Lacing the Flyer

Someone on Ravelry mentioned that there weren’t too many results when doing a google search for “Lacing the Flyer” and I decided that it was time to start this spinning/knitting/photo/life blog with a post, FINALLY.   The site is sort of bare for the meantime, design wise, but I’m working on that, honest.

So, Lacing the Flyer.   This is a great technique to make the take-up of yarn less aggressive when spinning a fine yarn or when spinning at the core of a fresh, empty  bobbin.   In effect, you lace or pull  the spun wool (or leader if you’re just starting a new project) around the pegs just as if you were lacing up a shoe with only one side of a shoelace.   There are so many ways to do this, so I’m just going to show you the way that I do it and what works for me.   I’m not an expert, but I like to think that with spinning and knitting, what works for you personally is what works best and it’s fun to share  techniques and see how other people do things.    The wheel pictured here is a Spinolution Mach 1.
This wheel has pegs at the front that work out perfectly for lacing up the flyer at one point.   I took the wool off the bobbin and  down along the outside of the row of pegs and then around the front of the right peg and the back of the left peg, coming around to the ‘orifice’ in front.   The orifice on this wheel is a big hook instead of a more traditional tube or hole type orifice.

Here I’ve added another set of zig-zag lacing in the middle of the flyer.   This varies wheel to wheel, so you may not have those two front pegs to zig-zag across.   For this to work – you need to have space between your laced wool and the wool on the bobbin.   Typically, for me, by the time I reach the point where the bobbin wool is touching the laced wool, I don’t need to lace that back part at all anymore.   You can zig-zag as many times as necessary in order to reduce the take-up to a manageable level.

Naturally, this is no substitute for changing the tension (this one uses a tension knob), but when you’ve run out of tension to let up, this is a great way to ease the take up.