Spinning Hemp

I’ve got a couple of spinning projects going at the moment – the one I’m going to focus on today is the hemp I’m spinning. I bought this hemp recently from Morro Fleece Works and I’m spinning it on my Schacht Matchless spinning wheel. I’ll confess right now that I didn’t really know how to deal with this fiber when I started, but I was inspired to try spinning it because it’s the fiber that was chosen this month for the Garden Spinning Ravelry group‘s monthly spin-along.

There doesn’t seem to be all that much detailed information on the web about spinning hemp, although I did find this article from Knitty.com by PippiKneeSocks. Even though she focuses on spinning a hemp/recycled sari silk blend in the article, she had plenty of good tips in there to get me started. She suggests:

• Spinning it fine, with your wheel set at a higher ratio, which I liked to see because it was my first instinct.
• Wet spinning it, much like you would with flax. I’m doing this by keeping a cup of water next to my wheel, and dipping my hand into it occasionally.
• Setting the twist in boiling water instead of soapy hot water like you would for wool.

I’ve only spun a bit so far, but here are the results.

I’m finding this a little more challenging to spin than some other fibers I’ve tried, but not unmanageable. The texture is a little rough as you can see from the photo, and some pieces of fiber seem to want to escape from the roving occasionally, but it’s not too bad. There are a few tougher pieces in the roving that I’ve been picking out as I go so they don’t create lumps in my yarn, but I’d say this is a pretty good quality roving.

Have you spun hemp before? What tips do you have to share?