Spinner's Alphabet: What begins with Q? Quill!

By Amelia © September 21, 2026

Q

is for quill. There are so many meanings of this word. A Quill attachment on a spinning wheel or e-spinner lets you spin off the tip just like the quill on a great wheel or charka. And, you can make a paper quill on a wheel/e-spinner's quill or on a spindle's shaft so you can slide off the cop of fiber that you built up on the quill or shaft.

When your spinning wheel has a tip that comes to a point and that piece both does not hold a bobbin and is rotated when the wheel spins, then your spinning wheel has a quill. Some spinning wheels have Quill flyers - like Ashford and the Pocket Wheel. Some spinning wheels have Quill attachments that fit in the orifice like the HansenCrafts MiniSpinner.

This would have been the type of setup that pricked Sleeping Beauty, as a regular bobbin and flyer setup has nothing that could prick you. Though, there's no reason for the quill to end in a sharp point unless you are lacing it with something that will make someone sleep until kissed by a prince. But I digress.

My homemade quill with a cork and handy charka quill

If your spinning wheel has a centered orifice - for example, Louet's is not centered, it hulas around a center point - then you can MacGyver up your own quill for it by using a cork and a knitting needle that has a flat cap on the end. Make a hole in the cork to fit the knitting needle, and carve it down to fit in the orifice. Put the needle in the cork, then put the flat end of the needle and the cork into the orifice. Wa-la, you now have a quill attachment for your wheel! You're welcome.

Why put a quill on your spinning wheel? I have found three uses that will always make me prefer a wheel that can provide me with this option:

1. bobbin winder!!! So I can, if I need to, wind yarn off onto a storage bobbin, or onto a weaving bobbin for weaving. For this use, the quill needs to have a decent diameter, usually a US10 knitting needle does the trick, for a homemade quill. The Ashford, Pocket Wheel, and HansenCrafts 1/4" quill are all good for this task. Definitely this gives more utility to your wheel!
2. Super-fine spinning. A quill gives only the tension you make when you pull the yarn against the quill, no more - there is no brake, nothing is trying to pull the yarn out of your hands. So you may find this an easier way to spin super fine than using a bobbin and braking setup. Even double drive wheel have some pull against the yarn not created by your hands.
3. Large-inclusion art yarn. If what you want to include won't fit through your wheel's orifice, then you are either getting very fancy and adding things after yarn has gone through the orifice - and people have done this - or you need a quill. Wa-la, no orifice, the inclusions can be large and unwieldy. Dominos, anyone? Just a thought. Don't everyone go out and make domino yarn now. Or if you do, send me a picture!

Of course the original quilled spinning devices are great wheels and charkas. Fantastic devices, both of them. The really neat thing about charkas, and even great wheels, is the amazing ratios they have for high speed spinning. That's super useful when you want to spin fine. Which, see the ordered list above, is also a good reason to have a quill!

Book charkas in particular tend to have fine-shafted quills, and plenty of them. They will often be called spindles alternatively and they do look a bit like a spindle. So you can simply swap one out when it is full and start again with an empty one. But I have had upright charkas before, like the one shown here, a Reeves charka, that had a fixed quill. Seemed like it could be quite a chore to unwind all that newly spun yarn. But that is where the other quill comes into play. I can wrap my charka's quill with a paper quill - literally just tightly wrapped paper around the metal quill - and spin all my yarn onto that quill. Once it's full, I slide it off, and pop it onto my lazy kate. Put another paper quill on, and I'm ready to go again. On my Reeves charka I needed to make my own paper quills because nothing quite fit, there wasn't a perfectly sized straw or weaving quill (same deal - those are usually cardboard though people do use straws too). And frankly I have enough post-it style notepads in the rectangular size that I have a lifetime supply, so I don't search for straws for this task on my HansenCrafts MiniSpinner or my Pocket Wheel quills, I just reach for the post-it pad.

