Spin-out, or is that spin-in?

I spent the last three days out at Carol Leigh's Hillcreek Fiber studio doing an introduction to spinning.

WHAT A BLAST!!!

Spinning is just as addictive as knitting. Okay, I admit it: I did wind up going home with my very own Louet spinning wheel.

We started first with a drop spindle, which is a very economical, very portable spinning "wheel." You can get a lovely hand turned hardwood spindle made by Carl (Bex's brother) for under $30. With a drop spindle, you can both spin and ply yarns. I told Carol Leigh that Carl really should go to engineering school because he had intuitively designed a very mechanically efficient spindle, similar to a flywheel. (For those who don't know, I was a biomechanical engineer before becoming disabled by a car wreck 10 years ago.)

There's a nice selection of drop spindles right here at the yarn shoppe, and more at the fiber studio if you're looking for something really unusual. I just spotted a spindle kit which includes a drop spindle, Connie Delaney's FABULOUS book: Spindle Spinning from Novice to Expert, and three colors of roving (sheep fluff) for spinning.

Bex also carries a small selection of spinning supplies right at the shop, which is conveniently located in full view of exit XX of I-70. If you get a squeak in your wheel or your goat eats your carders, pop on in for some quikie spinning supplies like oil, carders, angora fluff, glittery fluff to add to your yarn, scissors (but don't let Carol Leigh see you with them ), or even a niddy noddy for measuring and skeining your homespun yarns. Don't forget we also have swifts and ball winders to please both knitters and spinners alike.

So, back to the class. I sat in on part of the intermediate class, who were working on some designer yarns. The first they did (and I got to try too) was a Noro-type yarn. If you aren't familiar with Noro yarns, they are beautiful color-changing yarns. Instead of being variegated with short bursts of color changes that look like short dashes in your knitting and crocheting, Noro yarns have very long stretches of color that knit up as horizontal stripes, and either don't repeat or have a very long repeat within a skein. It's kind of a rainbow effect, but not necessarily in traditional rainbow colors. It comes in a variety of fiber blends, including 100% wool (Kureyon), and various proportions of wool, kid mohair, silk, lambs wool, and in some just a touch of synthetic fiber. This is an ideal yarn for entrelac knitting because instead of getting stripey entrelac squares, you get a field sprinkled with solid or slightly graduated squares, like a pile of autumn leaves. It's a stunning effect. Plus, if you use Kureyon, it felts very nicely. We have some nice patterns for felted entrelac bags and napsacks. I'm making a friend an entrelac hat with kind of purpley colors. I'll post a photo when it's done.

Leah and I talked about starting a little spinning gathering to meet at the yarn shoppe on Sunday afternoons, after the sock group. Carol Leigh said that on days that she wasn't committed to teaching classes and such, that she'd even join us. It's just going to be a fellowship sort of thing, to get together and chat, see what everyone is working on, trade ideas and discoveries, and so on. We're going to count our first meeting, this coming Sunday as this week's demo. So spinning demo this Sunday at 3 p.m.

Recap:

Saturday's knitting class is: Basic Socks (toe-up or toe-down)
The sock group meets this Sunday, at the shoppe, at 1 p.m.
Spinning demo this Sunday, at the shoppe, at 3 p.m.

Hope to see y'all there!