Spin Me a Yarn

I've decided that yarn is a gateway drug. I learned how to knit about 4 years ago, and it has taken over many hours of my life, an enormous number of my brain cells, and not a small amount of my apartment's closet space.

Lately, because I don't have enough nonsense going on, I've become somewhat obsessed interested in the idea of spinning. I blame this partly on the internet, because you can type in any subject you're interested in, and the most fabulous information and pictures are at your fingertips. A friend said that she knew this was coming as soon as she heard that I had dyed my own yarn.

So, I gave in to temptation, and because I have neither limitless funds nor space, I decided to try the whole thing out with a spindle rather than a wheel.


I purchased both a kick spindle and a regular spindle from Heavenly Handspinning, a company that comes very highly praised by those in the know, and my experience with them was excellent. In only a few days, my precious package arrived; I had also ordered some lovely roving, which arrived the following day.


I unpacked my treasures, and began to "spin":


Hmmmm...not as easy as it looks. There are tons of videos available about how to do this, and some of them look like magicians as they spin - it's really amazing. I am not a terribly coordinated person (I often bump into walls trying to take a corner too quickly) so I thought the kick spindle would be a good fit for me. It works pretty well, and I have been doing a little every day. I rolled my attempts onto a cardboard tube, and you can see the progression from really lumpy and uneven on the right to less lumpy (but still uneven) on the left:


I've been doing a little bit every day, and I know I'm improving. I don't know if you can call the finished product yarn, but it's definitely more yarnlike than the fluff I started with, so I guess we'll call that progress!