Lately, I’ve been enamored by the many patterns that use lots of different mini skeins, and if you’re going to have all the fun of knitting with minis, why not do it with handspun minis? Not only is there variation in color, but there’s some light variation in texture that way too and, well, it’s handspun. If you’ve knit with handspun before, you know what I’m mean.

I’m just at the beginning of making what I hope will be lots of different colors of handspun minis for the shop, and it occurred to me that I could share a couple shortcuts I came up with along the way for those of you who spin in case you want to spin some minis too.

The first time I spun multiple minis, I wanted them to weigh the same amount (20 grams), but I didn’t want to have to switch bobbins for each mini, and nor did I want to try to weigh the skeins at the end and divide them by weight. That can be done with a scale and a swift, but it’s a pain, and it can be less than fully accurate, especially with such small skeins.

So how did I solve this little problem? Let me show you.

My pink merino top was calling to me, so I decided to start with that. After I weighed out all my ingredients to make a 2 ounce batt, I started carding the merino. It’s always good to lay a base of wool on the drum carder because it comes off more easily than other types of fiber. After I added enough merino to cover the width of the drum carder, I started adding some hand-dyed mulberry silk as well.

I added multiple layers of merino and silk, and then I added some pink angelina for sparkle. Sparkle requires a bit of prudence. It’s really too light to weigh, so you have to eyeball it. If you add too little, you don’t have enough sparkle. If you add too much, it can get gaudy or even rough as the firestar and angelina aren’t as soft as merino, alpaca, silk, etc. This is how much I used in each batt:

After I finished adding all of the merino wool, mulberry silk, and angelina, it was time to remove the batt from the carder. I’m using an Ashford carder with 72 teeth per inch. When I first got it, I thought it would just be a stop-gap until I could afford something with finer teeth per inch since that’s what everyone recommends for the fine fibers I use. However, I have found this to be really pretty perfect for me. I think if the tpi (teeth per inch) was much higher, I might find it difficult to make my blends. Now, if I could afford a motorized one, I think that would be good given how many art batts I make. Some day!

I don’t have a doffer, so here I am dividing the batt with my hand-dandy screwdriver. I My husband got me this screwdriver because I complained that I could never find one when I needed it, and it’s the only one that tends to stick around since my sons eschew its use for some reason.

I break off about an inch at a time. I don’t know why, but I love the way art batts look standing up like this right before I take them off.

I have tried a lot of different ways of taking art batts of my drum carder, but this is my favorite. This is a pair of plastic chopsticks. A lot of people use wooden dowls or just take the batt off gently without any tools, but I find these chopsticks work the best for me.

I make sure the ends of all the fiber are sticking straight up, and then I put one chopstick in front of the fiber and one chopstick in back. I put one hand on each end and roll the fiber and the chopsticks together going away from the front of the drum carder.

Here’s the “cotton candy” on a stick. Sorry for the fuzzy photo. It’s tough to take a picture with one hand. As I go along, I turn the carder a little bit at a time.

When I’ve wound the whole batt onto the chopsticks, I gently pull one chopstick out which loosens up the tube of fiber, and then I unroll it. As you can see, there’s a little bit of fiber left on the drum, but I find this leaves fewer bits than other methods I have tried, and it makes a nice batt too.

Here I am unrolling the art batt off the chopstick.

I made two art batts, which is enough for 5 mini skeins with a bit to spare.

Now onto the spinning. I took my spinning wheel out to the back porch so my little ones could play in the fresh air while I spun. Here’s my youngest heading for some toys.

I took my scale so I could weigh out the 20 grams I needed for each skein. I actually made each one about 21 grams to account for a bit of wastage and because I’d rather a little over the 20 grams instead of a little under since I’m going to be selling these.

Here I am starting to spin. I’m using my Lendrum wheel with the plying head and bobbin. I find the standard bobbins hold just over 2 ounces or 56 grams, but I wanted to spin all 100 grams at once, and I wasn’t planning to ply the yarn, so the plying head and bobbin were what I needed.

