I'm ready for wintertime spinning. I've got all of my fiber show purchases from the year piled up and ready to go. I even have two of my three fleeces washed.

As usual, I bought a bunch of braids. No matter how carefully the dyer treats them in their dye process, most braids still need a little prep to draft smoothly.

Before I spin a braid I always make sure that it is all the way open horizontally. This allows the fiber to draft easily and steadily, with no catches or stumbles.

During the dyeing process a lot of combed top will curl in on itself, like a roly poly bug, from the edges to the center.

This creates layers of slightly compressed fiber that can make drafting uneven, and cause that stop and go feeling while pulling the fiber for a draft.

Here's what I do.

After I unchain the brain and shake it out, I look for the seam that runs the length of the fiber.

I slide my fingers in that seam and carefully unroll each side horizontally all the way down the braid.

This usually doubles the width of the fiber.

I used to stop after this and start spinning, but I noticed my fiber still catching.

I looked harder at my fiber and saw that the very edge of the edges were still curled in.

Look at the spots where the arrows point in the photo, the edges are a little thicker than the rest.

Now I take the time to do a second uncurling pass on my fiber.

When my fiber is all of the way open, my braid is sometimes 3x the width it was when I first unchained it.

The best part of fully opening my fiber is the smoothness of drafting. I can spin much faster (!) and it’s so much easier to keep my yarn consistent.

The wonderful fiber in this post is Frabjous Fibers BFL in the Ostara colorway.