Every good knitting project begins with great yarn. In the quest for one-of-a-kind fibres, many knitters and weavers have discovered the deep satisfaction of spinning one's own. An art in itself, spinning requires an array of basic technical skills and decisions to produce a particular style of yarn.

While knitters have long had stitch dictionaries to guide their hands, no similar resource has existed for spinners. Until now. "The Spinner's Book of Yarn Designs" is a step-by-step guide to creating 70 distinctive yarns, from classics such as mohair boucle to novelty features like supercoils.

Lush, full-colour photographs illustrate the process of turning fleece into yarn, reveal the architecture of each yarn, and demonstrate exactly how to manipulate and combine the fibres to achieve the desired result. Images of knitted and woven pieces reveal how the spun yarn looks in a variety of projects.