Just whack it!

My friend Petra from Germany is just getting into spinning. She has a drop spindle that she has been working with. She just finished plying her first yarn and I was telling her my method for washing my yarn and just had to post these pictures. As I mentioned in an earlier post I have been saving up all my leftover fiber from carding and have been spinning on that. I finished my fourth bobbin and decided to process the 4 skeins yesterday to show Petra the process. I soak my fiber in hot soapy tap water for a good 20 minutes and then rinse in hot water for another 20 minutes. The yarn then goes right into my washing machine on the spin cycle to get all the excess water out. This first picture was taken right after I took the skeins out of the machine.

The yarn has a ton of different fibers in it. Granted my carder sees mostly merino and bamboo. I have also been carding alpaca, cashmere, mohair, yak, corriedale, and romney these past 6 months. I also spun this yarn in a single ply, so as you can see it had a ton of energy and twist in that yarn. This next picture was taken after whacking the skein on a chair seat a few times. It took the majority of all that unwanted extra twist right out.

I then let my yarn dry to a bit of tension on a drying rack that my husband made for me. Normally I will just let the skeins hang straight down and dry, but beings this was a single ply with a ton of energy in it drying it with a bit of tension will help to take out any extra twist.


That is all there is to it.
I also wanted to make mention that on my Ravelry group I am trying to organize a fiber swap. If you are interested check the group for further details and let me know. Should be a lot of fun and a great way to try out some different fibers and get to know some fellow spinners.