Bizonkulous

Cheesy I know.  Anyway, I’m learning to spin.  You know your friends are cycling nerds when you say, “I’m taking a spinning class!” and they give you dirty looks and say why don’t you just ride your bike?  YARN, guys.  Also, you know your husband’s friends are music nerds when he tells them you’re taking spinning lessons and they think DJing.  Anyway, on with the wooly goodness.

I’m taking lessons from Felicia at Sweet Georgia, and so far (I’ve had 3 out of 4 lessons) I really recommend it.  I happen to be the only person in the class this time, and private lessons are always nice.  It includes the use of the spinning wheel - you get to take it home between classes - and materials.  I’ve got a ton of fibre… Wensleydale, Corriedale, merino, some blends, all kinds of things.

At the first lesson, we started out just learning to make single plies using the short-draw or inchworm technique.  I started with this:

And finished with this:

You can see some underspun parts (the fat fluffy areas) and some overspun (where it’s twisted on itself) but overall quite nice, I think!  It’s dyed with onion skins.  And even though it’s pretty much the worst yarn I’ve ever used, I was so proud of it I had to knit something:

A little scratchy, but it does keep you warm.

I also had some merino/tencel blend that James gave me for Christmas two years ago, along with a drop spindle.  I spun more of that stuff in half an hour than I ever did in two years with the spindle.

Before:

After:

I’m pretty happy with that too, it’s super soft and I managed a more consistent thickness and twist.

For lesson number two, we tried spinning Wensleydale instead of Corriedale.  It has a longer staple (=fibre) length, and less crimp in each individual fiber.  It’s kind of like wavy hair.  Blue-green wavy hair in this case.  We also did some plying - it’s done in pretty much the same way as spinning, just the opposite direction.  So you take two single plies that you’ve spun clockwise, hold them together, and spin counterclockwise.  Or vice versa.  I made 2-plies out of both the corriedale and the merino/tencel, and then later at home, made a 3-ply out of the Wensleydale.  Behold:

Corriedale

Merino/Tencel

Wensleydale

Obviously the last one is the best.  If I bought yarn and it looked like that, I wouldn’t be upset.

The third lesson had some new fibres (some really squishy superwash merino) and some new techniques (long-draw) and the fourth will involve Navajo plying and something else, or so I’m told.  More about those later.

I’ve been really liking it so far, and much to James’ dismay I think I will probably have to buy a spinning wheel.  $600 should pay for itself with the savings from not having to buy as much yarn, right?