Heart Lab: Jill Draper

Jill Draper makes the yummiest and the squishiest handspun yarns... they look good enough to eat!! I don't know the first thing about hand-spinning, so here's Jill to give us newbies a little peek at how it's all done...


Step 1. Wind off 4 oz balls from the giant bag of roving: 5 min

Step 2. Soak the balls of wool b/c they need to be wet to absorb the dye : 3+ hours (although they do this alone - no supervision necessary)

Step 3. Dye the wool using acid dyes & set it with heat : 1 hour

Step 4. Hang the wool on drying racks - outside if it's warm inside w/ fans when it's cool or rainy out : 2-3 days depending on humidity

Step 5. Pre-draft the wool - basically like pulling apart string cheese to get the roving into thinner pieces to spin : 30 min

Step 6. Spin the singles, each ply is spun separately onto its on bobbin to be plied together with it's mate during the next step : 3-4 hours

Step 7. Change the head of my spinning wheel to the plying head & ply the singles together : 2-3 hours

Step 8. Wind the yarn onto a contraption called a niddy noddy that also measures the length of the hank : 15 min

Step 9. Weigh the finished hanks : 5 min

Step 10. Make the labels & label each hank : 15 min

Make sure you visit Jill's shop at jilldrapermakesstuff.etsy.com!

Thanks Jill!!