Craft me Happy!

Questionable Blend number 12 - Ice and Fire

2026-08-17T20:09:55.269+01:00

I’ve been writing a blog series over the last couple of years, sharing several different ways of spinning commercially available, multicoloured blended tops. I’ve tried to choose blends that contain colours from more than half of the colour wheel. The kinds of blends that are a little tricky to immediately guess how they’ll spin up.

I’ll be using the word questionable to describe any blend that would cast doubt in the mind of even the most experienced spinner. A blend that would cause you to pause before ordering it and question how it might turn out.

Novice spinners are regularly attracted to the bold, multi-coloured stripes of a vertically blended top, but are frequently left disappointed when their beautiful combed top turns to mud on the wheel. In this series, I’ll be sharing several techniques that can help reduce the amount of optical mixing during spinning, so that some of the original colours still appear in the final yarn. By the end, the tops will almost certainly not be questionable.

Ice and Fire

Image of Ice and Fire - Reproduced by kind permission of World of Wool

The image of Ice and Fire from the World of Wool website is shown above. In my opinion, the colours aren’t quite as saturated and vibrant in real life as they appear on the World of Wool Website.

… and here are the colours of merino within Ice and Fire.

The other problem with the single image on the World of Wool’s website is that by photographing the fibre tightly wrapped like this, you’re only seeing half the story.

I often open the fibre up before I prepare it, and you can see just how different one side of the top is to the other. It could be two different blends!

Ice and Fire was a really obvious choice for my Questionable Blends blog series, and it was one of the fibre blends that inspired me to start this whole project in the first place. I had no doubt that the bold colours in this blend would blend together into brown if no attempt was made to keep the colours separate. The combinations of orange and blue hues, along with red and slightly green/blues, are a recipe for mud.

I arranged all the yarns from the blends in this series into a kind of muted gradient, and I spun them in this order. These first yarns have all been spun with no attention paid to colour management; they’ve simply been pre-drafted, spun, and then chain-plied.

Honestly, I saved this one until the very end because when I opened it, I wasn't sure how I was going to do this fibre justice. I was worried that I would struggle to spin a yarn that I loved.

Thankfully, after preparing and spinning eleven tricky blends over the last two years, and just allowing myself to play with colour, I've landed on quite a few techniques that should show off the colours in this blend beautifully.

Ice and Fire is one of the least blended tops available, which makes it really versatile. It's so much easier to reduce optical mixing when you have big chunks of colour like this. It's not surprising that Ice and Fire is one of World of Wool's most popular blends.

I should mention that all of the yarns in this series are spun relatively finely and then chain-plied into a sport weight yarn so that I can knit them together into my Questionable Blends Blanket. The finer the singles are spun, the more plies are combined and the more the colours will optically mix together. Ice and Fire would look beautiful core-spun into a thick, chunky yarn and then maybe kept as a single or coil-spun for weaving. Spun chunky, from the tip, and then plied with a single colour chosen from Ice and Fire would also be beautiful and show off the original colours much better than I have in the image below.

To begin with, I spun 8g of Ice and Fire to see how it looks when I allow the colours to freely mix together during spinning. I just drafted it out and then spun it from the tips. I then chain-plied it at the wheel to achieve a 3-ply yarn.

Of all the yarns I’ve spun in this series, this was the muddiest of them all. Just pre-drafting the fibres and then spinning them worsted style from the end is an excellent way of optically mixing all of those colours together into a heathered, but reserved definite brown. It’s not an unattractive brown, but it’s quite a contrast next to the original boldly coloured top.

Here’s the knitted sample. It’s only when you look a little closer that you see the complex, heathered speckles of blue, orange and red.

All of the Ice and Fire singles were spun on the Nano 2.1 and then plied on the Electric Eel Wheel 6 - This is an affiliate link. If you click through and make a purchase, I may receive a small percentage of the purchase price at no additional cost to you. Any income from my blog goes a small way toward funding future blog projects.

Spinning Ice and Fire 4 Different Ways

Spinning from the Fold - Two Ways

I'm spinning all of the yarns in this series from the fold, as this is one of the most popular ways of keeping the colours in a multicoloured top a little more separate.

Over the last two years, I’ve been working on improving my long draw technique, and spinning from the fold is my favourite fibre preparation for learning how to spin a true woollen-spun yarn. It has become muscle memory for me now, and I find it difficult not to automatically spin from the fold using a long-draw technique.

If you’ve followed my Questionable Blends blog series from the beginning, you will know that I began, however, spinning from the fold using a short-draw technique. I wondered if worsted drafting, a method that controls the fibres much more, results in a yarn with more colour definition. Ice and Fire, with its bold chunks of colour, is the perfect fibre to test this theory.

I begin both methods of spinning from the fold by breaking off just a staple length of fibre and wrapping it over my index finger.

You can see that with a worsted-style short draft, the fibres are still well under control. I'm barely allowing the twist to enter my fibre supply, so the colours take their turn to be spun as they shuffle gently along my finger.

With a long, woollen draft, the twist is allowed to enter the fibre supply, so I don't have the same level of control over the colours entering the twist zone. The chances of two, three, or more colours being spun together at the same time seems to increase with a woollen spun yarn, so maybe there is a higher incidence of optical mixing when you spin long-draw from the fold?

Here are the singles spun short-draw. The colour sections are short, as is usual when you spin from the fold, but the colours are still relatively well-defined. Although there’s quite a bit of marling, I can still see some clean oranges and reds in there, alongside optical mixes of pastel blue, grey, burgundy, and brown.

Here’s the woollen-spun single, spun from the fold. There are far fewer clean oranges and reds in there, and the colours are generally duller as there is a lot more optical mixing. It may be that I still need to work on my long draw technique, but the woollen-spun single is fuzzier, less smooth, and the single is less uniform in diameter - all factors that make the colours in the woollen-spun single less vibrant than the short-drafted single.

After chain plying, there seems to be only a very slight difference between the yarn spun short draw (on the left) and the yarn spun long draw (on the right).

At first glance, the colours might be a little duller and muddier, but there’s not an awful lot in it.

The oranges and aqua colours are a little cleaner on the yarn spun with a short draft…

… but from a distance, they’re both pretty brown. Pleasingly, both of the yarns evened out after chain-plying, and yet they both have imperfections that maintain the characteristics of handspun yarn.

After knitting them up, the difference is very slight. There does seem to be a little less optical mixing in the one spun short draw, and the colours are a little brighter. There are more oranges and reds in the one spun short draw, and, as the colour sections are shorter, it is slightly busier, but I'm being very analytical here. Both are very similar, and, from a distance, I probably could not tell them apart.

Splitting the Top Vertically

This is one of the most popular methods of avoiding ‘spinning mud’ when you have a contrasting coloured blend like this one.

Thankfully, Ice and Fire is one of the easiest blends to split as it hasn’t been through the gilling machine many times to reduce and multiply the individual colours. With some of the other blends, I was having to tear them into tiny strips to avoid muddy optical mixes, but Ice and Fire, with its thicker colour sections, was a breeze!

I separated it out into colour groups that were unlikely to blend together into grey or brown. So I avoided high proportions of blue and orange together and tried not to combine the red with colours that would mix together into green.

I then arranged my nests into a kind of mirror gradient, and I spun them in this order.

I love this technique as it’s probably the simplest way of avoiding all of the colours mixing together into mud. I’m able to control the length of the colour sections, the order of the colours, and the level of muddiness carried through into the final yarn. It feels so much more designed than a lot of the other methods I’ve tried in the past.

The final chain-plied yarn has the heathered look of a blended yarn, but with colour changes that, at first glance, are more reminiscent of yarn spun from hand-painted top. I would definitely wear this as an accent colour against a neutral background in a stranded colourwork sweater.

The colour sections here are relatively short as I was knitting mitred squares. If I began with a much longer length, it would be a little harder to manage, but it would allow me to prepare lengths of colour better suited to a sweater knit. It's very wearable!

Intentional Optical Mixing on a Blending Board

Ice and Fire, with its bold, lightly blended, contrasting colours is the perfect top to experiment with my technique of Intentional Optical Mixing on a Blending Board.

For this technique, I create a template to sit at the head of my blending board; the design varies each time, depending on how I want the different colours to interact with each other.

This was the template I created for preparing Ice and Fire. The colour order was influenced by my desire to avoid the orange of Clementine optically mixing too much with the Duck Egg blue colour combination.

I really liked the burgundy created when loganberry and duck egg were optically mixed together, so I ensured that those colours overlapped on the blending board. I was not particularly keen on the lightness of aqua, and I wanted quite an earthy tone to the final yarn, so I made sure that both clementine and duck egg significantly overlapped it on the blending board so that it didn’t stand out too much.

I broke off 3 blending board lengths of top and then tore off thin strips to place them on the corresponding section of the blending board. As you can see, I wasn’t overly strict about keeping the colours completely separate. A few colours in the wrong place only add to the complexity, and a little bit of muddiness was quite desirable.

I brushed the board down every time it was fully covered in fibre. It took about half an hour to separate out all of the colours like this, which is quite a lot less than the previous times I've tried this technique.

As I wanted lots of variegation and smooth transitions between each colour, I dizzed the fibre off my blending board. I’m a worsted spinner at heart, so this is one of my favourite fibre preparations to spin from.

