How to Turn Wool Into Yarn

Making your own yarn from wool is an incredibly rewarding experience and can be accomplished with a variety of animal fibers. Regardless of whether you choose sheep, angora, llama or alpaca with which to make your yarn, following these step-by-step instructions will result in a skein of handmade wool that you can transform into the knitting project of your choosing.

Things You'll Need

• Wool, dyed or not, but cleaned and carded Spinning wheel Bobbin

Instructions

1. Begin with wool that has been cleaned and carded into a "bat." As the name implies, it looks very much like the cotton batting that you purchase in fabric stores and use as a filler in pillows, blankets and such. (Carding is the process of combing the wool after it has been cleaned, so that it will more readily and easily be converted into yarn.)

2. Take the bat, and slowly pull out about 1 1/2 feet of fiber from your wool, creating a preliminary strand of yarn to thread into your bobbin.

3. Feed this thread, or draft, through the spinning wheel, and tie it to the bobbin (if you need more length, pull more from the bat).

4. Hold the bat in your hand, feeding the draft onto the wheel as you pedal. There should be enough tension that it is easily pulled by the wheel; if not, you may adjust the tension as necessary depending on the style/model of spinning wheel that you are using.

5. Now that you have fed all of your bat into the wheel, your wool is resting on the bobbin in the form of handmade yarn and is ready for use. Happy knitting!