Spinning - The Story of my Dangerous New Addiction

Sunday, 10:30am. At my local knitting circle that I went to for the first time on a lark I learned about spinning on a hand spindle. I learned that they're not all called "drop spindles"-- some are "high whorl" and some are "low whorl." Who knew? Not me.

2:00pm. After some research, I learned that I would prefer the high whorl kind. So then I looked on the internet for how to make one. I knew I had some bamboo straight needles at home that I'll never use again, so I went straight from the knitting circle to Home Depot.

3:00pm. Compiled Materials.


3:05pm. (Seriously). High whorl spindle assembled. (In a later post, I will give detailed directions for how I did this. I made up my own design using materials I had on hand. It was stupid easy.)


3:06pm. Pulled out balls of yarn I'd recycled from two thrift-store sweaters, watched some demo videos on YouTube (search "ply spindle" keywords) and spun some yarn while watching the movie "Stand By Me" on TiVo.

(Ace: "What are you gonna do, shoot us all?" Gordie: "No Ace, I'm just going to shoot you.")


4:00pm. Read Knitty.com article on dying wool with food coloring, then got out the food coloring I had on hand and a small bottle of vinegar and heated up some water. Dyed first skein of wool. Meanwhile, still spinning.

8:00pm. Spun four 25oz-ish skeins of yarn, set in hot water, dyed, and hung up to dry.


I'm using the yarn to make Quant.