You can really see the controlled mix of colours throughout the roving, which should give me a lovely heathered yarn.

The final chain-plied yarn is complex and heathered, but with lots of repeating colour changes throughout the whole yarn.

Zigzagging the Blending Board Batt

Originally, I was going to stop there, but when I knitted up the last yarn, I realised how short the colour sections were and became curious to see how it would look with much longer colour repeats. I also need to spin some more yarn to finish my Questionable Blends Blanket.

I broke the fibre up again on my blending board using the same method of intentional optical mixing above …

… but this time, I rolled the whole lot off in one blending board batt.

I zig-zag stripped the batt into thin strips to allow the full length of the gradient to show through.

I then drafted the whole batt out into one continuous roving, taking extra care at the top and bottom to rotate the fibres, trying to keep them as parallel as possible.

I repeated the whole process to create a mirror gradient, which could be repeated along the length of the yarn for a larger garment.

This was such a satisfying spin, and the longer gradient will be much better suited to a slightly wider knit.

---

Thank you so much to all the spinners who've followed along with me in this blog series! It's taken three years instead of the one year I originally planned, but I've learned so much along the way. I've added a few more techniques to my fibre preparation repertoire, which makes me want to revisit my Spinning into Focus blog series again... I've fallen down a very deep but joyful, meandering rabbit hole that I plan to continue to explore as far as it will take me.

This was the last World of Wool Questionable Blend in this blog series, but it's not the last time you'll see me spinning Ice and Fire. The bold chunks of colour make it the ideal fibre to demonstrate how I turn multicoloured blends like this into a fractal yarn.

Related Posts

Spinning 12 Questionable Blends

Questionable Blend #1 Higglety Pigglety

Questionable Blend #2 Over the Rainbow

Questionable Blend #3 Gourami

Questionable Blend #4 Rainbow

Questionable Blends Blanket Knitting Pattern

Questionable Blend #5 - Loriini

Questionable Blend #6 - Blaze

Questionable Blend #7 - Libra

Questionable Blend #8 Hickory Dickory

Questionable Blend #9 Tropical

Questionable Blend #10 Hawaiian Dreams

Questionable Blend #11 Twinkle Twinkle

----------

Please be sweet and share the love. Leave a comment, subscribe to my YouTube channel, like my Facebook page for regular updates or follow me on Pinterest, Bloglovin' or Instagram

The Evolution of the Electric Eel Wheel

2026-06-30T11:17:00.000+01:00

This blog post was first published on the 27th of November, 2018. As it is currently one of my most viewed posts, I will try to update it as the Electric Eel Wheel continues to evolve. Last updated: 30th of June 2026.

---

If you are simply looking for a visual reference to work out which Electric Eel Wheel model you have purchased, I've made this short video showing the Electric Eel Wheel progression -

Eleven years ago, I wrote a review of the Electric Eel Wheel 4. I loved that little wheel, but it did have quite a few issues - some I managed to overcome, but others I just endured.

Despite its problems, I was so thankful for the invention of the Electric Eel Wheel 4, as it allowed me to try spinning on an electric spinning wheel for the first time, at a price that was low enough for me to take the risk.

I thought it would be interesting to look back at the inception of the Electric Eel Wheel to see just how far it’s come from its humble beginnings, and to show a little of what the future holds for this little machine that’s taking on the big boys.

The Electric Eel Wheel

Maurice Ribble, the inventor of the Electric Eel Wheel, has been committed to designing and inventing an affordable, yet extremely usable electric spinning wheel for several years now. He felt that spinners were being exploited, and that it was time to introduce a little competition to redress the balance.

I first heard about the Electric Eel Wheel when I was searching online for an affordable e-spinner - I desperately wanted an electric spinning wheel as I had to stop using my beloved Ashford Traveller, as treadling was damaging my hip joint.

Unfortunately, when I first looked, every electric spinning wheel was prohibitively expensive, especially as there was no way for me to find out if I would even enjoy using an e-spinner before I bought it.

Image from Glacial Wanderer, January 2009

I did, however, stumble upon Maurice Ribble's blog, where he talked about his experience designing an electric spinning wheel at a more affordable price.

I love looking at these early images of the Electric Eel Wheel in its infancy. It shows just how far the Electric Eel Wheel has come in a little over a decade. The romantic in me also loves the fact that it was invented for his wife, Emily, to save her from lugging a full-sized spinning wheel around to spinning and knitting groups.

Image from Glacial Wanderer, January 2009

I love how home-made and functional it looks in its wooden box! Still, Maurice realised that there was a demand for this slightly inelegant-looking e-spinner when many of Emily's friends started asking him to make one for them. At the same time, Maurice also generously ‘gave away’ his design as an open-source project, helping other spinning enthusiasts to build their own Electric Eel Wheels at an affordable price.

By the next year, you could buy a kit to build your own spinning wheel in a box, and if you didn't have the technical know-how, you could buy an assembled version.

Image from Glacial Wanderer, February 2010

You can see that the Electric Eel Wheel is gradually rising out of the box, and it's started to become a little more compact.

The Electric Eel Wheel 2

Later that year, Maurice made several improvements on his original design, improving the motor life and reducing the volume, increasing the bobbin capacity, and improving the assembly process, making it easier for people who bought it in kit form to make their own. This was the birth of the Electric Eel Wheel 2.

Image from Glacial Wanderer, September 2010

It was now starting to look ever so slightly more commercial, with a custom, plastic controller box to protect the electronics. It was, however, still modestly hiding away in its box.

The Electric Eel Wheel 3

By 2013, there was enough demand for the Electric Eel Wheel (in what was still a very niche market) that Maurice was able to redesign it, using laser-cut parts bought in bulk, making it cheaper to build and quicker to assemble.

Image from Ponoko.com, September 2013

The Electric Eel Wheel 3 was a much more professional and commercial-looking machine, and it had finally escaped out of the box! It was starting to look a little more like the later commercially available Electric Eel Wheels. Anecdotally, I know a lady who still owns this version of the Electric Eel Wheel, and it spins just as well as any spinning wheel. She does find it quite noisy, though.

The volume of the Eel is one of the main problems that Maurice Ribble has had to try to overcome and is continually trying to improve. Keeping the cost down meant using a cheaper motor and light, thin veneered wood, which just aren't going to be as quiet and as stable as a heavy, solid hardwood electric spinning wheel, using a brushless motor.

In 2013, an Electric Eel Wheel 3 sold for $290, and you could buy a self-assembly kit for $240. That's pretty incredible considering that it was difficult to buy any kind of decent e-spinner for less than $800 at the time.

The Electric Eel Wheel 4

In March 2015, Maurice took the big step of launching the Electric Eel Wheel on Kickstarter, in the hope of funding the production of the 4th iteration of his little wheel. For the project to go ahead, he needed to raise $5,000. In the end, with the help of 245 backers, he managed to raise over 10 times that.

Some of those original 245 backers (myself included) helped to form a community on Ravelry where they showed off their altered wheels, shared spinning tips, showed off the yarns they had spun, and gave new spinners advice. Fundamentally, they also shared issues that they had with their wheels - the main problems being the sound levels and the sharp yarn hooks. The wonderful thing is that Maurice was, and is, a very active member of that group, and Maurice listened to everybody. Maurice also read my blog post about the Electric Eel Wheel 4, too, and took on board all of my comments.

Continuing in this spirit of openness and sharing, the Electric Eel Wheel 4 is open-sourced, and if you are technically minded enough to build your own, you can find more information on how to here.

The Electric Eel Wheel 5

November 2016 saw the Kickstarter for the Electric Eel Wheel 5. Maurice Ribble wanted to address everyone's issues to make an even smaller, quieter spinning wheel with a more usable sliding hook system. A lot of the people who invested in the first Kickstarter jumped on board to get the improved Eel Wheel, and word was slowly spreading about this new, affordable electric spinning wheel. With a target of $5,000 to get the project off the ground, the Electric Eel Wheel 5 raised over $90,000 on Kickstarter, which is pretty incredible when you consider that this is a niche product that very few people have seen in person.

There is no doubt that the Electric Eel Wheel 5 and its later updates were a significant improvement on the Electric Eel Wheel 4 and its predecessors. The sliding hook system on the 5 caused a lot less frustration (once the initial issues had been resolved), and the sound levels were much improved.

Here is a little video showing the 4 and 5 side by side, just to get an idea of the difference in volume.

You can hear that the 5 had thankfully lost that annoying high-pitched whine that irritated most people. The Electric Eel Wheel 4 noise levels measured about 68 decibels, but the Electric Eel Wheel 5 measured a much more bearable 59 decibels. (For reference, 70 decibels is twice as loud as 60 decibels.)

My family are all quite sensitive to noise, and so I purposely wouldn't use the Electric Eel Wheel 4 when others were in the room, as I knew the noise would be too loud for anyone to watch the television at a comfortable level. I was, however, happy to use the Electric Eel Wheel 5 with others in the room - albeit at a slightly lower speed than when I was on my own.

I should probably point out that the first Electric Eel Wheel 5 came with a plastic flyer spindle and sliding hooks. Quite a few spinners (myself included) started to see erosion of the plastic where the spun yarn was running over the plastic, and so Maurice sent out replacement aluminium flyer spindles and sliding hooks to anyone affected.