It seems like there are a lot of good spinning wheel makers out there these days, but I can’t recommend my Lendrum enough. One of the things I love about fiber arts is the fact that even the tools are made by hand much of the time, and that is certainly the case for Lendrum wheels, which are made in Canada and just so thoughtfully designed. This wheel has seen almost daily use for 11 years now!

After I had spun for a little while, I wanted to make sure I was spinning the DK weight I was looking for. Isn’t this lambie wpi tool cute? I got it from The Clay Sheep on Etsy, and it has served me well for several years.

As you can see, I got 14 wraps per inch this time, which is at the finer end of DK. I usually measure a few times in the course of spinning a skein of yarn. I am finding that if the yarn contains much silk, the wraps per inch tend to be a bit more accurate than the weight per pound, but I usually cross-check both to determine the weight of the yarn.

Regarding the question of wraps per inch, there’s a great website on all things fiber arts called Ask the Bellwether. If you have never come across her website, you should definitely make a visit. It’s a tremendous resource, but the best of all is the fact that she took the time to take the Craft Yarn Council standards of yarn weight and add wraps per inch so those standards can be used more easily with handspun yarn or to substitute handspun yarn in a pattern made for commercial yarn. I have done my own research on this issue, and I found her standards make perfect sense, so I adopted them. Here’s her blog post discussing the issue, and here’s what I use for all my yarn:

Craft Yarn Council #	Yarn Weight	Wraps per Inch
0	Lace Weight	24+
1	Fingering	19-23
2	Sport Weight	15-18
3	DK	12-14
4	Worsted	9-11
5	Bulky	7-8
6	Super Bulky	3-6
7	Jumbo	0-2

While I’m on the topic of wraps per inch, I love Ravelry for so many things, but I believe the wraps per inch they list for their yarn weights is way off the mark. I discussed this with other spinners at one point, and they told me they just ignore the WPI when listing their yarn on Ravelry. I do too out of necessity., but I sure would love it if they would fix their wraps per inch to match the standard. Our dog, Pfifltrigg, who came to visit while I was spinning, clearly agrees.

Anyway, I digress. Here I am spinning once again. The lighter areas are the silk. As you can see, the yarn is thick and thin, which is what I was aiming for. Frankly, I love letting the fiber do “what it wants” instead of trying to make absolutely even yarn. I can get pretty close to absolutely even, but I find it trying and stressful instead of fun and meditative like most spinning, and frankly, what’s the point? If you want perfectly even yarn, you can just buy commercial yarn. I just recently came across the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi, which means rejoicing in a bit of imperfection, and I think it is perfect for handspun yarn.

Here I stopped to check the twist. If you are planning to ply the yarn, it’s good to add extra twist since some of the twist will come out as you ply. For a singles, though, you want enough twist to make it strong enough to hold together but not a lot more because it makes the yarn (and whatever you make from the yarn of course) a bit less soft. The twist here was just right.

Now, this innocuous piece of blue bamboo fiber is what inspired me to write this blog post in the first place.

When I got to the end of the first 21 gram skein, I used this bamboo fiber to show where the first skein ended and the second one began. I recommend using a very different color from the yarn you are spinning so you don’t miss it when you are skeining off the yarn. I did this between each of the five skeins.

When it was time to skein off the yarn, I used my swift, and each time I got to a blue yarn marker, I broke off the yarn, tied it, added yarn ties, measured the yardage, and repeated with the next skein.

Next, I washed the yarn and hung it to dry. Here’s the finished yarn all ready to go:

This yarn can be found here along with my other mini skeins.

Have you found other methods to divide yarn on a bobbin? What do you think of the question of wraps per inch for handspun yarn? I’d love to hear from you.

One more thing. Here are a few nifty patterns featuring mini skeins:

Mini Madness Shawl by Angie Kimel – I think this one looks lovely, and I’m hoping to make one myself soon.

Mini Mania Scarf by Sarah Core – This one uses tiny 5 g minis, so it would make a great stash buster.

Mini Meltdown by Rachel Henry – This one uses fingering-weight yarn and short rows to make a lovely cowl/infinity scarf.

Loop by Casapinka – This one is on my short list of patterns I have to make. In fact, I am going to be listing some gray fingering-weight yarn in my shop today that would be perfect for this!

In the meantime, happy fiber artistry!