Table of contents for Summer 2025 in Spin-Off

Editor’s Note: As this issue came together, we were thinking about how balance (or intentional imbalance) affects all the yarns we make—fine and bulky. We love the carefully crafted textured yarns in the Got Weaver Fever shop, and we had to ask owner Audrey Costruba about her process. I love spinning big, chunky, colorful art yarns because it feels like creative play. There’s something so satisfying about watching bold textures and colors come together on the wheel! My go-to for those extra-large spins is the Ashford Country Spinner—it handles the bulk beautifully. For thinner yarns, I reach for my Schacht Ladybug. When I’m on the go, the Ashford Traveller comes with me. All three wheels have been tweaked to handle larger yarns, and over time, I’ve learned which setup works best…

Editor’s Note: We were smitten with Melody Lukens’s handspun skeins with their lively balance of fiber, color, twist, and ply. We had to ask her about her approach to balance. For me, creating a yarn with balance begins with respecting fiber for what it is. I allow myself the flexibility to change course from my spinning plans if the fiber is clearly telling me it’s meant to be something different from what I envisioned. My approach to spinning yarn with a balanced twist and appropriate ply is mostly about calibration. I calibrate myself often with plyback checks, especially at the beginning of a project, or if I am working with an unfamiliar or challenging fiber. Studying these plyback strands and running them through my fingers gives them an opportunity to…

Kumihimo is the art of making elaborate, patterned braids. These fancy braids have myriad uses: key fobs, eyeglass cords, basket handles, jewelry, and components of artwork, to name just a few. Use colorful braids to enhance your other handmade items—think purse handles, drawstrings, frog closures, and decorative trim, all of which can be made with just a few yards of handspun yarn. Kumihimo involves exchanging threads, usually eight or more, in a sequence of movements that can range from simple to complex. The sequence of movements determines the shape of the finished cord, which can be round, square, flat, or other shapes. Color placement works with the movements to create patterns. I often use a marudai (braiding stand) and tama (weighted bobbins) for braiding. It takes a little effort to…

We are excited to welcome Amelia Garripoli as one of our instructors for SOAR 2025. This article, which previously appeared in the Summer 2012 issue of Spin Off, is just one example of Amelia’s innovative and useful spinning methods that you can put to use. Amelia’s overplying technique is a classic—one she continues to use. She sent us some new examples of her purposely overplied yarn, and we’re excited to share them with you here. —Spin Off Editors My favorite feature of overplying is that it adds durability to yarn. In an overplied yarn, the fibers in the singles are twisted beyond the parallel of a balanced ply and are held tightly in place by the extra ply twist. In a balanced plied yarn, the fibers lay relaxed and parallel to…

Many spinners spend quite a lot of time thinking about creating balanced yarns. What we usually mean by this is that the twist added to the singles was appropriately matched by an opposite twist in the ply to create a relaxed yarn that does not twist and turn in either direction. There are many good reasons to spin unbalanced yarns, too. For example, singles yarns are, by their very nature, unbalanced. High-twist yarns are more durable, and for some projects, some twisting due to overplying is not a problem. If you’d like to dig deeper into twist and plying, we have a great article by Alden Amos—pulled from the Spin Off archives—on page 15. One of the best bits of advice that I can give you is to never judge your…

As much as we love spinning, there are certain questions that divide the spinning community. For example, “Is it better to be a technical or an intuitive spinner?” There are people firmly in both camps, but I believe in taking the middle road. It is absolutely possible to be an intuitive spinner who uses technical skills such as yarn measurements to make the process of creating the perfect yarn easier and less stressful. USEFUL YARN MEASUREMENTS Yarn measurements tell us about different aspects of our yarn, and each of them provides information that can be changed and manipulated until the yarn we make is right for both the fiber and the project. The measurements that I believe are the most useful to intuitive handspinners are wraps per inch (wpi), twists per…

Over the years, I’ve learned to never say “never.” I never wanted to learn to spin or weave because commercial yarns and knitting held so many possibilities—then I picked up both spinning and weaving in the space of six months! I never wanted to stray from spinning wool—that is, until I moved to a hot and humid climate. And even when I started spinning flax and cotton, I never wanted to blend them with other fibers—they were just fine on their own. When I thought spinning plant fibers was out of reach, the real problem was that I hadn’t found the right technique or tools yet. A few plant fiber classes with Hannah Smith at the Carolina Fiber Fest and Tom Knisely’s linen intensive at SOAR in 2024 helped me…

At WoolTribe dye studio, we dye yarn, fiber, and ready-to-wear goods. We do most of our dyeing on demand to keep materials from going to waste. Recently, we dyed a round of fiber that was gorgeous—except that one braid. It was murky, muddy. We knew it would be completely unappealing to shoppers, so it came home with me. I spun it over the next couple of months, finding the resulting spin to be a beautiful soft brown. I paired it with a fleshy pink yarn, and it came to life, glowing with earthy contrast! My desire to speak out on behalf of “ugly braids” was born. WHAT IS AN UGLY BRAID? For our purposes, my partner Sheri and I define “ugly braids” in three ways: Oversaturated: Braids to which too…

I’m a fine-fiber spinner. I love to feel soft locks flow through my fingers, and I can’t name any other fiber activity that exceeds the delight of spinning wellprepared Merino roving. With smooth uptake, fibers that glide, and consistent singles that fill the bobbin, the perfectionist part of me is at ease. My entire being relaxes. But Merino roving isn’t always perfect. There are times when the fiber is fraught with nepps—those errant clumps of fiber that can wreak havoc on a smooth spin. Nepps enter the fiber for many reasons, so it’s important to know how they are formed and what we can do to avoid creating them. When, despite our best efforts, nepps do happen, how we react to them can lead to a greater understanding of ourselves—how…

Silk blends and lace just make me happy. Ever since I completed my Olds College Master Spinner in-depth study and discovered that if you add silk to just about anything, it becomes better for lace, there have been very few lace projects I’ve done that didn’t include at least a little bit of silk. And as evidenced by this project, it doesn’t take much silk to make a lace pattern pop. I have coveted the Oysters Died to Make Those Pearls colorway from The Fibre Goddess for well over a year. I tend to be drawn to bright reds and deep blues, but there was something about this warm pearlescence that spoke to me every time I saw it come up on Instagram. So when the editors of Spin Off…

We’ve all spun too little (or too much) of a colorway, or wound up with just a little hank of handspun that we simply couldn’t part with after completing a big project. Now what? Rigid-heddle overshot coasters! Using small amounts of handspun yarn or a whole host of fun leftover colors, and at least an 8-inch weaving width on your rigid-heddle loom, beautiful coasters are close at hand. Small experiments and the joy of overshot on a rigid-heddle loom can bring deeply vibrant colors to your home and incorporate beloved handspun in quantities that are too small for other projects. I find thrums a little too small for this project unless I’m recarding and spinning new yarn, but that is a whole different adventure! You can revitalize singles yarn by…

With its bright colors and undulating ripples, Christina Chisholm’s textured scarf blew us away. We sat down with her to discover how she spun the energized yarns for this project and learned so much about her approach to spinning and weaving. —Editors Your scarf is stunning! Is this the first garment you’ve constructed this way, or have you been exploring energized singles for a while? What drew you to this line of study? I took an introductory course in collapse weave some years ago; the tutor, Ann Richards, and I discussed the potential for different wool yarns to create different collapse effects. I kept this idea in mind and took the opportunity to explore it a couple of years later as part of my self-directed study toward a Certificate in…