The Electric Eel Wheel 5.1

Maurice is constantly working on new ideas and asking members of the Ravelry forum what they want in an electric spinning wheel, whilst listening to the problems and issues that arise. It's a very unique and open business model, and it's almost like later models of the Electric Eel Wheel have been designed by Maurice, but with Ravelry members as his design consultants. Most companies are incredibly secretive about new ideas and inventions, but Maurice will happily risk sharing designs and ideas that he has for future models of the Electric Eel Wheel, knowing that feedback from Ravelry members has helped the Electric Eel Wheel become the little gem it is today.

I never actually got around to writing a review for the Electric Eel Wheel 5, as Maurice brought out the 5.1 very soon after everyone received their updated aluminium flyer rods and hooks.

The 5.1 had a coat of varnish on it, so it looked much more finished than his previous wheels. I did have a problem with wood chipping off both of my wheels, so this definitely takes the design up a notch. It also felt more finished and professional as the underneath was enclosed by a detachable base. Probably the biggest improvement made for the 5.1 was that the bobbins had bearings at either end - making them quieter than the Bobbins Up bobbins that shipped with the 5.0

The Electric Eel Wheel Mini

Image from Kickstarter, November 2017

In November 2017, Maurice Ribble launched a Kickstarter for a new kind of Electric Eel Wheel - The Electric Eel Wheel Mini. It was one of his most ambitious spinning projects yet, as he challenged himself to make the smallest, most affordable electric spinning wheel ever. Some would say that he'd already done this with the Electric Eel Wheels 3 - 5, but Maurice wanted to make a wheel that was even more affordable, to encourage many more people to try spinning for the first time. The Electric Eel Wheel Mini was sold on Kickstarter for an amazing $50. Unsurprisingly, over 1000 people backed it.

Maurice described it as a new category of spinning wheel to help bridge the gap between drop spindle and spinning wheel, the price being far closer to that of a drop spindle.

Inevitably, with such a low price tag came compromises - it was quite noisy, and it was so light it needed to be strapped down to stop it from vibrating too much. Changing direction to ply was also slightly awkward, but it was still an excellent introduction to spinning for a lot of people, many of whom went on to upgrade to the larger model once they were confident that they enjoyed spinning.

The Electric Eel Wheel 5.2

Image from Dreaming Robots

In November 2017, the Electric Eel Wheel 5.2 was released. This went up for sale on the Dreaming Robots site. Once word went out that they were for sale, 100 wheels sold out in less than a day.

I love the fact that it retailed at $260, which is $30 less than the Electric Eel Wheel 3 sold for, way back in 2013. It just shows that being able to buy materials in bulk and mass-produce many elements of the wheel has enabled Maurice to pass these savings on to his customers.

One of the most notable differences was the plastic flyer wheel. At the time, I was very torn on the decision to use plastic for the flyer. I much preferred the look of the wood, but I appreciated that plastic helps to keep the price down when you are working in large quantities - also, the thin wood of previous flyers could warp, which would add to the noise levels and the vibration of the wheel itself.

The frame had bearings built into the front and back for the flyer spindle to sit in to help quieten the wheel further. The back panel hinged downwards to make it easier to change the bobbins. I loved these design features, and you can see that Maurice was increasing his focus on improving the quality feel of the wheel significantly, while still keeping it at a price that was affordable for a large number of spinners.

Image from Dreaming Robots site

The spindle was also made from one piece of solid steel - the earlier flyer spindles were made from two pieces of aluminium screwed together, and some people found (myself included) that the rods weren't completely straight, which added to the wobble of the wheel. (Mine would go for a little walk when I used the aluminium spindle at high speeds.) Making it from one piece of steel lengthened the life of the spindle and reduced the chance of having a 'wobbly wheel'.

Quite a few people on the Ravelry forum requested a faster wheel so that they could ply faster and spin shorter fibres more easily. The 5.2 spun at a maximum of 1400 rpms, which is 40% faster than the previous model.

The sliding hooks also changed, making them significantly easier to move than the ones on the 5.1. I must say, though, I was a little uneasy about how they looked, but aesthetics are probably a little more important to me than most.

There is a regular discussion on the Electric Eel Wheel Ravelry forum on the aesthetics of the Eel and how important keeping the price down is, compared to how the wheel looks, and the functionality of the wheel. Personally, I would rather pay a little more for an attractive, quiet wheel, but opinion is very much split on this issue. Making the Electric Eel Wheel as affordable and as enjoyable to use as possible is at the forefront of Maurice's design concept, and I cannot fault him for that.

The Electric Eel Wheel Nano

(*I'm a Dreaming Robots' Affiliate - if you click through to the following product links and make a purchase, I may receive a small percentage of the purchase price at no additional cost to you. Any income from my blog goes a small way toward funding future blog posts.)

After the success of the Electric Eel Wheel Mini, Maurice took the feedback he received from his tiny wheel and made a radical decision - to design the new updated version completely out of plastic. As it was a complete redesign, and even smaller than the Mini, this tiny spinning wheel got a name all of its own - the Nano.

At first, quite a few people were quite uneasy at the thought of having a completely plastic spinning wheel, but as images and footage of the wheel began to come out, people started to come around to the concept of a tiny plastic spinning wheel. The primary reason for making the Electric Eel Wheel Nano was to make an affordable, yet easy-to-use electric spinning wheel. By using modern injection moulding techniques, it's much easier and cheaper to make a thousand wheels out of plastic than it is out of wood. Also, by making the frame out of plastic rather than several pieces of wood, there are far fewer variables, making for a quieter wheel with fewer vibrations.

Image from Kickstarter, November 2018

The Kickstarter for the Electric Eel Wheel Nano launched on the 15th of November 2018, and it reached its target in less than an hour. By the end of the campaign, there were 4,351 backers pledging $498,671 in total. It successfully exceeded its goal by 3,324%.

Due to many people bulk buying, the total number of Electric Eel Wheel Nanos sold was 5,381! That's some achievement and had a massive impact on the number of people learning to spin in 2019.

The Nano has a much more open design than any of the previous Electric Eel Wheels, allowing you to see how much yarn is on the bobbin very easily. It's also significantly quieter than the previous Mini and quieter than the 5.0. Changing direction is done with the flick of a switch, which is a real improvement on the previous Mini.

The basic Kickstarter package was just $60. I'm in the UK, and so with shipping and tax, this would have cost me a total of £80. Even for an entry-level spinning wheel, that is incredible!

The Electric Eel Wheel Nano 1.1

Image from the Dreaming Robots Website

In the Spring of 2020, Maurice brought out an updated version of the Kickstarter Nano. This version had an improved motor, the yarn guides were a little more user-friendly, and the motor pulley rod was changed to prevent slipping. It retailed at just $110 and was by far the cheapest spinning wheel around. The Nano 1.1 has a bobbin capacity of around 55g and a maximum speed of 1000 rpm.

The Electric Eel Wheel 6

Following the success of the Electric Eel Wheel Nano, there was a real demand from Nano owners for a full-sized, production version, with a faster motor and a foot pedal to turn it on and off. The Nano was built with affordability at the heart of its design. With a bigger budget and fewer price constraints, Maurice was able to design the Electric Eel Wheel 6 to be faster, quieter, and with a greater capacity than any of his earlier wheels. The Electric Eel Wheel 6 has a bobbin capacity of around 225g and a maximum speed of 1800rpm.

The Kickstarter for the Electric Eel Wheel 6 launched in May 2020, with a goal of $30,000. The Kickstarter campaign eventually raised well over $445,000 and meant that over 1800 people could afford to buy themselves a production-level e-spinner. The original Kickstarter Electric Eel Wheel 6 sold for $199 and was later sold for $289 on the Dreaming Robots website.

This is the version of the Electric Eel Wheel 6 that I own, and it is still one of my most-used e-spinners.

When I received my Kickstarter Electric Eel Wheels 4 and 5, I made videos to demonstrate their volumes. I made the first video because I felt that the EEW4 was uncomfortably loud and the second because I was pleased with the improvements that Maurice had made to the volume of the wheel.

When I received my Electric Eel wheel 6 it seemed only fitting to make a video to demonstrate the further improvements Maurice has made to the Eel's volume, and to show how much quieter it is than the previous models -

Unfortunately, I've modified my Electric Eel Wheel 5 to use bearings so I can't do a true side-by-side comparison but hopefully, this video demonstrates the difference having bearings in the flyer and bobbins, using a brushless motor and making it out of injection moulded plastic instead of laser cut plywood makes.

In simple terms, the Kickstarter Electric Eel Wheels have halved in volume with each iteration.

The Electric Eel Wheel Nano 2.0

Image from the Dreaming Robots Website

In the spring of 2022, Maurice Ribble launched the Kickstarter for the Electric Eel Wheel Nano 2.0. It launched on Kickstarter for $95 and retailed on the Dreaming Robots website for $125. With a Kickstarter goal of $20,000, and assisted by 3,402 backers, Maurice's campaign finally raised a total of $385,896.

