Spinner's Alphabet: What begins with D?

By Amelia © March 23, 2026

spindle long-draw

D

is for Drafting Style. Do you draft woolen or worsted or something in-between? Woolen draft is a long-draw draft, usually to allow maximum air in the yarn. Worsted draft is a short-draw draft, pinched continuously to minimize air in the yarn. Both can be fast; both can be fun. Most folks are somewhere in-between in their drafting style.

Worsted drafting is easier to learn and what we typically learn when we start. You pull out about 1/3 the staple length of the fiber you are drafting, then slide your fingers over that so twist follows behind them. Pull-and-slide repeats to do the drafting. Oh yeah - "staple length" is the length of the individual fibers. So much vocabulary! This explanation also simplifies the overall process a bit - there is a drafting area sometimes called a drafting triangle though not all of us see the triangle where you are already attenuating (drafting down from original diameter) the fiber supply. That final 1/3 staple length length is at the front of the drafting area, closer to your spinning tool of choice, and is as fine as you need to have it to get the yarn diameter you want once twist enters it. One key features of worsted draft: twist is never in the drafting area; to make this happen, you maintain continuous squeezing with the forward hand, even when it's not pulling fiber out of the drafting area.

Woolen drafting is also called long draw - if it's two four letter words you know it's going to be challenging. This is an amazing draft, when well done the spinner looks like a ballerina swinging their arm gracefully away from their wheel and then toward to feed on the yarn. You can do this with two hands where the forward hand gates (squeezes and releases) the twist so you can draft against the twist in the yarn but limit how fast the twist enters; or with one hand, where you have to move your hand back, drafting out the fiber at the same speed twist is entering. With woolen drafting, it is the twist in the drafting area, and the speed that twist is entering it that controls the yarn diameter. So, you draft by pulling back and letting the twist keep the fiber in place. Your hands end up wayyyyy more than a staple length apart doing this, and if you are doing it with just one hand well, that hand ends up far away from your wheel/e-spinner/support spindle.

My default drafting method leans toward woolen - that's my go-to, but if the fiber is not cooperating I may end up doing shorter draws or what I like to call leap-frog drafting, where I do a short forward draft but don't maintain the squeeze. So when my hand leaps back to the end of the new drafting, I have to give a quick twist to remove twist from the drafting area - mimicing worsted's no-twist-in-the-drafting-area policy so that I can maintain yarn diameter. Yes, even on a suspended spindle - it's supported long-draw in that case since gravity would cause drafting to be far too quick.

Two questions for you to ponder ...

1. What's your drafting style? does it vary based on what you are spinning on?
2. What other D's come to mind for our spinning dictionary?

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© March 23, 2026 by Ask The Bellwether, posted at http://askthebellwether.com/