Spinning 101

I took a spinning class a week ago and I'm thrilled. I tried to learn from a DVD but clearly I needed more interactive help than that. So I was frustrated trying to create something that looked remotely like yarn. When I saw the class at All About Yarn to learn on a drop spindle, I think I called to sign up within 2 minutes of receiving the email update of their classes. And it was great. The end result is that I can now spin something that resembles yarn. The first attempts resulted in lumpy bumpy yarn which we were corrected and told we had made "Designer Yarn" smile....whatever you call it, I was still proud of my efforts.


Lumpy bumpy it may be, it was still something I made. The drop spindle works quite well although I admit I'm not great about letting it remain spinning while I'm drafting etc and pinching the yarn to move the twist up. I tend to send it spinning and then clamping it between my knees while I work the twist up the roving. Maybe with more practice I will get more confident on that part.

So after working on half of the roving I had 3 balls of lumpy bumpy designer yarn.....so I started again and look what I ended up with this time!



This looks much closer to regular yarn to me! Still have sections that are lumpy than the rest, but I'm quite proud of this. There will definitely be more spinning in my future. I might have gone online to Etsy and purchased a couple more batches of 4 ounces of roving. smile....can't wait to get it and start spinning.

But in the mean time I have some Christmas knitting to take care of.

I'm about 2/3 done with the first mitten for my nephew's fiancee, Anna. Although my knitting was slowed this weekend because I tweaked my back. But I'm much better and think I can handle sitting for the amount of time I need to get some knitting done.