Charlotte Pemberton
Start with the Fleece, Not the Pattern
The best scarves begin in a field, not a wool shop. Before you fret over stitch counts or needle sizes, decide whose wool you want wrapped around your neck through February. A fleece from a breed raised a few miles from your door holds the weather of that place in it, and the yarn you spin from it will feel quite unlike anything wound onto a plastic cone in a craft chain.
Buy a whole fleece if you can, from a smallholder, a farm gate noticeboard or a county show. Expect between 1 kg and 2.5 kg, which is far more than one scarf needs — enough for mittens, a hat and next winter's presents besides. Ask to see it spread out before you commit. Look for a sound staple: long enough to draft easily, springy when you pull a lock, and free of the yellow tinge that means damp storage.
Breed choice does most of the work, so a few notes are worth having:
- Shetland — fine, soft and available in every shade from moorit to shaela. Spins into a light, warm yarn that blooms beautifully after washing.
- Bluefaced Leicester — a long, lustrous staple and the kindest introduction for a beginner, because it drafts almost by itself and shows off ribbing and cables crisply.
- Ryeland — dense and springy, traditionally spun for hosiery. It gives a sturdy scarf that shrugs off a coat collar rubbing against it all winter.
- Herdwick — coarser and famously hardwearing. Better for an outer layer than against the skin, and lovely blended with something softer.
- Jacob — often multicoloured, with a fleece that can be sorted into dark and light for a naturally striped scarf without a single drop of dye.
Skirting and Washing Without Felting It
Spread the fleece on a clean sheet in the garden and skirt it: pull away the belly wool, the daggy bits, the brittle tips and any second cuts — short clippings that will pill in the finished yarn. Work in daylight; you will spot far more than you would indoors. Shake it well to release dust and harvest debris. This is the tedious part, and the one that determines whether you enjoy the spinning.
Wash in small batches, roughly 100 g at a time, in mesh laundry bags. Use water at about 55°C — as hot as your hands can bear — with a good squeeze of washing-up liquid. Lay the bags in gently, press them under, and then do not touch them for twenty minutes. Agitation plus heat is how you make felt. Drain, repeat with fresh water and detergent if the water runs grey, then rinse twice at the same temperature. Spin the bags in a salad spinner or a machine's spin cycle, and dry the wool on a rack in a warm, airy shed. It will smell faintly of lanolin for weeks, which is no bad thing.
Carding, Then Spinning
Once dry, tease the locks open by hand and card them. Hand cards suit small batches and give you rolags — little rolled cylinders that spin into a soft, airy woollen yarn with plenty of halo. A drum carder is quicker and produces flat batts, better for a smooth worsted yarn with real stitch definition. If you want a scarf with drape, card worsted; if you want one that traps heat like a peat fire, card woollen.
A drop spindle will do the whole job. Fifty grams a session is a realistic pace for a beginner, so a 200 g scarf is a fortnight of evenings rather than a weekend. Aim for a single of roughly 12 wraps per inch around a ruler, then ply two of them together in the opposite direction to about 8 or 9 wraps per inch. That is a good aran weight. Wash the skeins in cool water and hang them with a little weight to set the twist, and you will have yarn that behaves predictably on the needles.
Knitting the Scarf
Skein-wound yarn must be balled, and hand-spun yarn must be swatched. Cast on twenty stitches in your chosen pattern, knit a good 15 cm square, wash it as you would the finished scarf, and measure it dry. Hand-spun relaxes, and a swatch that lies to you will cost you a scarf.
For a 20 cm wide scarf in your aran-weight hand-spun, try 45 stitches on 5 mm needles in garter stitch, or 44 in mistake rib — work k2, p2, but shift the pattern by one stitch every row for a broken, nubbly texture that suits uneven yarn. Knit to about 160 cm, or until the yarn runs low, then cast off loosely. A garter-stitch scarf in hand-spun needs no blocking beyond a cool rinse and a lie flat on a towel.
Finishing and Looking After It
Darn the ends in on the wrong side, split the plies and weave in opposing directions so nothing works loose. Do not trim too close. Wear it, and notice how the texture changes: the first fortnight it will soften at the neck where your coat rubs, and the halo will lift a little. That is the fleece still doing its work.
Wash it by hand, cool, with a wool detergent, and dry it flat away from a radiator. Store it folded in a drawer with lavender and a block of cedar, and check it in September before the moths do. Spin two skeins from the same fleece next year, and you will knit a scarf that remembers the field it came from — and the season you made it in.