I will now also at times use these paper quills on my non-Turkish spindles - if the shaft is shaped so I can slide the paper quill off, I will put one on, fill my spindle, then slip the quill off onto a lazy kate and the spindle is ready to go again, easy-peasy. But if I forget to put one on, all is not lost - then I do reach for a straw, slightly smaller than the shaft, and slide the cop down the shaft and on to the straw. Held all in a line, the transition from shaft to straw is smooth enough that this works well. Enough that I no longer fret about making paper quills on my spindles.

And on my Turkish spindles? they don't need quills, the ball you wind is a stable configuration that does not need a center structure once it's off the spindle.

Whew! Who knew there was so much to say about quills. Have you used a quill on your wheel, or a paper quill on a quill or a spindle? Do tell.

This was truly the only Q I could come up with - do you have a spinning Q to add to the alphabet? Post it in the comments.

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© September 21, 2026 by Ask The Bellwether, posted at http://askthebellwether.com/

Spinner's Alphabet: What Begins with P? Ply!

By Amelia © September 7, 2026

My Ply stack in 2021

P

is for Ply. It's not only a fun magazine (waves!), it's how we can bring our yarn into balance, or force it out of balance. Plying adds structure and strength to fibers. Usually, plying is taking two or more spun singles, and twisting them together in the opposite direction they were individually spun until they balance each other out. But that is the tip of the plying iceberg. Come join me, the water's warm! There's B for Boucle; C for Cable, Chain, and Crepe; H for Hawser... We could have a spinner's alphabet of nothing but plied yarn constructions.

One of the most interesting things about plying for me was recognizing that twist in singles goes dormant when they sit. So what seems balanced when you ply is actually underplied. The best way to make sure your plied yarn will be balanced (or, intentionally, not balanced) is to have a fresh sample plied back on itself. You can even make this out of dormant twist by making the ply structure you want, and then putting it into warm water. This awakens the dormant twist in the singles and the length will wriggle into balance. Take it out of the water, press it in a folded towel - or edge of your shirt - and wa-la! a fresh sample shows you what balance looks like. Ply to match that sample, and you will find your skein wet finishes into a balanced result, despite acting overplied while being made.

This warm water method is a bit more difficult with multiple step constructions like hawser, crepe, cable, and boucle. With those I often guess and then if needed use rough finishing to lock in the result if I guessed wrong. I have plans to spin a balanced two-ply yarn, gently wet finish it to wake up the dormant twist in the singles, and then once dry, make a cable. I'd like to see how the cable looks at different levels of twist in the singles, knowing what I actually had for a balanced 2-ply yarn: the puffy 2-ply from low-twist singles to the dense 2-ply from high-twist singles.

And returning to my opening remark - Ply is a remarkable magazine about all things spinning. The photography is both stunning and informative, the articles are all organized around a central theme for each issue, and it has continued to deliver great content since its kickstarter beginning. They even had an issue on Plying! I enjoy being both a reader and a contributor to it. If you haven't checked it out, I highly recommend it! They now have two sister magazines as well, Purl and Weft, as well as an online spinning guild. Lots of great information about fiber arts!

There you have it: plied yarn and Ply magazine, a dual-purpose letter this week. What's your spinner's P? Do you read Ply or participate in their online guild?

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© September 7, 2026 by Ask The Bellwether, posted at http://askthebellwether.com/

Spinner's Alphabet: What Begins with O? Overplied!

By Amelia © August 24, 2026

3-ply sock yarn

O

is for overplied yarn. I usually overply my yarn when I'm spinning for socks, and then rough finish it, which lightly felts the strands so that it will behave like balanced yarn in the knitting. It's doubly durable from the active surface twist and the light felting.

Another situation that calls for overplying is when you are constructing a more-than-two-step yarn such as a cable. Here's a recipe for making a cabled yarn:

1. Divide your fiber into 4 equal parts
2. Spin each part into Z twist singles on its own bobbin. You get to decide how much twist you want - ply it back on itself and if you like it, use that amount throughout. So you can have a puffy 2-ply or a tight 2-ply (that's coming next).
3. Ply two bobbins together with S twist into a balanced 2-ply yarn. If at all possible, do this step, let the yarn rest, then move on to the next step. Lots of folks (myself included) don't do that - we do both steps in one pass. I want to experiment more with separating the steps, letting this balanced 2-ply sit on the bobbin for a while to rest so it acts balanced - i.e. the plying twist becomes effectively as dormant as the singles twist became before plying happened. You now have 2 bobbins of 2-ply.
4. Overply the 2 bobbins, i.e. add more plying (S) twist. How much? So that the ply-back looks like grains of rice / strings of pearls. This is most obvious with 4 different colors in play, so that's a good learning tactic, frankly. I'd note most of my singles tend to be fairly strong twist as I'm doing this for socks, so my ply-back is also fairly strong feeling. I usually overply until the yarn compresses down to look like a single strand again, i.e. not much visible curving of the two strands around each other. It's a good idea to let these bobbins rest a few days so that extra twist can go dormant and not drive you crazy when you do the next step... just saying...
5. 
   Now cable-ply: take the 2 bobbins and ply them on each other in the Z direction until they are balanced. What's balanced? so they match the ply-backs you made in the previous step. That grains-of-rice look.

Whew! If it all works out the final skein washes up balanced. To be frank, it is a strong twist typically. If you met the grains of rice look but it's acting over- or under-plied after wet finishing, rough finish it by lightly fulling the yarn. I hope that's R! If not, see this post: When do you set the twist?. That will lock it all in place and make it act balanced.

A note on direction - the usual final twist direction of commercial yarns is S. If you want that, then spin the singles S, ply Z, and cable-ply S. There you go, final twist direction S. I will note, spinning singles S feels odd, as our hands get so used to feeling that Z spiral as they draft. Stick with it, and S singles will feel natural as well.

The great part of making a 3-ply sock yarn is that a cable from the leftover singles will have the same final diameter as the 3-ply yarn due to the extra compression it has. Great for heels and toes! A lovely friend told me that one day and it has proven itself true at my wheel as well.

Other fun O's: Optim (stretched merino, so soft!), Opposing Ply (another great yarn structure!), Ombre (shifting from one color to another over a long distance/in a single skein).

What's your spinning O? Have you overplied on purpose? Let me know in the comments.

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© August 24, 2026 by Ask The Bellwether, posted at http://askthebellwether.com/

Spinner's Alphabet: What Begins With N? Niddy-Noddy!

By Amelia © August 10, 2026

N

is for niddy-noddy, a tool many spinners have with their wheel, e-spinner or spindles. I like my body-noddies, as I always have them with me. When you get into lots of spinning, you may decide to upgrade to a skeiner to make skeins, as it's less stress on your body than a niddy-noddy, and faster as well.

My favorite niddy-noddy has a nostepinne as its center bar - another N! I do love a good multi-use tool. Nostepinnes are fairly simple, lightly sloped sticks used to wind a center-pull ball. the slight slope makes it so you can slide the ball off easily once its wound.

We usually skein up from the bobbin to wash the yarn, and then wind it into a ball to keep it under control when we knit, crochet, or wind it onto a shuttle or warping board for weaving.

One of the most important things about making a skein on a niddy noddy is to wind it properly so that it comes off without any crossed yarns. There's a rhyme used to set one up for the rhythm of the winding - do I know it? no. So I will let you google it. But I usually do it by making two Vs on opposite sides of my niddy noddy. And if I get my grip right, it's a gentle swooping motion with the hand holding the 'noddy while the other hand goes up and down making V after V after V.

Second most important is how you place your ties. I did a youtube on this a while ago, on a skeiner. When the skein is made off the bobbin, I like to make one tie with the inside end and 3 with the outside end, so that when I reskein it or wind it into a ball I can easily find the outside end to wind from. It re-winds much easier from the outside end.

But those boddy-noddies? The small one, used for samples, is your bent arm, winding between tumb-and-fingers and under your elbow. The large one, used for bobbin-fulls and spindle-fulls, is your bent leg, winding over your knee and under your foot. I do like that I have them both with me at the ready. When I'm travelling, those are the niddy-noddies I use, so there's more room for fiber and one less tool to track.

Do you have a spinner's alphabet N? Or a favorite style of niddy-noddy? Let us know in the comments. And come back in a fortnight to see what O is...

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© August 10, 2026 by Ask The Bellwether, posted at http://askthebellwether.com/

What makes a skein stand out to judges?