The Nano 2.0 uses 5v instead of 9v and is powered by a USB cord, making it even more portable than the previous model. (It can be powered by most pocket-sized phone charging batteries or plugged into the USB phone socket in your car or laptop.) The motor is 10% faster than the previous Nano 1.1, and the bobbins screw together securely instead of being friction-fitted. (The Nano 1.x bobbin ends could occasionally pop off when the bobbin was full...) The plastic yarn guides move more smoothly than the earlier wire yarn guides, and the flyer is moulded as one piece instead of having the arms screw in separately, making them less likely to become unbalanced.

The Electric Eel Wheel 6.1

In May 2024, Maurice brought out an improved version of the Electric Eel Wheel 6 - the EEW 6.1. It is currently listed on the Dreaming Robots website for $299.

The circuit board was redesigned to improve reliability and reduce static issues.

After backers received their Kickstarter EEW6s, some spinners found that static build-up could cause the circuit board to reset itself, turning it off randomly. Maurice fixed this soon after the Kickstarter launch, but if you have a very early EEW6, you can find the fix for that here.

The motor was made slightly faster, and a 'soft start' feature was added to gradually ramp up the speed. A D-shaped motor shaft and pulley connection was added to prevent slippage.
The flyer was injection-moulded using glass-reinforced nylon, and an optional brace was added to prevent the arms from flexing at high speeds.
Dedicated on/off and S/Z direction switches were added, with white text for better visibility. The switches are also interchangeable for left or right-handed users.
Optional plastic yarn guide covers were introduced to clip over the metal wire hooks to prevent heavily textured yarns from getting snagged. You can read my blog post about testing the plastic covers here.

The Electric Eel Wheel Fold

In January 2025, Maurice launched the Electric Eel Wheel Fold on Kickstarter. He wanted to build an ultra-portable, folding e-spinner that was faster and more compact than the Electric Eel Wheel 6. With its narrower flyer span, the Fold's able to meet the speed requirements of both the beginner spinner and the more experienced, high-speed long-draw spinner.

1,882 spinners backed the Fold Kickstarter, pledging a total of $435,203 between them. The Kickstarter price was just $199 and will retail on the Dreaming Robots website for $279.

The Fold bobbin size sits midway between the Nano and the EEW6 at about 100g capacity.
Both the maidens fold underneath the e-spinner to store neatly inside the battery case, making it cheaper to ship and perfect for spinners who travel regularly or want to pack it away for storage.
It has a maximum speed of 3000 rpm, making it the fastest of all the Electric Eel Wheels. It also has two spinning profiles, making it easier to fine-tune the lower speeds on the dial. Ideal for more sedate spinners like myself!
There's a digital RPM display, allowing you to ensure consistency between yarns.
Maurice used a closed-loop system for the first time with the Fold. This is a motor control algorithm that automatically maintains your selected flyer speed, regardless of how much you pull on the yarn.

The Fold also features a built-in twist-keeper, giving the spinner a location to wrap their singles mid-spin.

The Fold is due to land in America in July 2026 and will be shipped shortly after.

The Electric Eel Wheel Nano 2.1

In September 2025, Maurice Ribble released the Nano 2.1 on the Dreaming Robots website, and this is the current model available today. When Maurice released the Electric Eel Wheel Mini and Nanos, the primary goal was to make the price as accessible as possible to appeal to new spinners who might simply be curious about taking up spinning as a new hobby. Unfortunately, the original minimalist design meant that a little tinkering was sometimes necessary, which isn't ideal when you’re new to spinning.

The Nanos 1, 1.1, and 2 would regularly be described as 'finicky' by new spinners. I personally modified all of my Nanos within days of receiving them to use a spring and cord tension system, but that's quite a big ask of someone who's never spun before.

There was also an issue with the plastic flyer eroding over time, especially when spinning strong fibres very finely.

With a growing demand for Maurice to make the Nano more durable, quieter, and more beginner-friendly, he developed the Nano 2.1

I was a beta tester for this model, and at the time, I firmly believed that the Nano 3 would have been a much more appropriate name for this iteration of the Nano, given the number of improvements he was making.

The Nano 2.1 has a completely redesigned flyer with a tilted orifice, making it much more forgiving of beginner yarns.
The flyer is made from glass-reinforced nylon, which firmly tackles the problem of yarn eroding the flyer orifice.
The tension knob now stays solidly in place when you turn the tension right up.
The yarn guides are much more rounded, reducing friction and the need for additional tension.
The bobbins have bearings at either end to reduce bobbin chatter, are much more open in design, and now only have one brake band pulley end to avoid confusion.
The Nano 2.1 now uses a spring and cord tension system and is much more responsive than the original elastic tension system.

As of June 2026, the Nano 2.1 retails at $139, but with affordability at the heart of the Electric Eel Wheel range, Maurice also sells an upgrade kit for Nano 2.0 owners for $39, allowing them to purchase just the improved flyer, bobbins, and tension system to fit to their existing Nano 2.0 without the expense of a completely new spinning wheel.

The Competition

You only have to look at the number of new Electric Eel Wheel forum members every day on the Ravelry forum and on the Facebook group to see how much talk there is amongst spinners about the Electric Eel Wheel and how information about it is slowly spreading by word of mouth, whether it's amongst spinning friends or over social media. Everybody loves a bargain, and everyone loves to share information about bargains with their friends. Telling everyone that you just spent $1,200 on a new spinning wheel might be considered a little vulgar, but plenty of people were telling the world about the $60 spinning wheel they'd just backed on Kickstarter.

The big e-spinner companies still aren't taking the Electric Eel Wheel seriously and continue to make big claims about their own electric spinning wheels - the Ashford site describes their e-spinner as the smallest, lightest, and most versatile electronic spinner ever, and the Hansen website describes their e-spinner as the lightest, most compact, technically advanced e-spinner that is commercially available today. (Incidentally, the Ashford e-spinner weighs 2 kilos, the Hansen weighs 2.2 kilos, and the Electric Eel Wheel 6 weighs 1.4 kilos.)

Since I wrote this blog post in 2018, there have been a few more smaller e-spinner companies entering the market, but the Electric Eel Wheel is still holding its own as by far the best value-for-money e-spinner on the market. I believe that with the current performance of the Nano 2.1 and the Electric Eel Wheel 6.1, the big companies have got some serious competition on their hands that they can't afford to ignore anymore.

---

Future Electric Eel Wheels

Maurice Ribble is fundamentally an inventor who found a gap in the market. He's constantly working on new ideas and designs. He compares the design process of the Electric Eel Wheel to mobile phone companies, constantly working on future iterations of the device - improving it and upgrading it to maintain interest in the product and to keep it fresh and innovative.

His latest project is developing a 3D printed e-spinner. The idea is that he will sell a maker kit which will include stl files and non-plastic hardware for people who already own 3D printers. He's hoping that providing makers with a basic e-spinner design will encourage spinners and makers to build, alter, and develop their ideal e-spinner, driving innovation and encouraging new ideas. It will be Maurice's most affordable e-spinner option available. I'm sure it will be exciting to see the creativity of the spinning community when they're effectively given the ability to design and build their own e-spinner!

Now that Maurice has cornered the market in affordable e-spinners, he's considering developing a much more high-tech version in the future, to accompany his entry-level-priced e-spinners. One request that is often made on the Ravelry forum is for the Electric Eel Wheel to have some kind of auto-flyer, similar to the WooLee Winder, so that spinners don't have to constantly keep stopping to move the sliding hooks. Maurice is working on his own level winding system for a Pro version of the Electric Eel Wheel, and it is very much in development. It will have a built-in graphical screen to help display a menu system and an advanced motorised tension system. Unfortunately, with all of the other fibre-related products that Maurice has planned over the next couple of years, we'll have a while to wait and see what other pro features will be on this new wheel...

If you've found this post interesting or useful, please pin this image to Pinterest. It makes a big difference to me and helps other spinners find it too.

At this point, I normally suggest similar fibre-related blog posts, however, my list of spinning content is becoming a little unmanageable... If you'd like to read more blog posts about spinning and fibre preparation, please take a look at this page here where you will find links to all of my spinning and fibre articles.

Thank you for reading, and happy spinning!

---

Modifications, Fixes and
Upgrades for the Nano 2

Beta Testing the Electric Eel Wheel
Yarn Counter

Using the Electric Eel Wheel Yarn counter
to sample yarn gauges and ply the yarn I want

Testing New Yarn Guide Covers for
the Electric Eel Wheel 6

Testing the LWS Autowinder
for the Electric Eel Wheel 6

Free Handspun
Yarn Labels

Spinning Dog Hair

DIY Hackle

DIY Mini Wool Combs

3D Printed Modular
Lazy Kate

Yarn gauge reference tool for hand spinners

How I Fill a Bobbin as Neatly and
Efficiently as Possible Using an App

----------

Please be sweet and share the love. Leave a comment, subscribe to my YouTube channel, like my Facebook page for regular updates or follow me on Pinterest, Bloglovin' or Instagram

How I Fill a Bobbin as Neatly and as Efficiently as Possible Using an App

2026-06-23T21:02:58.688+01:00

I’ve always loved the look of a neatly filled bobbin or spindle -

Goodness, the main reason I picked up a Turkish spindle after 25 years of exclusively using a spinning wheel was because I was captivated by the beautifully wrapped cops that were filling my Instagram feed.

