Spinning Wool into Yarn for the first time

I have made yarn out of wool for the first time in my life. I’ve been wanting to try spinning for a couple of years, and now finally I have!

I can’t believe I finally got the opportunity to try this – for free! And how much I want to try again, and again, and again!

I was invited for a Wool Day at my friend Marika’s house, and she let me try both her low-whorl spindle and her vintage spinning wheel, and even let me spin with some of her trial wool. the wool was a thick gray wool with a lot of grease left in it (all of it?) which made my hands nice and smooth while working with it. The grease is a fatty, pale yellow wax that coats the fibers of sheep’s wool and yields lanolin (also called wool fat) that is washed away when you use the yarn later. But the more the merrier when you are a beginner perhaps? It kind of makes the wool fiber to stick together a little better, so it was great for me!

First I tried the spindle. You hold the thread in one hand and the spin the spindle with the other. When you let more fiber down into the spinning wheel it creates a yarn. A very strange looking yarn, but still a thread that is made out of wool. The newly spun yarn thread gets longer the spindle gets closer to the floor, so every now and then you have to stop and wound it around the shaft just above the whorl. It is a magic that looks complicated but is rather fun. I had beginners luck or as Marika though; was a natural spinner! I had fun anyway, as I have previously suspected. A creative hunch? Intuition? I don’t know, I just know I have longed to spin and when I did it it was fun and I want to do it again!

I was creatively excited!

The spinning wheel is a device for spinning yarn from fibers, where spinning is the process of twisting fibers together to create yarn. It is much faster than the spindle – when you know how!

Spinning Wool

The spinning wheel was much more difficult, because you spin the wheel by pumping with your feet at the same time that you are feeding it more wool in, preferably, an even pace. But the wheel spun much quicker than I gave it wool and then it stopped and fell backwards so that I had to start it up again and try to find the rhythm. I got a tiny little ball of gray way to twisted yarn out of this thing too, but I need to practice a lot more.

Marika made purple yarn with a more practiced woman’s technique and I was fascinated:

Isn’t it cool? Here are some more images:

And Marika’s beautiful two cats:

And a link to Marikas blog where you can see images of me spinning away in wool heaven! Thank you Marika!

Now high up on my wish list is a spindle, a bag of wool, a room to work in and a week at S?tergl?ntan practicing! Well, you can dream, can’t you!

Winner of the giveaway (sorry it took so long to tell you all) is Caren McNee! Congratulations to Caren and thank you to everyone who visited me, sent me link love and opened their heart in this big giveaway! Thanks to Lisa too, who arranged it!

I’ve updated my etsy shop too today! Take a look!