By Amelia © August 3, 2026

A pile of handspun after the fair,
waiting for their owners

Welcome to the final post of the handspun judging series ... in it we will detail the Finished Execution category on the score card. If you've just found this series, start with part one: How is handspun yarn judged at fairs? We've been working our way through the score card:

1. General overall appearance.
2. Preparation for exhibit — clean, properly skeined and tied, of listed yardage and/or weight, blocked if necessary
3. Suitability of fiber to yarn—amount of twist, diameter of yarn
4. Technique — twist evenly executed, appropriate plying twist, diameter consistent throughout, structurally durable, yarn designs consistent, dyeing/blending consistent
5. Suitability of yarn to use—direction of twist, amount of twist, diameter of yarn, handle of yarn, appropriate number of plies
6. Finished Execution – originality, creativity, complexity

The final category is Finished Execution, where the judge gets to consider originality, creativity, and complexity. This is often what bounces items into Best in Class and Best in Show awards. Dye the wool yourself, card or comb it yourself, do something more complex or exposing than a 3-ply - the judge recognizes you are showing an extra layer of skill. Yes, I said 3-ply. 3-ply hides mistakes in the singles better than a single or a 2-ply. Putting that extra effort in makes your yarn unique.

I loved sourcing rare breed fleeces to process myself, and will always state that on the submission for this reason. We are lucky now to have mills that produce specific breed yarns - I love seeing them in yarn stores!

Deneb, my Soay - I raised him, roo'd him,
washed, carded, and spun a 2-ply.
My most complex project!

This area is really where notes from the spinner can help. You tell me what makes this creative, complex, or original. Did you feed the sheep? Source it at the judging of a wool show? Develop the colorway to match a photo or flower? Generally spinners don't tell me this sort of thing and so I have to evaluate on what I see. Is it "wool" or a particular breed or blend or non-wool fiber? Is the yarn structure appropriate to use and more complex than basic singles or plying? Is there something special in its appearance, content, or structure that says "creative skein here"?

This category truly leans in to the creativity and effort of the spinner. If the skein is "just" a 2-ply, it can still excel in originality; perhaps the spinner used a suint wash on the wool fleece, or dyed the fiber or handspun with natural dyes they grew. I've had a future project planned for a while, where I "write" a poem with beads with words on them - like the fridge magnet poetry - spinning the beads into the yarn in the appropriate order to read as the poem, to be knitted or woven into a "page". The planning, inclusion of beads, and effort would definitely take the project up a notch - all I need is for it to pop to the top of my "most interesting future project" queue to be the next project.

That said, I do also love to see any entry - even the store-bought solid color top spun into a 2-ply yarn has a place. I've sometimes made an effort to cover all the categories in the fair with my submissions; it's a fun challenge. Some fairs only break up the entries by yarn structure, where others may have categories for tools used, preparation, or intended use. As a judge, I enjoy seeing when every category has several-to-many entries. It makes my job more interesting to have that variety, and I know I am going to uncover surprises as I work through them all.

At my local fair, it's the handspun items
that tend to take Best in Class/Show

Once all the entries have been judged, my job isn't done. I get to lift one item from each class for "Best in Class", one item overall for "Best in Show", and my favorite one of all, "Judge's Choice". The Best ones often are the highest points unless, for example, there's a stunningly spun simple skein that has fewer points than a more complex one in the same class. Choosing from among all the entries for Best in Show often takes me a while. I go take a walk once I've done all the judging so I can contemplate what I've seen. When I return, the Best in Show item often leaps out at me. Judge's Choice doesn't have to have top points. It is my favorite one. For me, it's easy to find it - I lay out all the skeins and run my hand above them - I will reach for just a handful, sometimes only one - and Judge's Choice comes from that pool. I don't consider the points I assigned, errors are even less important. it's the one I most want to take home with me. Though I never get to!

I hope you've found this series intriguing, and that it encourages you to enter your local county fair. I'm looking forward to fair season, and aspire some day to enter an item in my state fair as well!

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© August 3, 2026 by Ask The Bellwether, posted at http://askthebellwether.com/