Spinning - At Last!

I have wanted to spin yarn since I was about 10 or 11. It's one of those things that has been in the back of my mind all of these years, but I never actually saw a working spinning wheel in someone's home until I was 30. That was a situation where it wasn't appropriate to ask personal questions, so I held back. When I started stumbling across knitting blogs a few years ago, I realized that spinning was modern! Wow! A year ago in February, three of us went to the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival and there was a booth for the Williamsburg Spinners and Weavers Guild. They were giving lessons to all comers. I was hooked. I went to a booth that was selling roving and purchased a bag containing a silk and wool blend, got home, and got busy with other stuff. In May of last year, I separated the roving and started predrafting, basically, pulling the fibers to their longest and skinniest. The book Spin to Knit was very helpful.

In June, I went to a meeting of the Spinners' Flock - about a 45-minute drive away. There I got another lesson and finally got the idea of the "waterfall" and the "triangle." I was diligent for a couple of weeks, and, combined with a "sewing day" at a friend's house in November, produced all of this:

On Memorial Day, after going to the parade and the wreath laying at the local cemetery, I came home and spun:

Each time I do this, the yarn gets better, and I get more confident. I still have half the roving to spin that I bought over a year ago:

In order to spin, though, I have to disturb the "cat's bed" behind a chair in the living room:

I am looking forward to actually creating something with the yarn I'm spinning. Did I mention that I went to a fiber festival in October and bought another bag of roving? I'm also getting on Etsy and lusting after spinning wheels. Hubby Dearest and I were talking about the books in our queue, and lamenting that we each probably have longer reading and project lists than we're likely to accomplish, but it's not about the product, it's about the process, right?