How is handspun yarn judged at fairs and shows?

By Amelia © May 11, 2026

My best-in-show entry
two-ply sockyarn, overplied, rough finished
to make the superwash Merino durable

You've done your best, filled out the paperwork, and submitted your entry. How is it graded? Spinning isn't a multiple choice quiz, after all.

Some fairs use the Danish system, where your yarn is judged against a set of standards and awarded a ribbon on its own merits. Others use a best-one-wins system, where skeins compete against each other with the best one winning, then second, and possibly third place entries.

My home county when I was entering fairs used the Danish system, and the then-NwRSA (now NwSFA) judging scorecards. These have been developed by hand spinners for handspun, so they are more applicable than the more generic craft scoresheets used in other parts of the fair.

The Black Sheep Gathering premium book from that time sums up the NwRSA judging criteria nicely:

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.

I've had the good fortune to judge at several different county fairs over the years - the only drawback is that I need to be unfamiliar with the local spinners' work, which really curbs my attendance at area spin-ins. Each judge develops their own approach to evaluating the entries, while adhering to the common knowledge of what spinning entails.

I like to divide the skeins up by the categories that the fair or show uses; some divide by fiber, some by structure, and some by spinning device. Then I typically start with the category with the most entries and evaluate several skeins without assigning any points to get a feel for the entries at that fair. Once warmed up, I can go back and complete their evaluations then continue on to the remaining entries in that category.

I always check that a fair has an evaluation form appropriate for handspun yarn, and the premium book requirements. If the premium book is missing things that impact many entries, I give feedback to the fair/show organizers so they can add requirements such as stating intended use. If that particular key item is missing, I do the best I can with what I have in front of me.

Each skein is evaluated in full against the feedback form; I work through it from top to bottom though sometimes as I get more familiar with a skein I go back to earlier categories on the form to add more detail and potentially adjust a score - usually up, not down. I know the effort spinning takes, and asking to have your work evaluated takes a certain kind of braveness that I prefer to encourage and honor.

Yes, it takes a while to evaluate each skein. I usually pack a lunch and plan on a long day. I get there before the building is unlocked so I can organize and start even before my scribe arrives. I off-load as many tasks as possible - reskeining skeins is quickly taught to a non-spinner volunteer so they can tidy the skein up after I've opened it for evaluation. And each and every feedback form is packed with positive and gently corrective feedback, and a line at the bottom with my overall joy in their entry, in whichever form it took for that particular skein and the notes the spinner provided. If you've entered a fair I've judged at, I hope you've seen that feedback and found it useful or at least appropriate. I've been told by some that they appreciated the detail but have no intention to ever spin the "perfect" skein. I honor that, and recognize that handspun yarn has character we cannot copy in commercial yarn.

Have you entered a fair? I highly recommend it, getting feedback from another experienced spinner outside your local circle can open you to a new view on your yarn. Be sure to provide the skein's backstory along with your skein when you submit it. No fair I've seen stops you from adding information beyond what is required by the premium book. And I welcome your questions on fair entries. I sure had fun when I was entering - trying to enter all the categories was often my goal, and fit well with my love of technique while it gave me ample opportunity to stretch my tool skills and explore yarn structures. And lots and lots of project ideas, a.k.a. intended uses for my yarn.

I'd be interested in writing more about the categories on the form if you are interested. Let me know! If you don't want your feedback to show up as a comment on the blog, use the Contact page instead - thanks.

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© May 11, 2026 by Ask The Bellwether, posted at http://askthebellwether.com/

Spinner's Alphabet: What Begins With G?

By Amelia © May 4, 2026

My still-all-time-favorite spin,
3-ply sockweight CVM

G

is for Grist. That should be a four-letter word, given how much practice it takes to spin to a target grist. It's the measure of a yarn typically in yards per pound (YPP) or meters per kilo. Things that impact Grist: Wraps Per Inch, Twist Angle, Drafting Style, Fiber, Finishing.

In color classes I often talk about "spinning to the grist" - getting the same yardage with the same weight of fiber. If you have ever had this happen, I hope you went and bought a lottery ticket, or celebrated in some way.

My most recent run-in with grist is attempting to use a McMorran Yarn Balance to estimate YPP of handspun. I do not recommend that, by the way - it has not proven reliable with my human-spun skeins. So, I put my handspun on my skeiner and then count the rounds, or run the whole skein through my yardage meter between swift and ballwinder.

