes to remove a lot of the excess water. I love how you can see the bright whites and soft beiges more clearly now in the underhair. It's winter here in the UK and so I hung my bag of wet malamute fibres on a radiator, periodically checking it and fluffing the fibres out. It took about two days to completely dry. It hadn't been particularly dirty to start with, but now there wasn't the remotest smell of dogginess. A quite serendipitous thing happened too. As the underhairs are so fine and smooth, they became statically charged as they became dryer and dryer. I noticed that the very thickest guard hairs had started to fall out of the laundry bag of their own accord. These are just a few that I picked up off the bathroom floor. You can see here that there are a lot more white guard hairs in there than I anticipated. Shaking the bag repeatedly encouraged a lot more of the thicker guard hairs to either fall out of the laundry bag or just poke out, allowing me to remove them with a sticky lint roller. These are all of the sticky roller sheets I used on the outside of the laundry bag. Removing even more guard hairs When I first started reading the Spinnin' Chien forum, one member described a process of removing the guard hairs by placing the dog hair in a delicates laundry bag and putting them in the dryer with some pieces of foam and fleece. Initially, I thought this sounded quite risky and possibly fool-hardy, but as I could still see quite a lot of guard hairs amongst the fine downy malamute fibres I decided to take the risk. I keep guinea pigs, so I have a couple of densely woven laundry bags designed for washing guinea pig fleeces in to stop the hay and hair from clogging the washing machine. I put my delicates bag full of malamute fibres in my pet laundry bag and stuffed it full of foam offcuts. I zipped it up, crossed my fingers and put it in my dryer for 30 minutes on a gentle heat cycle. This is what the inside of the pet hair bag looked like when I removed it from the dryer. The inside, the foam pieces, and the delicates bag were all covered in guard hairs! I spent a good hour or so with my sticky roller, removing the guard hairs from the inside of the pet bag, the foam pieces and the outside of the delicates laundry bag. Thankfully the malamute fibres hadn't felted in the dryer and I had the softest mound of malamute fibres with just a few finer guard hairs left in. Unfortunately, at this stage it was very difficult to handle as it was so full of static charge that it wanted to cling to everything in sight! A quick spritz over the surface and then a gentle mixing with detangling spray dissipated the static charge straight away. It also made the fibres smell lovely! Spinning Malamute A lot of spinners of chiengora insist that the dog hairs need to be at least 1 and a half inches long. Most dog hair doesn't have the same crimp as wool, it's also slippier and so the shorter fibres have a tendency to shed from the yarn. It's not unusual for chiengora spinners to blend the dog hair with wool or alpaca to make it easier to spin, with less shedding, but the purist in me wanted to spin 100% malamute. Looking through my malamute fibres, I noticed a wide range of staple lengths and textures. Some were as long as three and a half inches, but most of them were between one and a half and two and a half inches. I knew that I was going to have to spin a much tighter yarn than I was used to, to ensure that the fibres held together well. In my first attempt at spinning malamute, I tried to hand-card the hair. Unfortunately the shorter, fluffier fibres rolled themselves into little neps, I eventually gave up on carding the dog hair and just fluffed it up and spun it from the cloud. A cloud of malamute fibre After consulting the members of the Spinnin' Chien forum, I was advised that my wool carders really weren't suitable for dog hair, and experienced chiengora spinners use cotton carders that have much finer, more densely spaced teeth. This was the first malamute yarn I spun. It's a 2ply, spun from the cloud. I was relatively pleased with it, but you can see that there are an awful lot of slubs in there, and as it's spun from the cloud, it's quite untidy and very much a woolen-spun yarn. I use an e-spinner, which doesn't really lend itself well to the stop-start and varying speeds required when spinning from the cloud, so next, I decided to attempt a more worsted-style fibre preparation. I wasn't about to invest in expensive equipment for what may be a one-off project, so I decided to try and build my own simple hackle out of inexpensive dog combs and a table clamp that I've had for decades. I managed to find three of these combination dog combs at Pets at Home. They were