Spin, Spin, Spin!!! Yarn, Yarn, Yarn!

I'm off for an entire week from school!  I'm home and watching Sunday night football with my dad and my dogs next to a really lovely fire.  I could stay this way forever!  Today I decided to finally teach my self to learn to spin using a drop spindle.  I'm so excited!  My yarn is so ugly and beautiful at the same time!

I bought a drop spindle before I went away to school and about 5 oz. of roving to play with while at school.  Needless to say that didn't really happen.  I could never get relaxed enough to justify spending time playing with wool.  But I'm home for a week and the only other things that have my attention is some scholarship applications, my dogs, bunnies, and chickies, my family and quite a bit of time will be spent in the kitchen.



After watching a few videos on youtube.com this morning, I finally got out my roving and spindle and seriously started to learn.  I'm still in the "park and draft" level of skill but I will improve this week!  I'm really enjoying it and can't wait to be making my own yarn start to finish!

Let There Be Yarn!

Despite the fact that I have been actively using yarn for nearly a decade, I still use the cheapest yarn I can find in the local chain craft store.  A few years ago I decided I would raise alpacas for fiber and offspring sales.  But that is still in the future.  So I have taken on the mission to find out everything I can about turning that fiber I will be shearing off my future alpacas (and since then I have added fiber goats and sheep to my dreams). 

I went to the library and checked out three books on handspinning and dying fiber.  I just finished the first book this morning.  It is called  by Judith MacKenzie McCuin.  Now, I haven't much experience actually using this book so at the moment this in purely a "reader's review". 

I found Teach Yourself Visually Handspinning a very excellent and informative book.  There were great pictures detailing each section.  It not only covered spinning on a wheel or drop spindle, but also covered a little on dying and spinning exotic fibers.  There was also a section on how to cable, ply and create different artistic effects while spinning yarn.  I would recommend this book to anyone interested in learning to handspin. I plan to use this book when I actually attempt to teach myself to spin my own yarn. 

Now I know what questions to ask the people who are in the handspinning competition at County Fair!   Until next time!  God Bless!