chronicle of a beginning spinner

[piranha]

oh yeah, this spinning thing suits me. it's very zen. well, theoretically it's very zen; that is, i can feel how it will become so. most of the time i am still too tense, but i can feel it for moments. i am doing much better with the grey shetland i bought at the cowichan fleece and fibre fair than i did with the nice, commercial top that came with the wheel. i just couldn't draft that properly until i started doing it from the fold; then it was, wow, so much easier.

however, spinning from the fold seems sort of a waste when one has long staple, because one folds that in half. but otherwise i guess i have to separate the roving even more than i did, and predraft the heck out of it. i also think that i need to do a longdraw with that fibre.

the grey shetland is very fluffy and lofty, and while it has lots of little noils, i am actually managing to mostly control the thickness of the single otherwise. i seem to tend towards spinning very thin, and today i practiced to get a little thicker single instead. my twist is really good, too; it's not been as hideously overtwisted as before anymore.

i'm sitting further back as well. i didn't start out real close to the orifice anyway, because it makes sense to be back some so i have more length of yarn to control before it goes onto the bobbin. but i'm now about half a metre back, and that gives me a lot of opportunity to smooth bits out that were a bit too thin, and i am still close enough to be able to see.

i'm basically spinning in some unholy mixture of worsted and longdraw, *snicker*. inchworm didn't work well for me at all; the yarn was very uneven. i might've had too much roving in my hand. in any case worsted technique works for me, from the fold works for me, and i can feel longdraw happening as well. i'm happy with my progress.

if you have no idea what i am talking about, but want to: here's a great page with short videos introducing basic techniques.

Comments

[jenett]

There is something gloriously geeky about how you have to adapt to the different wools/staple lengths, isn't there?

(I dislike spinning from the fold, incidentally, and I do as little pre-drafting as I can get away with, which is a sign that it takes all kinds. Fortunately, spinning is remarkably tolerant of these variations as long as you're okay with the variation in end product that results.)

But yay you for finding the stuff that works for you.

[piranha]

oh yes; i love the geekiness this supports -- so much stuff to learn about wools and other fibres. and about techniques and tools.

i am not much into pre-drafting either (BORING), but this commercial top i have is so dense, nothing else would work -- except spinning from the fold, *heh*, so that's what i did. the lazy option. why do you dislike it?

i think my spindle work will improve a lot now, because i seem to be learning much faster on the wheel, but some of the different drafting options will translate back.

[jenett]

I spin from the end. I think it's that spinning from the fold takes a combination of coordination and having to rearrange myself periodically that I find frustrating when drop-spinning, where if I spin from the end, I can just set myself up with a long strip of fiber and go at it for a while.

[ex_rising236]

I spin in some ungodly variation also, most of the time. Rarely do I have anything that works absolutely as planned or absolutely one way or the other. But it always comes out wonderfully.

[piranha]

*nod*. well, i don't expect everything to work 100% as planned, because that won't happen with organic things, and i actually like the little surprises -- they teach me, and they add something unique to the work.

but i want to get to the point where i can predict what should happen overall and know how to get there. that's the geeky part in me. :)