WhirldWorks Farm
A small homestead and Debouillet sheep farm in Central Texas
Hand Spun Yarn
Anyone can walk into a big-box store, or even smaller craft stores and pick up a package of machine spun yarn. It’s definitely a quick and easy way to get back to your own crafts, and usually at a pretty reasonable price too. Then there are those stores that specialize in selling solely or predominantly hand-crafted yarn and other great fiber items. It doesn’t take long once inside such a store to feel that perhaps someone may be trying to take advantage of your pocketbook. There are deals to be found for sure, but the price tags on these hand-made goods can seem alarmingly high, on occasion. Let me assure you that (to the best of my knowledge) nobody is pulling in easy money through the sale of these items.
In fact, for the most part, hand-crafted fiber goods are a labor of love and there is a great deal more attention, thoughtfulness, quality, and so much more poured into them. If you are not quite convinced (as I was when we began this journey), please allow me to share the amount of work and devotion that went into what may seem a simple ball of yarn. This is a story from my wonderful wife who I have watched working diligently at this project for about a year:
There are many projects going on simultaneously around our home, but at some point I started keeping notes on some of them. We had our first batch of wool processed into roving at Independence Fiber Mill in 2018. For this particular project I noted that I started spinning 4 oz of Winton’s wool on May of 2018. The final note on this project shows that I finished spinning it on September 1st of 2019. Now, keep in mind that during this time I’ve been raising a 6 year old (now 7) and gave birth to another beautiful boy who is now about to turn a year old. We also spend a lot of our “spare” time managing and caring for our very own flock of Debouillet Sheep, several chickens and our beautiful homestead.
To be honest, I also took a few frustration breaks due to the VM in the wool and losing the yarn ends more times that I could or would want to count. In hindsight, I probably spun it finer than I should have, a bit finer than sport weight for sure, but it is part of the learning process. At any rate, I was so happy to celebrate the final spin of the wheel that brought this stage of the project to a satisfactory end. After I spun the initial roving into a single strand, I then double plied it and then measured it out on the niddy noddy that I bought at Yarnorama in Paige earlier this year. I tied of the ends and removed it from the niddy noddy ( note you are supposed to wrap one side on the arm that DOESN’T have a knob on it, so it can easily be removed.
Next I soaked it in clean, steaming hot water (to set the twist) until it cooled enough to remove it. I love the lanolin smell and even though it’s very clean just the tiniest bit of lanolin is enough to get to enjoy that smell again. Now that I think about it, I should probably save the water next time for a luxurious foot bath. Once the yarn was dried, I put it on the scale. The final weight was 2.5 oz and 595 yards, plus an additional .3 oz and 75 yards for a grand total of 2.8 oz and 670 yards!
Of all the projects I have done so far, there really is no price I could assign to this yarn that would help me to let it go to someone else. In fact, this is going into my private collection and am definitely going to make it into something very special!
WhirldWorks Farm 
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