Spinning Wool for Beginners: The Drop Spindle

There is a moment, the first time you do this, that stops you in your tracks. You have a soft cloud of wool in one hand and a little weighted stick spinning below the other, and somewhere between the two a real thread appears, strong enough to tug on, made entirely by your own fingers. People have been feeling that exact small astonishment for thousands of years, long before wheels or mills, using nothing more than a spindle and a bag of fleece. It is the true heart of the fleece-to-yarn journey, the step that turns a sheep's coat into something you can knit, and it is far more within reach than it looks.

If you have already been reading about washing and preparing a fleece over on our working with wool guide, spinning is where all that preparation finally becomes yarn. And if you are eyeing up your own sheep or a neighbour's fleece, learning to spin is also what lets you sell wool and fleece as finished handspun rather than raw weight, which is a very different price.

How spinning actually works

Strip away the romance and spinning is one simple idea repeated over and over. Loose fibres, on their own, slide apart the moment you pull them. But twist a bundle of them together and the fibres grip each other, lock in place, and become a continuous strand strong enough to knit with. That is the whole secret, and everything else is just doing it neatly.

There are three moves, and they always happen in this order.

Drafting is thinning the fibre. You draw a small amount of the prepared wool out so the fibres slide past each other into a loose, thin ribbon. How much you draft decides how thick your yarn will be.

Adding twist is the magic. As the spindle turns, it feeds twist up into that drafted ribbon, and the twist is what actually turns fluff into yarn. A single strand made this way is called, sensibly enough, a single.

Plying is the finishing move. Two singles twisted together in the opposite direction make a rounder, stronger, more balanced yarn that will not twist back on itself when you knit. Most beginners spin two singles and ply them into a two-ply yarn.

The kit: a spindle and some wool

The joy of this craft is how little you need. A spindle and a bag of fibre will get you spinning, and both cost less than a takeaway.

A drop spindle has just two parts: a straight stick called the shaft, and a weighted disc called the whorl that the shaft runs through. Most also have a hook to stop the yarn slipping off. If the whorl sits near the top of the shaft it is a top-whorl spindle, which suits finer yarns and is what most beginners get on best with; if it sits near the bottom it is a bottom-whorl spindle, which suits heavier yarns. For a first spindle, the UK spinning press points beginners at a medium-weight top-whorl of about 50 to 75g (2 to 3oz): heavy enough to keep spinning steadily, light enough not to snap your fragile early yarn. Avoid the very lightest and the very heaviest until you know what you like.

Your fibre wants to be prepared wool, not raw greasy fleece, while you learn. It comes in a few forms. Combed top (sometimes sold as sliver or roving) has the fibres brushed roughly parallel and is the easiest to buy and to draft, which is why it is the standard beginner's choice. Carded batts and rolags have the fibres jumbled up and are lovely later on for a fluffier, woollen-style yarn. For a first go, buy a combed British breed top in a pale, natural colour so you can see what your hands are doing.

Fibre	Staple length	How it spins	Good for a beginner?
Shetland	roughly 5 to 12cm	Soft, slightly sticky, forgiving	Yes, an ideal first fleece
Blue-faced Leicester	long and lustrous	Smooth, drafts easily, a little slippery	Yes, a lovely starter
Merino	roughly 7 to 10cm	Very fine and soft but slippery, drifts apart	Later, once you have the rhythm

Buying a British breed top rather than a generic import is worth doing: it ties your yarn to the same breeds you might keep or buy fleece from locally, and it keeps a very British craft supporting British flocks. A wool with a bit of grip and a medium-to-long staple, like Shetland, hides a multitude of beginner sins.

A sensible starter kit

You can begin with almost nothing, and the whole lot fits in a small bag. Here is what to look for, with tagged Amazon search links so you can browse current options rather than a fixed product we cannot vouch for.

• A ready-made drop spindle spinning kit usually bundles a spindle with a little fibre to start you off, which takes the guesswork out of a first purchase.
• If you would rather choose the spindle alone, a medium top-whorl drop spindle around 50 to 75g is the friendliest weight to learn on.
• A British wool combed top for spinning in a pale, natural colour gives you a forgiving, easy-to-see fibre.
• For the finish, a little wool wash sets the twist gently without stripping the wool.

