{"id":13024,"date":"2015-12-20T08:39:49","date_gmt":"2015-12-20T15:39:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/?p=13024"},"modified":"2016-01-02T18:10:22","modified_gmt":"2016-01-03T01:10:22","slug":"spinning-by-hand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/?p=13024","title":{"rendered":"Spinning By Hand."},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the reason I sold my dairy goats was to spend more time with my sheep.\u00a0 Specifically with all their wool that is piling up in the craft closet.\u00a0 Last winter I felted 2 entire fleeces into balls in the washing machine because I needed to make room in that closet for more wool.\u00a0 Last spring’s fleece is still in the barn waiting to be washed and carded and this spring’s wool is only a few months away.\u00a0 The pressure is on but the problem is not with the will<\/em> to spin but with the way<\/em> to spin.\u00a0 Because I sat through a couple classes on spinning.\u00a0 And I watched some youtube videos.\u00a0 And I borrowed some books from the library.\u00a0 And I was still completely mystified when I sat at the spinning wheel or held a spindle.<\/p>\n

Part of the problem is being left-handed.\u00a0 Right handed people are never sure whether they should try to teach me how to do it the right-handed way or whether they should try to teach me upside down and backwards, which is the way us lefties are used to living.\u00a0\u00a0 Also, there’s a bit of room for personal preference—-ask 3 different spinners and you might be shown 3 methods that are just the teeniest bit different.\u00a0 And that teeny bit is very confusing.\u00a0 Throw in the terminology (draft, ply, slub, whorl, Z or S twist) that is thrown around during teaching and it’s all very baffling.\u00a0 Besides, I have found that my hands are better learners than my brain.\u00a0 Which results in even more problems.<\/p>\n

For example, when I learned to card wool I had the same difficulties.\u00a0 This part was not hard.<\/p>\n

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But as soon as I left the lesson or turned off youtube I forgot how to get the wool off one carder and onto the other.\u00a0 I just stared at it while my brain tried to remember what came next.\u00a0 And then switching the carders from hand to hand just resulted in dropping them in my lap and wondering how the hell I was holding them (palm up?\u00a0 palm down?\u00a0 thumbs where?) to start with.\u00a0 Eventually I learned to look away, keeping the carders in the edge of my peripheral vision, and letting my hands switch the wool and change hands on their own.\u00a0 Because they remembered what to do, if my brain would just get out of the way.<\/p>\n

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Basically, I card by muscle memory rather than thought.\u00a0 If I think too hard about what I’m doing, it just doesn’t make sense.\u00a0 The less I pay attention to what my hands are doing, the better I card and the faster my wool turns into a bag full of rolags.\u00a0 I think this says something odd and terrible about the connections in my brain, but I can’t say I’m surprised.\u00a0 I’ve always had my doubts about what’s going up there.\u00a0 And it made learning to spin seem impossible.<\/p>\n

Until I sold the last of my dairy goats to a spinner with her own fiber flock.\u00a0 She told me that she had trouble learning how to spin so she knew how to teach people that were struggling.\u00a0 Sure, I thought.\u00a0 But then she sat down in my kitchen and showed me how to spin on a spindle.\u00a0 In about 5 minutes, using the “park and pull” method.\u00a0 And it made sense.\u00a0 She waited until my hands knew what they were doing and then left me to work on it on my own.\u00a0 For the next month or so I picked up the spindle and spun the wool for a few minutes at a time so my hands wouldn’t forget the feel of it or the proper direction to spin the spindle.\u00a0 I did as she suggested and ignored the imperfections and just got accustomed to the feel of the process.\u00a0 I was getting a little bit done but I was balanced right on the edge between thinking and spinning.<\/p>\n

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Then basketball season began.<\/p>\n

My younger boys had been playing soccer so I spent a lot of time at the soccer complex.\u00a0 There was a lovely walking track around the practice fields so I used the time to get some exercise and fresh air.\u00a0 But basketball occurs indoors in a small gym with no track at all.\u00a0 And I can drop off the boys and go somewhere else but I can’t get a whole lot done at home or in town during that hour of practice, especially considering driving time.\u00a0 But I can sit there on the bleachers and spin with my drop spindle.\u00a0 Meaning there are 2 hours each week where I just sit and spin and don’t do anything else.\u00a0 Of course, time is all it takes.<\/p>\n

After the first practice I was spinning away, flying through bags of rolags.\u00a0 Oh, it isn’t pretty.\u00a0 I try to get this:<\/p>\n

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Because it actually looks a bit like real yarn.\u00a0 Which is the goal.\u00a0 But I have a hard time joining new rolags without creating slubs.<\/p>\n

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When joining a new piece of fleece, you’re supposed to draw out the fibers and lay them alongside the piece that you are already spinning.\u00a0 As the twist rises up the wool it will suck in the new fibers on its own.\u00a0 But I tend to end up with a big clump where the the new pieces comes in.\u00a0 I’m not sure why because if I’m not paying attention the end of the rolag will join quite neatly with the rest of the yarn without leaving any bumps at all.\u00a0 Just another example of how much more skilled I am when I am not paying attention to what I am doing.\u00a0 Is that a superpower?<\/p>\n

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Regardless, my will and my way are finally coming together.\u00a0 And spinning is so much fun and so quick that I often don’t realize how much I’ve spun until I can’t reach any higher and am forced to stop and wind they yarn on the spindle and start at the bottom again.\u00a0 By next week’s basketball practices I might even be ready to drop my spindle instead of parking it.<\/p>\n

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And my yarn is simultaneously the ugliest and the most beautiful yarn I’ve ever seen.<\/p>\n

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Isabella would be impressed with what I’ve done with her fleece.\u00a0 Probably.\u00a0 Maybe.\u00a0 Eh.<\/p>\n

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The only problem I foresee is when the spindle is full.\u00a0 Because I have no idea how the get the yarn off the spindle.\u00a0 And once I get it off there’s another problem.\u00a0 I no longer remember how she started attaching the fleece to the spindle to start the spinning process.\u00a0 Something about leaders and whorls and shafts…..ugh.\u00a0 Talk to the hands, spindle, talk to the hands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the reason I sold my dairy goats was to spend more time with my sheep.\u00a0 Specifically with all their wool that is piling up in the craft closet.\u00a0 Last winter I felted 2 entire fleeces into balls in the washing machine because I needed to make room in that closet for more wool.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13024"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13060,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13024\/revisions\/13060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ruffledfeathersandspilledmilk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}