I get an awful lot of satisfaction from winding yarn I’ve spun neatly, even when it makes no logical sense. This ball took me over an hour to place every strand carefully, when I could have quickly and easily wound it on my ball winder in 5 minutes. It’s completely irrational! It clearly scratches a part of my brain that finds winding a neat ball slowly and precisely, and seeing the colour patterns changing, very relaxing.

(Ad) Almost all of the yarns in this blog post were spun on Electric Eel Wheel e-spinners - This is an affiliate link. If you click through any of the product links and make a purchase, I may receive a small percentage of the purchase price at no additional cost to you. Any income from my blog goes a small way toward funding future blog projects.

Bamboo single spun on the Electric Eel Wheel 6

It’s no secret that if you move the yarn guides frequently, in tiny increments, you’ll get more yarn on the bobbin than if you let it build up in little hills. As well as getting fuller, neater-looking bobbins, you may also notice that the brake tension is more consistent, as the diameter of the yarn on the bobbin tube isn’t varying very much.

It also pulls off the bobbin more smoothly for plying if you move the yarn guides more frequently.

This yarn was pre-chain-plied with chains that were over 11 metres long to encourage barber poling. It was imperative that the yarn wound off the bobbin smoothly, as the singles spanned the full length of my house.

The mounds of yarn are far less likely to topple over (which means you have to pull on them a little more to release the singles) if you don’t allow them to build up too much. It’s also very difficult to lose your yarn end if you wind the bobbin neatly.

It’s not good for my body to sit in the same position for hours on end, so stopping regularly and taking little micro breaks reduces the health risks associated with sitting in the same position for too long.

All of these reasons are how I justify to myself my slightly bonkers obsession with winding a neat bobbin…

The App that helps me fill a bobbin more neatly

I have a chronic spinal condition, so I originally began using the Seconds app to help me time my daily physio stretch intervals. When I began using e-spinners, I quickly realised that I could also use the Seconds App to prompt me to move the yarn guide.

(Not Sponsored) I use the Apple App Store version of the Seconds App on my iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch in various settings and scenarios, but it's also available on the Google Play App Store.

My preferred spinning position is sitting slightly reclined, and drafting sideways with the e-spinner sitting to the right of me, perpendicular to my knee. I find drafting by slowly moving my hands sideways, apart and together, doesn’t irritate my neck and shoulders in the way drafting forwards or backwards can. Unfortunately, this does mean that the wheel isn’t in my eye-line, and, as turning my neck is painful, I’ve had to find a workaround to remind me to move the yarn guides when I can’t easily see the mound of yarn building up on my bobbin.

The Seconds interval timer has been a game-changer for me as it means I can zone out, sit back, and relax into the spin. When I see the app change colour, hear it beep, or feel it buzz on my watch, I know it’s time to move the yarn guide without having to constantly monitor my bobbin.

I began occasionally using the Seconds App while spinning on my Electric Eel Wheel 5 as a reminder to move the yarn guide when it wasn’t in my field of vision, but when I purchased the Electric Eel Wheel Nano it became my permanent spinning companion.

The official maximum capacity of a Nano bobbin is about 50g. This is an approximate figure, and the capacity can change depending on yarn gauge, fibre content, texture, drafting style, tension, whether it's a single or plied yarn… and how frequently you move the yarn guides.

Here’s a photo illustrating how much more you can get on a bobbin if you move the yarn guide more frequently. Both of these bobbins have exactly 46g of singles on. The fibre is identical, as is the wpi, angle of twist, and the tension used while spinning. The only difference is that I moved the yarn guide every 2.5 minutes for the one on the left, while I moved the yarn guide every 60 seconds for the one on the right.

Moving the yarn guide every 60 seconds rather than every 10 minutes can mean being able to add an extra 20% on the bobbin, and on a Nano bobbin, every extra gram makes a difference.

As an aside, I made this graphic when I was testing the capacity of the Electric Eel Wheel Fold. The yarn on the right is exactly the same weight and fibre type as the one on the left. The difference is that it has been chain-plied, so it is thicker, airier, and more textured, so it now takes up a lot more space on the bobbin.

The technique for getting smooth bobbins

Most instructions for sliding yarn guides encourage you to let a little hill of yarn build up and then move the yarn guide a cm or so onto the lower level of yarn on the bobbin so that you end up with lots of little hills and valleys along the length of your bobbin. This very much replicates the undulating bobbins you naturally get from a spinning wheel with hooks along the length of the flyer, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with this approach - as long as you don’t allow the hills to build up so much that they topple over and trap the singles.

Hopefully, in this animated gif, you can see that I don’t move the yarn guide into a lower area (I took a photograph every time I moved the yarn guide). Instead, I move it just a few millimetres along so that the yarn falls on the side of the little mound of yarn I've just spun. By doing this all the way along, I get smooth bobbins rather than undulating ones.

This was quite an extreme example, as I was intentionally moving the yarn guide every 60 seconds to make a stop-motion video. I find that if I allow the singles to build up a lot more, over 3 or 4 minutes, I still get relatively smooth, neat bobbins by moving the yarn guide to the mid-point of the side of the little hill of yarn. Pleasingly, the smoothness of the bobbin becomes more pronounced the fuller the bobbin gets as the circumference of the yarn on the bobbin increases.

This YouTube Short shows the movement of the yarn guides in more detail.

Only moving the yarn guide in one direction

When my yarn guide reaches the front, I take it all the way to the back of the bobbin again in one sweeping motion. This serves a few purposes. It makes it easier to find the yarn end as the final layer gradually covers the single strand spanning the bobbin. It means that I’m only moving the yarn guide towards me, so it’s easier to see and easier to move, and it also means that I’m not building up a double-height layer when I get to the end. The single layer at the bobbin end means that it will pull off my lazy Kate more easily and give me prettier colour-changing bobbin ends if I’m spinning a multicoloured yarn.

I am a sucker for a pretty bobbin end!

Programming the Seconds App

In this video, I walk you through the steps for programming the Seconds App to be an interval timer. To save editing time, I don't speak on the video, but for clarity, the steps are as follows -

Click on the plus symbol.
Select Circuit/Tabata Timer.
Name the timer - mine is going to be a 1-minute timer.
Click on Exercise 1.
Rename 'Exercise 1' to be the instruction you want displayed. Mine is just 'Move Yarn Guide'.
Change the duration to whatever you want the interval to be.
Click back and add another Exercise.
Repeat to rename Exercise 2 and add a duration, but this time change the colour to a contrasting colour.
Click back and select Alerts.
Decide on the sound you want the app to make at the end of the interval.
Click back and type in the number of sets or repeats you would like. I have two sets totalling two minutes, so if I change the set number to 200, this will give me a total spinning time of 6 hours and 40 minutes, which is plenty!

Filling a neater Nano 2.1 bobbin

When I was beta testing the Electric Eel Wheel 2.1, I highlighted an idiosyncrasy that means if you use the yarn guides as originally intended, the bobbin doesn’t fill quite so neatly and efficiently.

As you can see, moving the yarn guide the conventional way doesn’t fill the very front of the bobbin. It will fill up eventually as the circumference increases, and the edge starts to compress and topple a little bit, but those very end singles will always be looser and less compact.

Well, the Nano 2.1 has been available for quite a few months now, and I am yet to see another spinner bemoaning the fact that they can’t get neat bobbin ends on the 2.1, so I’m clearly quite bonkers and alone in my obsession …

However, it bothers me, especially as the Nano 2.1 bobbin ends are so beautifully open, and the capacity is only about 50g.

When designing the 2.1, Maurice Ribble, quite rightly, prioritised improved yarn guides and overall bobbin capacity over more efficient bobbin filling.

When I shared my issue with not being able to wind singles onto the very front of the bobbin, Vampy pointed out that if I moved the single onto the first yarn guide, the bobbin front would be a lot neater. Sometimes, I can’t see the wood for the trees!

Well, after filling one bobbin, I decided that swapping the single back and forth in that small space at the front of the bobbin was a little fiddly and obsessive - even for me. (I lost control of the single a couple of times and it ended up winding around the flyer in front of the bobbin…) I eventually worked out a technique that felt a lot less problematic and more user-friendly.

In this YouTube Short you can see that once the rear yarn guide reaches the front, I slide it all the way to the back again with the yarn still in position. This makes it easier to remove the single and place it on the front yarn guide. I then carry on filling the front of the bobbin using the front yarn guide. Once the front is level with the rest of the bobbin, I loop the single around the rear yarn guide and start all over again, sliding the rear yarn guide from the back to the front, filling the bobbin in tiny increments.

My Dream e-spinner (that doesn’t exist!)

There was a time when I would have loved a WooLee Winder or an Autowinder. Before I started using an interval timer to remind me to move the yarn guide, the idea of not having to keep turning my neck to monitor my bobbins was very alluring. The notion that I could just zone out and spin, spin, spin - especially for plying - was so very tempting, but way out of my price range.

I regularly read that you can fit more yarn on a bobbin with a level winding flyer, but I have to disagree. WooLee Winders or Autowinders wrap the yarn diagonally, so it's reasonable to infer that you would fit less yarn on a bobbin with a level winding flyer than if you were to move the yarn guides using my preferred method. When the singles are criss-crossing their way along the bobbin, lots of tiny air pockets are incorporated with every layer, so it follows that a bobbin would fill more densely if the singles are not allowed to build up and are all laid almost parallel to each other.

