Still Spinning

After spinning a good length of yarn with my light weight spindle, I unloaded my spindle onto the back of a kitchen chair then tied all four sides with short pieces of string. I then slipped it off of the chair and put it in hot tap water for 20 minutes.

I towel blotted the yarn dry and stretched it back over the chair to finish drying. This is done to set the twist of the yarn. When I took it off of the chair for the second time, it was no longer trying to unwind itself.

My first hand spun wool yarn is uneven and bumpy, but I am proud of it. Now I will spin another length of the same wool and then twist the two together to make a two-ply yarn that I can actually make something with.

Drop Spindle

I purchased a drop spindle kit that included wool, spindle and instructions on eBay. I anxiously started spinning but soon became discouraged because it wasn't quite as easy as it sounded and the instructions didn't help.

I googled for drop spindle videos, to watch how others did it and these videos didn't help either, they just made it look so easy and no matter how hard I tried, it wasn't easy. I found myself constantly turning the spindle because it would not spin on it's own, except in the wrong direction.

I finally figured out that the spindle was just not heavy enough to continue to spin in a clockwise direction without a lot of help from me, but as I continued winding on the yarn, the spindle got heavier and would spin easier without unraveling what I had already spun.

The moral of this story is to buy a nice hard wood spindle and not a cheap kit.

Spinning Yarn

I spun (is that the right word?) my first yarn tonight, I read all of the tutorials that I could find on the web, I read the instruction book that came with the Drop Spindle Kit, I watched the online videos but nothing helped. I finally put all of that information together and kept trying again and again. I eventually made something that vaguely resembled yarn.

I will try again in the morning and maybe then I can actually call myself a spinner.