I am trying to find out if it’s worth my time trying to spin up some yarn and try sell it on eBay.
My goal would be to make 12WPI yarn, 2 ply, undyed, and 50 gram skeins.
It would bloom after the dye work would be put into it, or when blocking it in.
The fiber would be Merino wool, because this is all I can get in enough quantity.
Do any of you work with yarn like this? Is it wrong gauge, or does it need color? Do I need block the skein before selling it? I would love to spin it up, tie it off without making it wet.
I wonder if @mullerslanefarm @Shintoga @FluffyYarn can help with this. I don’t know if they have experience with sales but maybe.
1 Like
@brassfitting Different people like different colors and/or even natural colored yarns that they can dye themselves. Different people prefer different weights of yarn. Personally, I like using 9-15 WPI for knitting or crocheting, and using 15-30 WPI for weaving.
If you’re not going to dye the yarn, you will want to wet finish it so it will bloom (and shrink). Your customers will not be happy if the yarn they bought changes structure after they work up the yarn and wet finish it.
If you will be dyeing the yarn, you will want to wet finish it so all excess dye has been removed. Your customers will not be happy if the dye comes off on their hands when they’re working it or after they wet finish it.
“It’s not finished until it’s wet finished.” 
If by ‘blocking’ they skein you mean ‘weight it’ while wet, then I wouldn’t. Wet wool stretches. Tensioned wool can remove extra twist while weighted or stretched. Once the wool becomes wet, it will go back to its natural structure. For a customer, that would mean their object can be skewed or shrink a lot more than expected. Wet finish and let it dry naturally.
You could spin the yarn, skein up 50 grams, and offer it for sale. The question you’re asking is should you.
If I was a customer that spent good money on handspun yarn and the dye transferred to my hands or the object I spent time on knitting/weaving, et al shrunk up more than I expected or twisted my project, I would be upset. I would contact you for a full or partial refund and/or leave a negative review of your product.
That said, if you really do only want to spin and skein off without wet finishing it, make sure you say so in your description so your customers won’t be surprised.
It’s difficult enough to get people to buy your product for the first time. By offering a properly finished yarn will get you more return customers.
Happy Spinning!
4 Likes
Good advise. It must be wet finished before offering it. And, make sure it don’t bleed.
My current plan is spin up the 50 g skeins, undyed, wet finish them. I would be using wuzzing on them. Dry them out in front of my fan. This way it only takes 3 or 4 hours get dry.
1 Like
Wuzzing is taking the wet skein, and spinning above your head. You grab hold of it spinning it, then change spots and spin some more. Until you have gone around the skein spinning it. About 4 places.
1 Like
Perfect name for it! I do that but never knew what to call it! Thanks!
1 Like
There is a market for hand spun yarn but there is a lot of competition for customers for it, which limits what you can ask for it, ask to much and it will not sell, ask to little and you can’t even afford to pay for the fiber and at least some of the time it took to spin it. I spin for myself or to give as a gift to a friend who knits (my dentist is a knitter and I always take her a skein of hand spun yarn when I go in for my visit :P) or knit my hand spun yarn into items for family and special friends. We will not get the time we put into to it out of. I think spinning white fiber and then dying it makes it worth more, but only if the colors are appealing to the customers. There is a lot of work that goes into spinning and selling. You might check, if you have a small owner owned yarn shop if they would be willing to buy hand spun yarn. They will probably jury it to see if it meets whatever standard they have set up for buying things from others. There are some stores that will sell your handmade things (I would count hand spun yarn in that) and take a percentage when it sells. I did some knitting at one time for a yarn shop knitting samples for patterns they were selling to show how the yarn worked with the pattern because the store hopes they will buy the yarn for the pattern there too. The store paid me pretty well because they knew the worth of my skill, and they had customers who loved the pattern but didn’t want to knit it ask if I would knit them one and I did, again they paid me pretty well for that. But generally knitting for people who don’t knit don’t really understanding the cost and skill and time, when they can buy preknit sweaters from big box stores for so much less.
2 Likes