My ideal level winder would be one that remained stationary for a minute or so and then moved on a few mm to fill the next small section of the bobbin. What if the stopping times and travelling distances were programmable to account for spinning speed and yarn thickness? How cool would that be?

For me, the next best thing would be a programmable “Beautiful Bobbin Mode”. I mentioned my idea for a “programmable, slow-stopping interval system” at the end of my review of the Daedalus Sparrow.

- What if you could program spinning intervals into the e-spinner that would automatically stop the wheel slowly after a set amount of time? You would then adjust the yarn guides by hand, allowing you to check your progress, stretch a little, before resuming spinning again for the next interval of time. I find it much more relaxing to zone out and spin when I’m not constantly turning my neck to check how full the bobbin is, and I wonder if a perfectly able-bodied person would also welcome the idea of not having to constantly monitor their bobbins.

It might not be ideal for high-speed long draw, but I can see it being helpful for plying or for a more sedate worsted spinner, like myself.

Ah, a girl can dream…

If you've found any of this post interesting or useful, please pin this image to Pinterest. It makes a big difference to me and helps other spinners find it too.

At this point, I normally suggest similar related blog posts; however, my list of spinning-related content is becoming a little unmanageable... If you'd like to read more blog posts about spinning and fibre preparation, please take a look at this page here, where you will find links to all of my spinning and fibre articles.

Thank you for reading, and happy spinning!

----------

The Evolution of the Electric Eel Wheel

Electric Eel Wheel Nano Orifice Reducer
with a built-in Twist Keeper
and Other Modifications

Modifications, Fixes and
Upgrades for the Nano 2

Testing New Yarn Guide Covers for
the Electric Eel Wheel 6

Free Handspun
Yarn Labels

DIY Hackle - My £22 Onion Slicer Hackle

DIY Mini Wool Combs

Spinning Dog Hair

Please be sweet and share the love. Leave a comment, like my Facebook page for regular updates or follow me on Pinterest or Instagram

Learning How to Make Patterned Christmas Pom Pom Baubles

2025-12-11T17:38:00.000+00:00

Back in 2013, Mr Printables started sharing how to make pom pom animals and pom poms with letter motifs worked into them, and linking to them on Craftgawker (remember Craftgawker?!)

Image copyright of mrprintables.com

Well I was fascinated! I loved the idea of wrapping yarn around a pom pom maker in such a controlled way that you could create pictures and designs on the surface of the pom pom. To add to the magic, there’s also a little ‘Ta-Da!’ moment at the end when you’ve finally finished wrapping and you get to cut open your pom pom. I love a good mystery project with a final reveal at the end!

Back then, I didn’t really have a need for an animal shaped pom pom, so I never did get around to giving it a try. However, the desire to make pom poms with motifs and patterns on them has lived quietly in my brain for well over a decade now, so this year, I thought I’d scratch that itch and have a go.

My local Maker Space are making Christmas decorations for St Mary’s Church’s annual Christmas tree festival. This year our theme is ‘Christmas Joy’, and what could be more joyful than a big round pom pom bauble with a Christmas image worked into it?

Full Disclosure - I’m an Amazon affiliate. The following blog post contains links to products that I’ve purchased myself. If you click through and make a purchase I may receive a small percentage of the purchase price at no additional cost to you. This blog makes no profits and any income from my blog goes a small way towards funding future blog projects.

Materials I used to make patterned pom pom baubles

Pom pom maker - I prefer the hinged pom pom makers by Clover or Habico. I’m using the 8.5mm pom pom maker by Habico for all of the following pom poms.
Yarn. Pom poms are very yarn hungry so I used inexpensive or donated yarn that I wasn’t overly precious about. Use a mixture of textures and thicknesses held together for added complexity and to speed things up.
Small, sharp precision craft scissors for cutting the pom pom open and for finer details. Sharp fabric scissors for sculpting the pom pom.
Big eye beading needle for threading a hanging cord through.
Strong upholstery thread, waxed linen thread or strong crochet cotton for tying the pom poms.
Metallic thread or Chinese knotting cord to hang the pom pom baubles from.
Kumihimo bobbins - if you have more than two yarns wrapped separately at a time, these help reduce tangles.

My First (Failed) Attempt - A Christmas Tree Pom Pom

I began by building up a simple long triangle for the tree, dotted with red yarn. I added a block of brown yarn for the pot and then filled the outside with natural cream yarn.

I had such high hopes! You could clearly see the Christmas tree shape when I first cut it open…

… but when I removed the pom pom maker, my Christmas tree unfurled its branches to reveal a much wider tree than I’d planned, and that cute little plant pot at the base became a long, thin line. I’d made more of a berry bush than a tree.

To top it off, I’d managed to wrap the second tree on the reverse side upside-down!

To prevent me from making the same mistake again, I dotted one side of the pom pom maker with Sharpie, so I knew which side was the top once I’d covered up my design with the background cover.

My Second Attempt - Another Christmas Tree Pom Pom.

If I’d actually stopped to think about it, I should have realised that the final wraps of yarn on the pom pom maker make up the outer edge of the sphere. I need to shrink and distort my motif width-wise if I want to avoid the design stretching out to the outer limits of the pom pom circumference.

At this point, I was still learning and experimenting. I wasn’t in a position to make a tutorial, but I did take a photo of every layer for my own reference.

Here’s my first layer. I’m using two strands of green yarn held together to create more visual interest. Also note that I’m using separate strands for the white background above and below the tree.

I added another layer of the same colours, this time bringing the white yarn further down to cover the top of the tree and adding a couple of wraps of red yarn for Christmas baubles.

For the third layer, I brought the white background down even further and added a little more red for a tree bauble.

For the last layer of the tree, I covered the dark red for the pot with the background colour and brought the top background yarn down further to cover more of the green.

Finally, I covered everything as tightly as possible with the background colour.

Here’s the final half of my pom pom with the arc at the base completely filled in with the background natural yarn.

I repeated the same winding pattern for the reverse of the bauble.

I’ll share how I tied my pom poms later on, but here’s how it looked before the trim…

… and here it is afterwards.

From making this second pom pom, I learned a few more things. I’ll make a list of everything I’ve learned with this experiment and post it at the end.

Reverse engineering my pom pom design

At this stage, I still wasn’t quite sure how the size and placement of the layers were affecting the final design, so I thought I’d analyse the photographs to see if it would help me to design future motifs.

I’ve overlaid just the tree wrap sections over the final cream yarn of the completed pom pom with all of the layers to scale. It’s almost like a cross-section of the pom pom while it’s still wrapped around the pom pom maker. I’ve numbered the layers to show how the tree design was reduced with every layer. I’m certainly no pom pom expert, but I was starting to get a better feel for how altering the wrap placement and coverage affects the final motif.

Christmas Pudding Pom Pom Bauble

I’ve seen quite a few Christmas pudding pom pom baubles online, but they’re all very simple and stylised - they all have a very definite straight line between the pudding and the white sauce. I wanted to make one that looked slightly more realistic, as if it had sauce dripping down the sides.

I designed a very simple half pudding as a kind of reference to follow while I was wrapping the pom pom.

I think the key to getting more detail on a pom pom like this is to go big! My pom pom maker is 8.5cm wide, so it requires a lot more layers to fill it. More layers mean more design definition.

These were the colours I chose for my Christmas pudding using oddments from my yarn collection. They’re all double-knit weight yarns and a real mixture of fibres and textures.

I divided the two brown yarns so that I could wrap four light brown, two dark brown, and one dark red, holding seven yarns at a time for the lower Christmas pudding.

As I was holding seven strands for the pudding, but only one strand for the white sauce, I ended up working three layers of the cream yarn for every single layer of the browns. (From here, I just call this one layer.)

For my first layer, I wrapped the cream yarn almost to the centre of the pom pom maker, filling the rest with the brown yarns.

I brought the brown further up over the cream for the second layer - this should create a drip effect with the previous layer.

I brought the cream wraps down to almost the centre again to create another drip…

… and then brought the brown back up again.

Finally, I filled the middle arch of the pom pom maker with a division of brown and cream again.

I repeated this wrapping pattern on the reverse section of the pom pom.

When I cut my pom pom open, I revealed definite drips, which was very pleasing!

As usual, after I tied the pom pom and removed the pom pom maker, my Christmas pudding pom pom was very untidy before its haircut. If you fill the pom pom maker to capacity (as I do), your pom pom will end up much wider than it is tall, so it needs a good trim to neaten it up. A fully filled pom pom maker results in a much denser pom pom. (It’s also a lot less likely to fall apart between cutting and tying.)

I trimmed my Christmas pudding into a relatively tidy ball using good-quality large fabric scissors. To give my Christmas pudding more of a 3-dimensional, realistic look, I went in with my precision craft scissors.

I carefully trimmed off several millimetres from all the way around the edge of the brown yarn with my small craft scissors, where the pudding meets the sauce. I went on to trim the rest of the pudding with my large fabric scissors, rolling it and ruffling it, trimming out any sections that stuck out from the slightly smaller ball shape I was trying to form. I wanted to give the impression that the sauce was thick and drippy on top of the pudding, so I wanted it to protrude out above the brown of the pudding..

