Spinning? with Pictures!

roving and drop spindle and confusion

A few (read: sevenish) months ago, I bought a drop spindle and some roving from The Twisted Purl... I wanted to try spinning yarn. Clearly, it had to sit on my shelf for a few to several months before I could work up the balls or the boredom to actually try it. Everyone says it's really difficult to do when you first start. They weren't kidding.






I used some red Caron yarn as my leader. I don't know if that's a good idea or not, but ... that's what I did. And it picked up the roving with the first spin!! What!

But then the strand broke.

.... but it looked ... somewhat yarnish, right?

Anyway. I kept going for a bit, and kind of felt like I was sort of getting the hang of drafting- which is what it's called when you pull apart the fiber a little (I think) to add to the yarn on the spindle. As the yarn on the spindle twists and you let fiber bits lead into the yarn that's already on the spindle... the twist travels up the drafted/pulled fiber and that magically turns it into yarn. It's pretty cool.

Eventually I couldn't really tell how things were going with it. I kept having it break because little puffs would pile up and it seemed that the twist didn't make it into the puffs, but the twist would all pile into one small, very thin strip of fiber. So I ended up with a lot of this:

lots of broken bits of "yarn" which I think was just slightly tightened roving

But I did have a little of this:












<<<That almost looks like yarn... yeah?


In any case, I'm calling it a night on the spinning. I figured you'd all be dying to know how I was spending my Monday. This was the long version, with pictures. The short version is this: I spent thirty minutes fighting my cat off my ankles and roving scraps while I tried to turn a ball of fiber into a strand of yarn.

In any event, you should check out The Twisted Purl's website. She makes beautiful yarns, among other things. Her Etsy shop is currently on vacation until August, but take a look at the site! Click the name of the site... there's a hyperlink but the text makes it a tad difficult to tell.

On a somewhat related but mostly unrelated note, I'm really digging Ellie Goulding's Lights (Bassnectar Remix) right now.