half price at £4.75 each. They have two densities of tines and the more closely spaced teeth are perfect for preparing my fine malamute fibres. I taped them together with double-sided sticky tape and then clamped them in my tabletop clamp with the finer teeth sticking out. I made a little 2 minute video to show my technique for aligning my malamute fibres to make a kind of lightweight top. Basically, I teased and opened up the malamute fibres, drafting them open with my right hand and then lowering them onto the dog combs with the more open fibres to the right of the teeth. Once my dog comb was half full, I carefully drafted out the fibres into a top, discarding the shortest and most knotted fibres that remained on the comb at the end. I then halved the length of fibres a couple of times so that I had a mix of long and short fibres on top of each other and then I drafted the four lengths into one length of fibres. Here are my sweet little nests of malamute fibre that are so much easier to spin on my Hansen Minispinner as they require far less effort to spin at a constant speed. There are still quite a few little neps in there, but you can see the fibres are now much more aligned. Spinning my prepared malamute fibre was so far more relaxing after it had been drafted out. I spun a high twist, fine single with the intention of chain plying it later. Please take a look at my video on pre-chain plying singles - Before plying I left my singles to rest for several days for the twist to relax a little so that it was easier to manage. Here are the first two malamute yarns that I spun. The top one is the very first yarn that I spun. It's a two-ply and was spun from the cloud. The bottom one is chain plied and was spun from drafted, combed fibres, prepared on my home made hackle. I love how much more definition the lower one has and I'm sure it would be much more comfortable to wear, having fewer guard hairs and less of a halo. I did actually spin a third yarn (the first in this picture) where I pulled out every guard hair by hand, but that was just too ridiculously labour intensive. I would not recommend it! As a thank you to the dog owner that provided me with the malamute hair, I knitted these little hearts that she could keep as a memento - along with enough yarn for her to knit herself some wrist-warmers or a hat. I've still got a lot of malamute left to spin for myself - maybe I'll try dyeing some next year. Chiengora is 80% warmer than sheep's wool so it'll be perfect for next winter's accessories! This blog post contains Amazon affiliate links to similar products that I purchased myself to prepare and spin the chiengora yarn. If you click through and purchase anything, I may receive a very small percentage of the purchase price. At this point, I normally suggest similar related blog posts, however, my list of spinning-related content is becoming a little unmanageable... If you'd like to read more blog posts about spinning and fibre preparation, please take a look at this page here where you will find links to all of my spinning and fibre articles. Thank you for reading, and happy spinning! If you enjoyed this, you might like to take a look at some of my other spinning-related blog posts - 9 Different Ways of Spinning a Multicoloured Blend While Trying to Avoid 'Spinning Mud' Spinning into Focus Chain-Plying at the Wheel Versus Making a Chain-Plied Ball Blending and Spinning a Rainbow Yarn 2 Ways How to Measure Handspun Yarn Using an App Free Handspun Yarn Labels DIY Hackle DIY Mini Wool Combs 3D Printed Modular Lazy Kate Yarn gauge reference tool for hand spinners Testing the Electric Eel Wheel Yarn Counter Prototype Hackle Blending a Long Gradient Linear Blending a Gradient Spinning Supercoil Yarn Using Waste Fibres Unbiased Review of the Daedalus Sparrow Testing the LWS Autowinder for the Electric Eel Wheel 6 ---------- Please be sweet and share the love. Leave a comment, subscribe to my YouTube channel, like my Facebook page for regular updates or follow me on Pinterest, Bloglovin' or Instagram

Make a DIY yarn swift at home. 2 video tutorials inside, one tutorial requires the use of power tools (drill) and some readers asked for something simpler and building from scratch.

How to use small scraps of any fibre to create a multi coloured, speckled batt for hand spinning. Create one of a kind variegated yarns with this technique.

The Good Yarn supplies you with the very best knitting, spinning, weaving, crochet equipment as well as quality yarns and fibres

Minicombs are handheld tools with one or two rows of tines and are used for creating a worsted or semiworsted yarn.

shepherds spinning wool ... landes, france ... circa1900-1920 ...

By Benjamin Krudwig