Finally, I went in with my small scissors, cutting the cream yarn at an angle, all the way round the edge to try to give the impression that the sauce was rounded, rather than sticking out like yarn.

To top off my Christmas pudding, I needle-felted a couple of leaves. I could have just cut some holly leaves out of felt, but I do like the 3-dimensional quality I can get from needle felting. These are just free-formed, but I might have achieved a better result if I’d used the cookie-cutter method and a sugar flower holly leaf cutter.

I needle-felted 3 little berries out of crimson wool. You can read how to make these here.

To create a hanging loop, I took a length of Chinese knotting cord, folded it, and then knotted it.

I then used a big-eyed beading needle to thread both ends of the cord down through the middle of the pom pom separately.

It was then just a case of knotting the two ends of the cord, cutting it, and hiding the cut end amongst the longer strands of yarn.

To finish it off, I stitched my 3 felt beads together to form a loop and attached my two leaves underneath with a few stitches through the pom pom.

I absolutely love it! It’s so squishy but dense. With ‘Christmas Joy’ as our theme, this makes me smile every time I see it!

Poinsettia Pom Pom Bauble

At this point, I was starting to understand a tiny bit more about how to design and wrap a symmetrically patterned pom pom.

I got quite ambitious and decided to see if I could make a poinsettia pom pom. I wasn’t sure if I would manage to get the definition for a more detailed design like this, but my curiosity was piqued.

I definitely needed to use my large 8.5cm pom pom maker for this one!

I took my poinsettia design and warped it in Procreate so that it would sit on top of a semi-circle. This effectively gave me a pattern to follow. After a couple of false starts, I simplified my poinsettia design to this pixelated set of chart instructions. The gaps between the arched lines in the image above represent a single layer of yarn wraps.

To get better definition I used a separate length of yarn for each colour section of the pom pom. I join a new yarn in simply by wrapping it around tightly and securing the end under the first wrap.

I’m using kumihimo bobbins to wrap the separate yarns around to try to keep everything under control. At this stage, I’m still undecided as to whether this makes it less fiddly than just using a long length of yarn, but I’m giving it a good try. They do get tangled quite a lot, but it still feels quicker than pulling a long length of yarn through every time.

Here’s my first layer. I notice that most people who wrap patterned pom poms don’t usually work a layer at a time - they tend to build up a single colour at a time in little piles. That method wouldn’t really work for a complex design like this with sections that jut out over each other at an angle.

Here’s a collage of all of the layers as I placed them down. I haven’t gone into too much detail as it was quite time-consuming and took several hours to make half a pom pom. Sadly, I managed to fill the pom pom maker just before the final layer on the chart. I just covered everything in yellow yarn so that at least there would be a complete background behind the poinsettia.

For my own reference, this is approximately 9 layers of double knitting yarn on an 8.5cm pom pom maker - although I did stop winding yarn at the sides for the last couple of layers as it was getting overly full.

For the reverse of the pom, I didn’t have enough yellow yarn to cover the whole of the pom pom maker, but I also couldn’t bring myself to spend another 3 hours wrapping a layered pom pom. I thought I’d have a go at a much simpler flower design this time, employing the method I’ve seen other pom pom makers use.

Instead of building up layers of colour across the full arch of the pom pom maker, I wrapped bunches of colour in sections to try to form a representation of a poinsettia. This method felt a lot less precise - but at this point, I wasn’t even sure if my original method had worked so it was a very useful learning experiment.

This method took less than an hour to wind, but I’m sure if I did it repeatedly, it would take significantly less time.

After 4 hours (total) of wrapping, it was now time to cut my pom pom open!

Here’s the side I methodically wrapped, layer by layer…

… and here’s the side I wrapped more quickly in bunches of yarn sections. It’s all looking very hopeful!

To tie my pom poms, I use a strong upholstery thread. You want a thread that can be pulled on really hard without risk of breaking. When I knot it, I wrap the thread through 5 or 6 times to reduce the chance of the knot slipping, and then work another knot on top of it. I will do this several times, wrapping the thread around the pom pom and placing the knot in a different area until it feels like the knot cannot be tightened any further.

Mr Printables recommends a waxed linen thread, which further reduces the risk of the knot slipping, but I’ve also seen other pom pom makers use a fine cotton crochet yarn, which is probably as strong as upholstery thread but wouldn’t dig into your hands as much.

Here’s my pom pom immediately after I removed it from the pom pom maker. It’s like an untidy, fluffy rugby ball!

To get a sharper pattern definition, I needed to trim a significant amount of yarn off my pom pom. A dense pom pom is also a lot more durable. This is going to be a Christmas bauble that will hopefully get packed away year after year, so it needs to be hard-wearing.

I used my sharpest pair of fabric scissors, rolling it, fluffing it, and trimming it until I was happy with its roundness and density. It was very satisfying!

After trimming, my final pom pom is about 8cm, which is a little smaller than the pom pom maker I used.

Frustratingly, I don’t think either side looks obviously like a poinsettia. The vague suggestion of a poinsettia, maybe… I think I might have been a little too optimistic. Regardless, I’m still really happy with my final pom pom bauble. Pleasingly, my favourite side is the one that I spent the most time on. It has an organic complexity, while the one wrapped in bunches of colour looks simpler and bolder. For me, the complex one is just visually more interesting.

I’m really learning the limitations of surface pattern pom pom design. Natural, organic motifs lend themselves perfectly to pom pom decorations, as imperfections are inevitable. I’m embracing the imperfections!

Star pom pom

In contrast to the complicated, organic shape of a poinsettia, I thought I’d try a bold star design next. Large pom poms use a lot of yarn, and there is quite a lot of wastage, so I didn’t want to use my precious handspun yarn to make pom poms. However, I was running out of inexpensive yarn… in the end, I chose a Christmassy red and green for my star pom pom. That might have been a mistake!

I designed a layer plan to follow, with teal blue/green for the star, and red for the background

I attempted to follow the pattern I’d designed, but it got much trickier to stay on track as the pom pom maker filled up. Again, I used several kumihimo bobbins to store my yarn on to allow me to layer up the design without carrying the colour across. As every layer hides the previous one, I found it very easy to lose track of where I was supposed to be. I also think I may have already reached my limitations for designing motifs for this size of pom pom…

I definitely need to invest in an extra-large pom pom maker!

The first reveal, when I cut the pom pom open, made me hopeful that I might have made a star pom pom.

But when I released the pom pom from the pom pom maker, it turned out that I’d made more of a festive tomato!

I attempted to rescue my festive fruit pom pom by giving it a significant trim. I sculpted it with my fabric scissors into a kind of drop shape and then cut a hole in the centre of the star so that I could glue in some sparkly crystals.

Hopefully, I managed to rescue it a little!?

Snow-topped striped pom pom bauble

At this point, I’d come to realise that my 8.5cm pom pom maker was better suited to simpler, bold graphic designs like the tree or Christmas pudding so I thought I’d make a basic striped pom pom with a bit of a twist.

I chose 4 slightly Christmassy colours from my small stash of cheap yarn …

… and divided each colour into 3 balls for each colour. This would allow me to work a kind of fade from the white into the coloured section - suggesting that snow had landed on top of the bauble. That was the idea anyway.

This was my process for every layer of the pom pom. I held 3 colours to wrap the lower part of the pom pom. When I was well past halfway, I dropped one coloured yarn and picked up 1 strand of white. After wrapping these yarns two or three times, I dropped one more coloured yarn so that I was now holding one coloured yarn and two white. I wrapped these yarns two or three times and then wrapped to the end holding just three strands of white yarn.

I reversed this wrapping pattern to work the same coloured yarns over a second layer and then changed colour to build up a striping pattern with a dithered fade into white at the end.

Here are my wraps at the end of every colour change.

I began making this pom pom by just allowing my balls of yarn to hang loose, but I very quickly got in a tangle. Much like knitting using the intarsia method, it became so much easier when I wound my separate yarn balls onto kumihimo bobbins.

Cutting the pom pom open revealed a satisfying speckled fade.

Before trimming…

… after trimming

To finish it off, I looped some metallic thread, knotted it, and threaded it through the pom pom using the big-eye beading needle. I attached a couple of beads to the top loop using a crimp bead.

I’m so pleased with my first attempts at making patterned pom pom baubles! I’ve learned so much just by allowing myself to play and experiment. These are going to look so cute hanging on our Christmas tree this year!

Now, I’m just itching to get hold of a bigger pom pom maker to see how much more detail I could capture if I were able to go bigger!

-----

Finally, here’s a summary of everything I learned from my first few attempts at making patterned pom poms -

Symmetrical designs are significantly easier! It is still possible to make some non-symmetrical motifs by building the design across the two halves of the pom pom - take a look at Mr Printables impressive examples of asymmetrical letters.
If you’re going to repeat a hidden motif on both sides of the pom pom, make sure to mark the top of the pom pom maker at one end.
Wrap the yarn tightly around the pom pom for a more dense final result.
Filling the pom pom maker to absolute capacity will result in a much denser pom pom, and it will also help the two halves of the pom pom stay together during cutting.
Remember that where you wrap the yarn at the base has a greater effect on that colour’s final position (not where it is positioned at the top of the wrap), as this is where it will be secured.
Holding several similar-coloured yarns together can create visual interest and speed things up.
When changing colour, cut the yarn at the top of the pom pom arch.
If you’re going to use the same colour repeated across one layer (more than a few strands apart), use a separate strand of yarn for each section to prevent rogue strands appearing where they don’t belong.
Use the sharpest scissors you can find for cutting the pom pom open. Large fabric scissors are useful for sculpting the pom poms. Roll it around in your hand, fluffing it up and trimming off small sections at a time until you achieve your desired shape.
Use a thread that won't break when you tug on it to tie your pom poms.
Bigger pom poms allow for more detail and definition in the final design. You can always trim it down for a really solid and dense patterned pom pom.
The more you trim it, the denser the pom pom.
Pom poms don’t have to be spherical. Experiment with pointed drop shapes, eyes, hearts… anything you can imagine.

