Spinning with Turkish Spindles: Singles to Plying
In this Fiberygoodness short course, Evanita will take you through the process of successful spindle spinning with the Turkish Spindle. This is the kind of spindle that allows you to create a beautiful ball (‘turtle’) of yarn right on the spindle, removing the spinning ‘arms’ to free your spun yarn.
You have probably seen the beautiful results of Evanita’s spindle spinning! You will see how she winds on her yarn and tidies up the threads to get these beautiful ‘turtles’. We hope you will enjoy making these too, and then plying with them!
What follows is some course information and overview, please read that first and then…
During this course you will learn the following:
In Part One
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How to set up your spindle with a leader made of your spinning fiber
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How to prepare your fiber to make it easy to spin
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How to draft your fiber and spin your spindle
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How to wind onto the spindle to make a beautiful ‘yarn turtle’
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You will also learn how to remove the turtle ready to ply
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In Part Two you will learn two methods for creating a 2 ply yarn. The first one is plied on itself by using a centre-pull “Turtle” and second is by using two “Turtles”. You will also find some troubleshooting tips and how to solve problems such as “yarn barf” tangles from your center-pull ball.
In Part Three you will learn how you can wheel ply your yarn in order to achieve larger skeins of yarn. In addition, there is a small section about “yarn barf” with a portion of the video showing how to handle this situation while wheel plying. This section includes Navajo plying which can also be done on a spindle.
You will need:
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At least one Turkish Spindle
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At least 2oz of commercial top or roving, or a batt split into strips.
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All your course materials for this class can be found online here in your Fiberygoodness course pages, there is nothing you need to download and you will continue to have access to these pages and content as long as you need it.
We have split the lessons up for you into three parts. In Part One you will work on spinning singles and winding them on, then removing your spindle from the finished ‘turtle’. This section contains one longer video plus your course notes. We suggest watching the video all the way through, then read the notes, then watching the video again before you start spindling. You can also play and pause the video as you begin spindling and work along with Evanita at your own pace.
Part Two is all about plying and Evanita shows you two ways you can ply with your Turkish spindles. For this section, we have split the video up and embedded it in the appropriate places into the text so you can read then watch the demonstration.
Part Three shows how to use a wheel in order to ply larger quantities of spindle spun yarn to form a large cohesive skein rather than smaller spindle plied skeins.
In addition Evanita has put together a Frequently Asked Questions page which contains extra helpful information.
Support
Please feel free to ask questions at any time, you can email Evanita at Evanita@fiberygoodness.com if you need support with any of the course materials. We would also love you to share your course work on our Fiberygoodness group page show us your gorgeous spindles, share your spindling stash, and show off what you are spinning!