The method: park-and-draft

There is a beginner's way to spin that separates the two tricky jobs, spinning the spindle and drafting the fibre, so you only do one at a time. It is called park-and-draft, and it is the gentlest possible on-ramp. You spin the spindle, trap ("park") it so it holds its twist, then calmly draft and let the twist travel up before repeating. Once your hands know the feel, you will naturally start doing both together, but there is no rush.

Spinning your first single with park-and-draft

1. 1

   Prepare a little fibre

   Pull a length of top off your bundle, about as long as your forearm. Pre-draft it by holding your hands a little more than one staple length apart and gently pulling to loosen the fibres, working along the length until the whole piece is softer and airier. Do not pull so hard it breaks.

2. 2

   Attach a leader

   Tie a loop of ordinary yarn, about 45cm long, onto the shaft just below the whorl with a slip knot and a couple of half hitches, then bring it up and over the hook. This 'leader' is what you start your fibre onto.

3. 3

   Join your fibre to the leader

   Fan out the end of your drafted fibre, lay it over the end of the leader so they overlap, and pinch them together. The twist you add next will catch the fibre and grip it onto the leader.

4. 4

   Spin the spindle, then park it

   With the spindle hanging from the leader, give it a brisk clockwise flick with your fingers or a roll along your thigh, then trap it between your knees so it holds its twist. Keep pinching the join so the twist waits below your fingers.

5. 5

   Draft and let the twist run up

   Hold the fibre supply in one hand. With the other, pinch just below it and draw out a small amount of fibre into a thin ribbon. Now slide your pinching fingers up and let the parked twist run into that drafted section, turning it into yarn. Never let the twist run up into the un-drafted fibre in your supply hand, or it locks up.

6. 6

   Wind on and repeat

   When that length has enough twist, unhook the yarn, wind it neatly onto the shaft below the whorl, leaving enough to loop back over the hook, and start again from the flick. Little by little a single builds up on your spindle.

Plying two singles into yarn

When your spindle is full, wind the single off into a ball or onto a storage bobbin and spin a second single the same way. To ply, you simply twist the two singles together in the opposite direction to the way you spun them, which for most beginners means spinning the spindle anticlockwise.

Tie both singles onto the leader, hold them apart so they do not tangle, give the spindle an anticlockwise spin, and let the twist travel up to bind the two strands into one balanced yarn. Let a length hang slack now and then, just as before: a balanced two-ply hangs quietly without kinking. Wind on and carry on until you run out of singles. Plying is genuinely easier than spinning the singles was, so it makes a satisfying finish to the job.

Finishing: set the twist by washing

Fresh off the spindle your yarn is full of live, restless twist, and washing is what calms it into the balanced, usable yarn you want. This step is called setting the twist.

Wind the plied yarn off into a loose loop, a skein, using a niddy-noddy, a willing pair of arms or the back of a chair. Tie it loosely in three or four places with scrap yarn so it cannot tangle. Soak the skein for around fifteen minutes in a basin of warm water with a little wool wash or gentle wool soap. Lift it out supporting its weight, press the water out gently between your palms or in a towel (never wring or twist it, which can felt the wool), then give the damp skein a brisk snap between your hands to settle the strands. Hang it to dry out of direct heat and sun. What comes off the line looks and behaves like proper yarn, ready to wind into a ball and knit, perhaps for your first small beginner knitting project. If you would like to add colour, undyed handspun takes beautifully to a natural dye bath at this stage.

The mistakes almost everyone makes first

• Drafting too much fibre at once. Beginners nearly always start too thick and lumpy. Take smaller amounts than feels natural and your yarn evens out fast.
• Letting the twist run into un-drafted fibre. Once twist gets into the fibre in your supply hand it locks solid and you cannot draft it. Always keep it pinched off below your fingers.
• Under-twisting, so the single drifts apart. If it pulls apart like cotton wool, it simply needs more turns of the spindle before you move on.
• Over-twisting into hard corkscrews. The opposite fault, and just as common. Let the spindle back off or draft a little more.
• Forgetting to ply in the opposite direction. Ply the same way you spun and the yarn stays lively and unbalanced. Reverse the direction and it settles.
• Expecting perfection. Your first yarn will be uneven and that is the point of a first yarn. Keep it, label it, and enjoy watching your later skeins improve.

Spinning rewards short and often far more than long and rare. Ten or fifteen minutes an evening, spindle in hand while something else plays in the background, and within a week or two the movements slip into muscle memory. It is the calmest, most portable craft on the homestead, and it turns the humble contents of a fleece into something genuinely your own.