Okay so remember how I said I was taking a new class, on spinning. Ya that wasn’t like cycling. I was learning how to make my own yarn on a spinning wheel. So things started out really rocky, and I didn’t want to talk about, that’s how bad it was. I got home from my first class and I was so upset. I like to “get things” to pick them up easy. Maybe not to master everything, but if I take a class on something I need to be one of the people waiting for the next direction, no begging for more help. But I found myself constantly calling upon the teacher. “Why is my yarn all twisty? How come I can’t get it to take up onto the bobbin? Is something wrong with my wheel?” I had spent 97 dollars on the class, more on the wheel rental, and I was bummed. My teacher said that my wheel wasn’t working all that great. And looking on the web I found unfavorable reviews of the Ashford I had rented. I didn’t know what to get! I didn’t know what a treadle was, or that I would want two instead of one. I just picked one that looked kinda fairy book style and brought it home.
So my mom drove me back to Woodland Woolworks. A big shop in a super tiny town an hour away. I brought the wheel in and told them my teacher said it wasn’t working right and I wanted to trade. I went upstairs to the loft where all the wheels were and kinda played around. I thought I had one I liked better so I went downstairs to get someone to help me. I saw a woman spinning on the wheel I had brought in. “Are you the one who brought back this wheel?” she asked. I said yes, and she said nothing was wrong with it, the bobbin just had two different ends, and they had to be flipped around. I told her what my teacher said, and then asked if she could come help me pick out a wheel, because I decided that even if that one worked I wanted a double treadle instead. So I sat down and showed her what I could do and she was all, “why aren’t you using your thumb on your drafting hand?” (that’s the hand that hold the fiber you are going to spin). I told her that my teacher told me not to, that it was a bad habit, and she said she had never heard of that, and everyone spins that way and she showed me a few tricks and… I GOT IT! I mean I was spinning. Then she showed me that the fiber we had got was really short, and not that great. So I got some prepared stuff, just carded, so it still grabbed to each other. I was so happy I went home and spun, and spun. Then we had the bad weather, and a class was canceled, so I didn’t get to show off my skills until Tuesday. When I went I had more done than any one and I felt like a super star! We started playing with different fibers.
And she even let me ply on my last class because I”m going to be gone for the make-up from the snow day. I am loving spinning so much. A great new friend I met in the class lent me her copy of Spinning Designer Yarns and I am going to buy it because it has lots of great information. Here is a single ply that I knit up after soaking in hot water and drying (to set the twist):
Thank Bj for the great photo. Check my photo of the day for a rockin turquoise I”m working on. I don’t know if I’m going to keep the wheel (a double treadle folding Lendrum), I’d have to pay like 400 dollars more, all my spending money for the next few months (luckily the rental price goes into the wheel, and I’m loving the one I have now). But I was thinking I might make up some fun stuff to sell on my blog to offset the cost. I don’t know though. So that’s my spinning update. I feel like I could be a real pioneer woman now, knitting, spinning, quilting, but of course I would miss my power mac, so I guess not!
