Mortaine’s Blog

I posted about this in already today (twice, ahem), but I wanted to post here about it as well.

I learned how to spin yarn today. It’s not especially great yarn, because I’m new. But it’s yarn and it’s more or less consistent in length and strength, so I’m happy. It was very easy to learn once all the pieces fit together in my mind; I made my first yarn this morning before I even had coffee.

This is an incredibly awesome good thing, because it brings me one step closer to spinning my mom’s wool into yarn. I think I figured out that I’ve carded her wool incorrectly (fortunately, I haven’t carded much of it), because the fibers just puff up instead of go in the same direction. so I will need to re-card or just start over with uncarded wool.

I’ll post pics at the end of the weekend. For those who want to know (and a plug): I’m using a top whorl drop spindle bought off eBay and purple roving. I also got a low whorl spindle from the same seller and some rust-colored roving (same seller). The seller is Annie May Stone: the spindle+roving kits were about $10 each, which is about half of what a spindle alone costs in stores (and about $8 more than you can make your own spindle for). The spindles had leaders attached, and they have hooks, which makes spinning as a beginner SO MUCH EASIER. They came with directions, but I also used the videos at ICanSpin.com to help me figure it all out.