With about 4 years of spinning under my belt I finally feel comfortable sharing some of the things I do with you. I do not in any way consider myself and expert, so take this for what it is, chatter from an average jane spinner. For a long time the drafting part of spinning caused me heart ache after hearth ache, then I discovered pre-drafting and I haven't looked back since, but evolved how I go about it quite a bit. There is nothing as pleasing to me as knitting from a center pull ball/cake and thus I came to unvent the center pull cake for spinning. Here is how you go about it.
How to make a pre-drafted center pull ball from roving
Weigh off the amount of roving you want to work with.
Split it down the middle
Continue to split every strip down the middle until you have a suitable thickness,
this is a question of preference, mine are about the width of my pinky.
Fluff up the first strip, this fibre, Malabrigo Nube doesn't need a whole lot of pre-drafting in my opinion, but you do as much as you like. This is where you lay the foundation for trouble free spinning.
Now wind the first strip loosely (the key word for all the winding you will do!) around your hand.
Make sure you have the end sticking out a little so you can find it later on.
Your cake will now look something like this and you can move on
to fluffing up your next strip (or you could do all the strips at once).
For the join, make sure you place the new strip under the old one.
I have found this to be the best way to ensure it gribs the next strip when spinning.
Continue the process until you have a cake of your desired size and then enjoy the spinning.
I would love to know how it went if you try this out or tell me in the comments how you pre-draft your fibre.
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