Thank you so much for reading this far! If you've enjoyed this blog post, please pin this image to Pinterest. It really makes a difference to me and helps other crafters find it too.

Questionable Blend number 11 - Twinkle Twinkle

2025-10-15T15:33:00.000+01:00

Novice spinners are regularly attracted to the bold, multi-coloured stripes of a vertically blended top, but are frequently left disappointed when their beautiful combed top turns to mud on the wheel. In this series, I’ll be sharing several techniques that can help reduce the amount of optical mixing during spinning, so that some of those original colours still show up in the final yarn. By the end, the tops will almost certainly not be questionable.

Twinkle Twinkle

Images of Twinkle Twinkle - Reproduced by kind permission of World of Wool

Above are the images of Twinkle Twinkle from the World of Wool website. They don't look like the same blend! The first image is much too washed out, and while the second image is a slightly closer representation of Twinkle Twinkle, the yellow is much more prominent than in the blended top I have in front of me.

Above are the colours of the merino and bamboo fibres within Twinkle Twinkle. Optical mixing is magical! Even when I opened the fibre at home, I was sure there must be some purple or blue in there.

Here’s my photograph of Twinkle Twinkle, and to my eye, it’s a very close representation of the top I purchased. I’m so confused! This barely resembles the images on the World of Wool website. It’s beautiful! Either something has gone amiss in the blending process, or World of Wool need to take a look at their photography because the website images do not do this blend justice. It’s beautiful!

I originally chose Twinkle Twinkle as I wanted to see how the yellow bamboo fibres would neutralise the more purple hues within the blend. On opening it, I was hopeful that I shouldn’t see too much brown in my final yarns, as the yellow is much more subtle than the website images suggest.

I arranged all the yarns from the blends in this series into a kind of muted gradient, and I’ll be spinning them in this order. They have all been spun with no attention paid to colour management; they’ve simply been pre-drafted, spun, and then chain-plied.

To begin with, I spun 8g of Twinkle Twinkle to see how it looks when I allow the colours to freely mix together during spinning. I just drafted it out and then spun it from the tips. I then chain-plied it at the wheel to achieve a 3-ply yarn.

Much like the Hawaiian Dreams I spun previously, the resulting yarn is a very pretty, tonal purple. This time it's much darker and richer with a golden sheen, thanks to the 15% yellow bamboo content. It's beautiful, and a colour I would very happily wear!

From a distance, the colours optically mix together into a warm aubergine colour, heathered with purples and pinks. This one is going to be very difficult to achieve distinct colour variations as it’s so well blended, but I’m looking forward to spinning it to see what I manage to come up with.

(Ad) Most of the yarns in this series will be spun on my Electric Eel Wheel 6 - This is an affiliate link. If you click through and make a purchase, I may receive a small percentage of the purchase price at no additional cost to you. Any income from my blog goes a small way toward funding future blog projects.

Spinning Twinkle Twinkle 4 Different Ways

Spinning from the Fold - Short Draw

I'm spinning all of the yarns in this series from the fold as this is one of the most popular ways of trying to keep the colours in a multicoloured top a bit more separate.

To prepare my fibre for spinning from the fold, I grasp the full width of the top at the very tips and just pull. This allows me to spin from just a little over a staple length of fibre.

Over the course of writing my Questionable Blends blog series, I’ve been working on improving my long-draw spinning - a technique I find much easier when I spin from the fold. However, I decided to spin Twinkle Twinkle using a short sideways draft as I’m beginning to suspect that long-draw spinning from the fold increases the possibility of the colours mixing together. Twinkle Twinkle is one of the more blended tops in this series, so hopefully this will result in a little less colour blending.

It’s definitely a theory I plan to explore more thoroughly in the future…

Here is my single, spun from the Fold with very little twist entering the drafting zone. As is usual with yarn spun from the fold, the colour sections are short, but it's reassuring to see quite a few pops of colour in there.

The final chain-plied yarn is a very subtle heathered autumnal purple that is much less flat-looking than the yarn spun from pre-drafted top.

The knitted fabric is a pleasing autumnal purple with subtle pops of colour that add a little visual interest without being distracting.

Splitting the Top Vertically

All of the blends in this series were split vertically as it's one of the easiest ways of ensuring the colours in a blended top don't completely mix together when you spin them.

As Twinkle Twinkle is so well blended, I had to tear it into quite thin strips to ensure that my final yarn had a little more colour variation. Some of the sections were so thin that I ended up combining two or three nests of similar colours together so that I had a fibre supply that was thick enough for me to draft from.

As you can see, most of my nests are similar in colour, but a few of the lighter ones should stand out to add a little visual interest to my final yarn

This may well be the most subtle yarn I've spun by splitting the top vertically.

It is rewarding to see those subtle purple and orange streaks running through the yarn...

... which show up as gentle colour fluctuations in the knitted mitred squares.

Hand Combing a Gradient

Back in 2023, I used my hackle to turn a custom blended merino and bamboo top into a gradient.

In my experience, bamboo fibres tend to be shorter, on average, than merino fibres. By taking advantage of the differences in average fibre length, you can often achieve a gradient when you remove the fibres thinly from a hackle or comb.

Here you can see that there are more of the shorter yellow bamboo fibres in the middle of my combed nest. The merino - being a more natural fibre than the bamboo rayon - has a much wider range of fibre lengths, so they are distributed throughout the combed top with a greater proportion of merino fibres on the outside of the nest.

I repeated the combing four times and arranged the nests in alternating order to avoid abrupt colour changes when I spin them.

The dark and light fibres show up quite well on the bobbin.

This technique results in one of the more striking yarns with streaks of purple and muddy orange.

Knitting it up, I get a kind of gradient that gently cycles through the colour changes. If I were to use this technique for a sweater, I would probably diz the fibres off my hackle to give me much longer sections of colours. Plying two, three, or more gradient singles together rather than chain-plying them would give me an even longer gradient with complex, dithered colour transitions.

Making Blending Board Pencil Roving

This is a technique I discovered while I was writing my Spinning into Focus blog series.

I break off just one length of top that’s a little over the length of my blending board. I then open it up so that all of the colours are sitting next to each other, rather than on top of one another. The fibres are then just laid on top of the blending board in a single layer, while trying to get them to stretch across the full width of blending board.

I then brush the fibres down, starting at the bottom and gently working my way gradually up the board, holding the fibres above the brush to keep them straight.

With the two blending board dowels, I draft off all of the fibre into one single blending board rolag.

You can see that opening up the top and arranging it in a thin layer across the whole of the board allows me to now spin the blended top from the side, rather than the end. I can spin the colours one after the other rather than all at the same time.

Unfortunately, thick blending board rolags are quite unpleasant to spin from as they take quite a bit of tugging, and the colours have a tendency to bunch together and optically mix into a single hue.

To avoid this, I draft the rolag out into pencil roving, making it much more enjoyable to spin from, and increasing the chances of getting more fluctuations of colour throughout the final yarn.

It’s lovely to see a nice selection of blues, pinks, purples, and even greens in there.

But the final chain-plied yarn is still very subtle and understated.

The knitted mitred square sample shows the greatest variety of colours without being too busy.

---

It should be noted that the first and last yarns are woollen prepped, rather than worsted. Even though they were both spun short-draw, the singles still don’t have quite the same sheen and smoothness as the two yarns spun from the end of combed top.

From left to right - spun from the fold, split vertically, combed gradient, and blending board pencil roving.

Yet again, I’m so very thankful to have started my Questionable Blend series. I never would have bought Twinkle Twinkle based on the images on the World of Wool website otherwise. Whichever method I chose to prepare it resulted in a beautiful dusky pink/light aubergine, that I would very happily wear.

My next blend will be the final Questionable Blend in this series, and I think it’s going to be an interesting one…

Related Posts

Spinning 12 Questionable Blends

Questionable Blend #1 Higglety Pigglety

Questionable Blend #2 Over the Rainbow

Questionable Blend #3 Gourami

Questionable Blend #4 Rainbow

Questionable Blends Blanket Knitting Pattern

Questionable Blend #5 - Loriini

Questionable Blend #6 - Blaze

Questionable Blend #7 - Libra

Questionable Blend #8 Hickory Dickory

Questionable Blend #9 Tropical

Questionable Blend #10 Hawaiian Dreams

Questionable Blend #12 Ice and Fire

----------

Please be sweet and share the love. Leave a comment, subscribe to my YouTube channel, like my Facebook page for regular updates or follow me on Pinterest, Bloglovin' or Instagram