How to: The “Fibre Sandwich” Game!

Who It’s For

Are you in need of some handspinning inspiration, or are looking for a fun fibre arts group activity? Then you need the Fibre Sandwich Game! This is a great idea for spinners or felters. Pool small amounts of spinning fibres in varied colours, textures and types, and you get to take home a chunk of “fibre sandwich” to spur your creativity.

How It Works

To make the fibre sandwich work, each spinner needs to bring along a small amount of fibre (25-50g), which makes things manageable. It will quickly look like a lot, even if there’s just a few of you! Find your handspinning inspiration by mixing different fibre types. For example, you could use wools, silk, alpaca or mohair. A random mix works well for this activity, because it creates a surprising and interesting combination of textures in your finished yarn. So, give it a go with a few spinning-mad friends! Alternatively, if you have scraps of colours and fibres at home, you can use the same process to make your own experimental handspinning blend.

When our handspinning meetup (“Danske Spindere” on Ravelry) learned about this game, it was because we had a fantastic teacher in Bev Tilson of the “New Zealand Hermit Sheep” Ravelry group. We had a brilliant day of handspinning inspiration, chatting, a potluck lunch and creating our “fibre sandwiches” together.

Step 1

Our group split into two teams of five in order to make things manageable. We took small tufts of fibre so that together, we could create circular layers of fiber. This had the benefit of practicality for standing around a table placing fibres in the middle of the group. Making the sandwich in this way also makes the fibres easier to divide once the sandwich is complete. Here’s the start of our sandwich, with our small fibre stashes at the sides:

Step 2

Just keep building up those layers! At some point it will look a bit high and fluffed up- just squish it down a bit and add more. Here’s some of the handspinning group hard at work.

Step 3

Keep going until all your fibre is used up, and you have something approximating a Sesame Street monster sitting on your table top.

Step 4

Divide the sandwich! You’ll probably need a scale for this. Divide the whole thing down the middle like a sandwich and give each member of your handspinning group an equal wedge. Here’s my slice.

Spinning Challenge

I took my slice of wooly sandwich home and there were lots of ingredients in there! As far as I can remember, we had merino tops and some ultra soft New Zealand wool (gifted by Bev). Also in the pile was Jacob wool, some natural Icelandic, and silk. Some of it was soft and some was hairy. A few bits were still “in the grease”. I wondered what it would be like to spin with.

I spun the yarn as thinly as I could, which was tricky in places. This was because of the varying textures and fibre lengths. Despite this challenge, it was fabulous to spin with so many colours. I also really enjoyed seeing how the different tones and textures blended together. The yarn was spun as a single, then chain-plied to create a 3-ply yarn. I skeined it all up and soaked it to set the twist of the yarn, hung it to dry and…

The Finished Yarn

Hey Presto! Here is the finished result, a 50g skein. After wondering for a long while what to knit with it, I knitted a pair of short wristwarmers. The finished fabric was heavy and dense, but satisfying and warm. The best part is, when I wear them I remember that day of creativity. Most of all, I remember the shared ideas and fibres that went into the finished project.

Happy Knitting!

Rosie x