Spinning and swatching Zwartbles: how I get to know a new yarn and fibre

A few years ago, I got some Zwartbles fleeces from a local smallholding, just a 10-minute drive from me here in south-west Wiltshire. I took a long time to skirt and sort it, and finally sent some off to a local mill to be processed – half into spinning fibre and half into yarn. Now that the wool is back, I thought I’d take you along as I spin, swatch, and sample my new batch of local Zwartbles wool.

See how I spin, swatch and sample my new local Zwartbles wool yarn and spinning fibre. 

As a knitter and spinner, I love getting to know a new yarn or fibre, so when I received this magnificent batch of my chocolatey Zwartbles British wool back from the mill, I thought I’d show you how I go about it. I’ll walk you through my process, starting with how I spun up some of the carded sliver with a backwards long draw method (which I've never really tried before) for a woollen-spun bouncy yarn, swatched some of the undyed, mill-spun DK yarn in stockinette and a cable pattern to see how it knits up, and then compared it with how my hand-spun is to knit. 

A very local British wool

As I mentioned, I got some Zwartbles fleeces from a very local farm a couple of villages away. It’s taken a long time to skirt and sort it, and clean it as best I could, but I finally sent some off to Rampisham Hill Farm Mill over in Dorset to be processed, and here it is. Half was prepared into carded sliver (which is really good for woollen spinning), and the other spun into a beautifully bouncy DK yarn.

At first glance, Zwartbles fleece looks black, but it’s actually a gorgeous, rich dark chocolate brown with some lighter, heathery flecks. I deliberately left some of these bits in the fleece when sorting it to give it a bit more character, and I’m super happy with the way it turned out. 

Admittedly, the sliver flew out the moment I made it live to my patreons, but I do have a few skeins of the undyed Zwartbles DK remaining on the website if you’d like some for your own yarn stash. 

Find the undyed Zwartbles DK yarn on my website

How I get to know a new yarn or fibre

When I work with a new yarn or spinning fibre, whether it’s a new one from a yarn company I’m working with, something from my own yarn stash, or a new fibre I’m trying out for the website shop, I like to spend time getting to know it. Sampling helps me understand what kind of project the yarn wants to become.

Since I have both the Zwartbles yarn and carded sliver, I started with a small sample spin, then swatched the mill-spun DK yarn and finally compared the knitted fabric to my handspun swatch. 

About my Zwartbles yarn and carded sliver

The Zwartbles sliver was scoured and carded but not gilled (gilling removes shorter fibres and aligns fibres into a more parallel preparation used for worsted spinning). All of the wool staples in this spinning fibre, then, are in every direction - perfect for trying out the backwards long draw method for woollen spinning.  

The yarn, on the other hand, is semi-worsted, so it was gilled but not combed. This means the fibres are mostly aligned, but not fully so. 

Spinning the Zwartbles fibre

As I’ve done a lot of fine spinning lately, I had to make a conscious effort not to go too thin with this handspun sample, instead aiming for a slightly heavier yarn. The backwards long draw method isn’t really something I have done before, and woollen spinning like this is always going to give a less consistent yarn in terms of thickness and texture than short forward draw worsted spinning. My spin wasn’t perfect, and there were moments where I was treddling too quickly whilst getting used to it, but I figured it was best to embrace the lumpiness.

Although it’s not best practice, I wound my single into a centre-pull ball to ply the ends together. It’s a method I’ve done frequently, and whilst it matters when you’re being particular about creating a yarn that is consistent and predictable (in a centre pull, one end gets more twist than the other as one is working its way around the ball and the other is coming straight out the middle), that is not the case here. I’m not aiming for perfection, I’m just aiming to get to know the fibre.

Once plied, I could see that my handspun definitely wasn’t going to be a smooth or consistent yarn, but it was definitely going to be lovely - with so much air trapped inside it was looking to be really nice and bouncy. I gave it a soak and a thwak and got to swatching with the mill-spun yarn whilst it dried. 

Swatching the mill-spun Zwartbles yarn

I had a few smaller skeins of yarn from the ends of the cones in addition to the larger 100g skeins, so I used these to swatch the yarn I got from the mill. 

The yarn is a three-ply DK, which makes it really nice and round, and because the Zwartbles fibre is really crimpy, it’s got quite a lot of spring to it. I began with a small stockinette swatch on 3.75mm needles to get a feel for the fabric. As a designer, I’m considering what the yarn will work well for, rather than trying to match an existing pattern. I like to let the yarn tell me what it wants to be made into, rather than the other way around. 

I cast on 26 stitches using a knitted cast-on as standard, and knit my swatch in stockinette. I avoid garter stitch edges since they can distort the knitted fabric slightly, giving a bit of a misleading gauge, especially in smaller swatches. The first few rows tell me a lot about the fabric - and often I am naughty and tend to make swatches that aren’t big enough - but for this video, I knit until I had 10cm.

After finishing the swatch, even without blocking, I could see that the 3.75mm needles I chose were the right size for me. It had good structure and looked like it would be really nice for decently structured knits. The dark colour means it won’t be great for showing fiddly, detailed stitches well, but I did think it would be perfect for cables. 

So, I knit up a cable swatch too. I cast on the same number of stitches (26) and used the same needle size (3.75mm), and the resulting cable swatch is quite a bit narrower than the stockinette. Which makes sense because the cables pull the fabric in where the stitches cross over each other.

Swatching my handspun Zwartbles yarn

Then it was time to knit up my handspun yarn. It turned out quite a bit thicker than the mill-spun and pretty uneven, but wonderfully bouncy. To accommodate the handspun’s fatness, I used 5mm needles and knit a small stockinette swatch to get an idea of the knitted fabric. After the first few rows, I could see the stitches were a little gappy. Sometimes it's worth persevering as the yarn can really bloom and fill up all the gaps, but on this occasion, I think a 4.5mm would have been better for a slightly denser fabric. 

Assessing swatches after blocking

Once the blocking was done, I had a stack of three swatches - and I love them! I’m really really pleased with how the knitted fabric has turned out. 

The mill-spun yarn works well on 3.75mm needles, and the cable swatch looks lovely. Now that the swatch has been blocked, the knitted cables do look slightly less crisp than I expected, as the yarn softened a bit as it soaked, but I think it would work nicely on a garment or a knitted accessory, like mittens.

My hunch with the handspun was correct - I do think I could have gone down to a 4.5mm needle. Knit on 5mm the fabric looks a bit gappy, but I do think it would make a lovely breathable, lightweight jumper - and it’s quite trendy at the moment to knit at a fairly loose gauge. In general, it’s turned out to be a really lovely fabric, and it does make me want to spin more to improve my long draw technique because it makes such a lovely, light, bouncy, happy yarn.

My most local British wool yet.

I’m so proud of this local yarn and spinning fibre. The wool comes from a farm just a few villages away from me in Southwest Wiltshire, and the mill, Rampisham Hill Farm, is about an hour away in Dorset. Seeing it come to life and working with a yarn that is my most local one yet has been so exciting, and I hope sharing my approach for swatching and sampling has been useful for any knitter/spinner/crafter trying new yarn or fibre.

Now, what about you? Do you have a process for exploring a new yarn or spinning fibre? Do you have any little knitting or spinning rituals you complete every time? I’d love to hear how you approach things. 

That’s all from me for now, until next time! 

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