The one YPP number I keep in my head is 1600 - the typical yardage for socks. With their tight twist angle of 35-40°, drafting style is less important. I aim for sock fiber to produce 100 yards per ounce, or 400 yards for a pair of socks. I've seen that number again and again no matter the blend.

For the same yardage and WPI, I can use weight to compare twist angle. Higher twist is denser, so I know if my 400 yards of 16 wraps per inch sock yarn is less than four ounces, I'm going to have socks that will wear out faster than 400 yards of the same WPI that weigh four or even five ounces. In fact, the five ounce skein would be super tough and have a pretty high twist angle.

I can also take a comparative guess at drafting style or fiber preparation with the same weight and WPI. The skein with more yardage is likely to have some woolen component, while the skein with less yardage is likely to have some worsted component. Worsted prep/draft lead to denser yarns, causing the same yardage to weight more than a skein with woolen prep and/or draft.

It amazes me how, even after spinning for decades, I still come up with ideas for experiments to hone my spinning knowledge. There's always something new to explore, be it tools, fibers, or the intricacies of spinning itself.

Striped rolags spun to the grist...

Two questions:

• Have you had the magic of spinning to the grist happen? Even within an arm's length is "close enough"!
• What's your spinning G?

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© May 4, 2026 by Ask The Bellwether, posted at http://askthebellwether.com/

Spinner's Alphabet: What Begins with F?

By Amelia © April 20, 2026

Me, spindling in the Olympics

F

is for Fiber Artist. When people call me a fiber artist, it makes me a bit uncomfortable. I don’t instinctively feel like an artist. I tend to think of myself as an artisan. I’m drawn to the craft itself — the methods, the repeatability, the satisfaction of using tools and technique to reliably achieve a specific result.

I suppose this goes back to my background as an engineer, where the goal is to design a process and then execute it well. We use our tools to get results, and there’s something deeply satisfying about refining that process until it behaves the way we want it to.

Over the years, I’ve seen that fiber artists come in many stripes and colors, and that the label can apply to me too. There are fiber artists who focus primarily on the art of what they do. They create unique pieces, rarely the same item twice, because they’re working to embody an idea or concept.

My own path has been different. As an artisan, my focus for many years was sock yarn. That was a ten-year journey. I embraced the idea that I could refine my process until I could reliably produce the sock yarn I wanted, while still exploring different variations within that framework.

Another aspect of my skills is analytical. I’ll encounter a commercial yarn, love its feel, and then work to copy it. Often I end up improving on it, because I can choose the breed of wool, the fiber content, and the structure. I can make deliberate decisions that shape the final result. I don’t see that as plagiarism or copying. I see it as using my skills to reach an intended target. It’s part of the craft — understanding something deeply enough to recreate it, and then making it my own through the choices I make along the way. This harkens back to my background as an engineer, where what we are doing is working to get results, and we use our tools to get those results.

I embrace the art and craft of spinning and am happy to be recognized as an artisan, teacher, writer, and yes, even artist in this space. I'm excited to see where the next decade takes my spinning — cotton, perhaps, as my looms call to me for new projects.

A table of spindles from my Spindle Tricks presentation

I had originally considered having F stand for fiber, since that is the heart of what I do as a fiber artist, and then building you a beautiful taxonomy of everything fiber, the animal, plant, and manmade fibers, and all the subcategories below them. There's just so many!

I would love to hear about your fiber artist journey and about the fibers that you love to spin.

What's your spinner's F?

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© April 20, 2026 by Ask The Bellwether, posted at http://askthebellwether.com/

How do you measure twist angle?

By Amelia © April 13, 2026

I much prefer to measure twist angle in my yarn instead of twists per inch.

Part of this stems from my unwillingness to count treadles when using a wheel, perhaps because neither my spindles or my espinners have a treadle. The other part is that twist angle has the same impact on yarn whether I spin thick or thin, while twists per inch (TPI) change as wraps per inch change, to get the same feel.

