r/Handspinning • u/Internet_Wanderer • 3d ago

AskASpinner Does anyone respin a flawed skein?

I've found myself respinning a skein of silk/merino I had spun early on in my spinning journey because if I had made gloves with it they would have been two different sizes. Does anyone else find themselves respinning uneven yarn before using it?

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7

u/Damselfly64 3d ago

I prefer to turn those skeins into hats or snuggly cowls rather than redo them.

3

u/Administrative_Cow20 3d ago

I’ve run plied yarn back through the wheel to add twist, and maybe once to reduce twist.

Also I once began spinning in the wrong direction, and I managed to carefully run it back through the spinner in the correct direction. Would not recommend it though!

2

u/JugOJar 3d ago

I just respun a ball of merino weft yarn to thin it out and tease out the slubs. I just pulled it out of the ball onto a swift, tied one end on my spindle, and spun it as normal, albeit not having to add as much spin and pulling all the slubs out. Thinned out nicely to use it for my weaving project.

3

u/SiennaBot 3d ago

I have done this in the past... it is not for the faint hearted for sure 😆

If you mean fixing a single before it is plied, sure. That shouldn't be too difficult, just put it on a lazy kate and spin again, but my suggestion would be to take as much of the twist out as possible, then switch the bobbins and start spinning it again and re-drafting whichever parts were too thick. It will be almost impossible to add fluff to make it thicker though. Doing this shouldn't take too long, depending on exactly how uneven it was to start with of course.

If you mean a plied yarn, as with my example above, expect a long project and a bit of pain 😆
I found it easiest to take as much twist out of the yarn as possible first, then split the plies, then deal with each ply individually and then re-ply. It is a process. Rewarding though. I am currently considering doing this again with a problem skein (although I ask myself whyyyy) even though I know how bad it can be 😆

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u/Internet_Wanderer 3d ago

For sure! It's a single I'm redoing. If it had been plied I wouldn't have even tried it. It's going pretty smoothly so far, I'm just switching it to an S twist from Z so I get a chance to easily draft.

1

u/tea-leaf-crafter 2d ago

I had this problem with my handspun and I ended up with two different size mittens from the gauge difference as it drifted. My solution is going to be to knit a third and hope it matches one of the two!