Core Spinning with Judith MacKenzie

Judith provided the espinner retreat participants a lesson on core spinning.  She had us pick out some silk yarn in two colors and wind them onto 6" Schacht weaving bobbins.  The silk yarn is hand dyed and came from the Fiber Addict.


After winding our bobbins, we were given a demonstration on our miniSpinner.  Judith used dyed mohair locks to show us how to core spin.


She first tied on one of the silk yarns (these are very fine 2 ply yarns) to the leader.  She was very clear that we wanted to be spinning in the same direction as the silk yarn (or any core yarn you choose).  She set the brake tension on high so as to draw in the yarn faster.


A trick to determine the direction of the twist is to lay the yarn in between your thumb and forefinger.  If the slant of the yarn twist matches the direction of your thumb than that is the way the yarn is twisted.


So here is an example with really big yarn.  The first photo is of my left hand and the second photo is of my right hand.  You can easily see that the slants are going to the left.  That means you should be spinning to the left to increase the twist.

The reason to do this is to prevent the core yarn from being unplyed and also to increase the twist to allow for untwisting when the yarn is plyed back on itself.  Because the core yarn is already a 2 ply, when plyed on itself, it becomes a 4 ply.


Judith just gradually added mohair locks to her core yarn and ended up with a quite soft and fluffy yarn.


She also showed us her secret bag of duck down that she got from a friend for a Christmas present.  (Who else can you think of that is happy to get a grocery bag full of duck down for a present?)  For these small pieces of down, she placed both bobbins of silk on a lazy kate (her favorite at the moment is the Will Taylor clever kate as seen here).  She tied both yarns together and with her fingers slightly open started adding the duck down in between the two core yarns trapping the duck down.


When plied back on itself, it definitely is a novelty yarn.  You can see both samples here.