I am a huge fan of Mabel Ross - to the point of having two copies of her book Essentials of Yarn Design for Handspinners, and one of each of her others, Encyclopedia of Hand Spinning, Essentials of Hand Spinning, and Hand Spinners' Workbook: Fancy Yarns. (All links are affiliate links - I may benefit from you using them to make your next purchase.) She has lovely tables in her books of WPI, treadle counts, TPI, and twist angle. I distilled it down for myself, filtered through my experience, to:

• 15° → very soft fluffy yarn - usable but easy to split when knitting
• 25° → medium knitting yarn - great for hats and scarves
• 35° → durable yarn - lowest twist I like for socks
• 45° → crepe yarn - high twist weaving yarn that will crinkle the fabric woven to a balanced sett

You can buy specialty tools for measuring twist angle, or simply use a protractor. I've done both. In fact, Mabel Ross's book has a twist angle tool printed on cardstock in the back. The tools are handy because they contain the typical twist range, so you aren't going to measure in a way that mis-reports twist angle as 75°.

Protractors, however, are much easier to find in your local school supply aisle or online, like the one I found here. I can display it on my phone when I want to measure twist angle. With the protractor, I line my yarn up on the 0 line at the flat bottom, and keep it parallel to the 0 line as I slide it across toward the 90° on the other side.

The angle lines on the protractor tell you what twist they measure - those slanted like the middle of the S measure S-twist (counter-clockwise twist) and the other half, slanted like the middle of the Z measure Z-twist (clockwise twist). What about the 90° mark? I like to jest that it is for measuring corespun, as that has the fiber wrapping a core, perpendicular to the length of the yarn.

In the series of pictures that follows, you see me moving the yarn across to measure the ply twist, which here is S-twist. I am looking for the angle line that matches the angle of the strands twisting around each other.

If you agree with me, you will say this twine (it's what I had to hand for these images...) has a twist angle between 25° and 30°

I would use the other half of the protractor for Z twist.

I recently posted on twist in singles vs. twist in yarn plied from them. I usually use a ply-back to see the ply twist and help me decide on the appropriate amount of singles twist, rather than trying to directly measure twist angle in singles. I invite you to check out your current spin against a protractor and free yourself up from counting treadles.

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© April 13, 2026 by Ask The Bellwether, posted at http://askthebellwether.com/

Spinner's Alphabet: What begins with E?

By Amelia © April 6, 2026

My HansenCrafts miniSpinner Pro, 3900

E

is for e-spinner. E-spinners have long existed, I remember when I was learning to spin in 2001, the Roberta Eortl was popular as a plying tool. In fact, the early e-spinners seemed to mostly be focused on making plying take minimal time. However, they were not all that friendly for spinning in groups as they were pretty loud. I made a hunt in the early 2000's for a quiet e-spinner and came across the Womack Butterfly. It was both gorgeous and quiet - yay! Then HansenCrafts showed up on the scene and since then e-spinners have really taken off. Theirs was whisper-quiet, light, and very portable with the addition of a small battery pack.

Learning to use an e-spinner for spinning is different from a wheel or spindle. So if you already spin but want to start on an e-spinner, don't be surprised that there is still a learning curve. The key difference is that an e-spinner twists at a constant speed, while you can vary the speed of your wheel or spindle almost without thinking of it.

There is now a rich variety of e-spinners; I'm a huge HansenCrafts fan - not only because I teach Zoom workshops through them, but also because the wood is lovely. See 3900? yeah. Amazing. (3900 is its serial number, printed on the underside.) That said, the 3-d printed or plastic molded ones have their place. The Electric Eel Wheels are affordable and you can 3-d print extra bobbins. The Daedalus line has a huge following. Ashford already had an e-spinner but redesigned theirs to fit in this new landscape; Louet now offers the Jenn-E e-spinner. And there are others out there... but please, avoid the cheap knock-offs on Amazon. If it's a no-name e-spinner likely it's not going to have good manners.

The same advice I offer wheel spinners I offer you: look for a second-hand one; the mark-down is not as significant as it can be with wheels, but you may save a little and should also be able to re-sell it if it turns out not to be your dream e-spinner. I have mine with HansenCrafts #3900 that's for sure!

Related posts:

• Why Spin on an Electric Wheel? - shows my lovely Butterfly!
• How do I choose the Speed Setting on my E-spinner? - featuring HansenCrafts #3, so early that they were not yet making the flyers!
• There are several others as well, tangentially related: see these blog articles mentioning e-spinners

I'll leave you with two questions...

1. Do you have an e-spinner? Which one and what do you think of it (be kind!)?
2. What's your spinner's E?

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© April 6, 2026 by Ask The Bellwether, posted at http://askthebellwether.com/