My three spindles
In early October I attended an event called “Festival of the Snow Eaters” just outside of Lethbridge. It’s an SCA event, and one of the highlights for me was the chance to take a few classes taught by other SCA members.
One of the classes I taught was spinning with a drop spindle. While I took a class earlier, at this class I had the chance to try a few new things, including carding alpaca wool (much more challenging than I anticipated!) and working with a bottom-whorl spindle. (Which was a good deal more fussy and difficult than the top-whorl style it seemed!
In class I used the bottom whorl with some white sheep’s wool. The wool was very similar to the white wool I used earlier, which I still have some left.. so perhaps I’ll try to use them together in some way? The teacher also gave me a top whorl spindle to work with – the whorl is much lighter than the one I already have, so it will likely produce a different weight of yarn.
batts of carded angora
Carding the angora was very challenging – I had no idea the technique would be so foreign to me – while spinning seemed quite natural in comparison.
However, when I brought the bats of wool home, and used my older (and much easier to use!) top-whorl spindle, it was super-easy to spin a very fine yarn with the angora. I quite liked the result! It also spun up very quickly!
The fine angora on my older top-whorl spindle
Fingerlooping
In addition to the spinning class, I also took a class on fingerlooping, using some tapestry wool for my five-loop project. The result is quite heavy/chunky, which I wouldn’t use for much I think… Something finer would likely work better for my projects.
grey and white tapestry-wool fingerloop braid
