Adventures in Spinning!

Knitting has been my favorite pass time for about 4 years now and though I am certainly not an advanced knitter I feel that I am not too bad at it. I love to look at yarn, smell yarn and buy yarn. Choosing yarn of course is essential when deciding on a particular project you would like to complete. I myself am not very picky when it comes to yarn. I will knit in any weight, any color, any fiber ( though cotton sometimes makes my hand really dry and isn't all that pleasant to work with). I will use some acrylic yarns, but usually only if there is some kind of wool percentage in it and it is soft.

With that said, after snooping around on some of the forums on Ravelry I noticed that some people were actually making their own yarn. What a concept! I mean you can choose the fiber, weight, and color of your yarn and make it yourself! You need a certain level of skill to get to that level of course, but it was possible. Thus I entered the world of spinning.....

This was a set that I bought on ebay for my first go at it. It is a bottom whorl spindle with a cute little leaf design. Unfortunately I tend to jump the gun when I am excited about something and had I researched this hobby properly I would have known that not all spindles are the same. In fact it seems as though 99% of people prefer a top whorl spindle. I will admit I was grumpy when I finally got it in the mail but after watching a few tutorials on YouTube and taking a class at Mind's Eye Yarns in Cambridge, I got the hang of the bottom whorl ( but I like top whorl better now =P)

Things were slow going for me with spinning. Its not like you can just finish a hank of yarn in an afternoon (maybe with a wheel, but not so much with a spindle) but like most new things I do, I was obsessed. I spun every chance I got for the first few weeks I had my spindle. I abandoned the bottom whorl pretty quickly and switched to a top whorl Ashford spindle I bought during one of my classes.

Sorry for the awful pic, these images are old and I didn't have a nice camera back then. This is my Asford spindle. It is a very good spindle for when you start, it has a good weight and is easy to control. That is some practice fiber I bought with it, not sure what kind but it spun up really nicely.

As my spinning got better, I got more spindles....behold my Kundert 1oz spindle (best one I own in my opinion) and my Butterfly Girl jade spindle. Both are super cute and spin like a dream! I enjoy this hobby, almost as much as knitting. It is relaxing and you can do in front of the TV! Some FOs tomorrow!