Adventures in Spinning - Part II

So, Linda and Jamie and I take my car (a large black station wagon) and head North and West to The Fold. I was so excited to be there - Linda and Jamie have been there before, so they were old hands already, and Jamie is an experienced spinner.

OK - if you have not been to The Fold, it's hard to describe what a spinner's and knitter's paradise it is. Every conceivable fiber, every conceivable color, wheels, spindles, tools, books, patterns, and an entire other room filled with commercial yarn! All that, plus Eric, the giant German Shepherd. And then there's Toni - this woman has the patience of a saint. I'm not kidding.

We bypassed spindles altogether (probably a good thing for me, actually) and she sat me down at a Lendrum ST wheel (that one in the photo below - I just took it home with me). Jamie sat down next to me with her own Lendrum wheel, and Toni proceeded to show me how to thread the fiber and we got started. I wasn't perfect, but (according to Toni and Jamie) I was better than the average beginner. It all seemed to make such sense to me, and my body had little trouble coordinating my feet, my hands, the fiber and the speed of the wheel - I'm wondering if this is because I'm a piper - you have to do a lot of different things at the same time to play the bagpipes.

Anyway - after conversation, and teaching, and shopping, Linda, Jamie and I headed into town for some lunch and then came back to the store. I asked a million more questions, and we did our final shopping, and loaded up the car. I think Linda has a picture of all the stuff we came home with (this is why we generally take my station wagon to places were we could possible buy a lot of stuff (yarn stores, Stitches, etc.) instead of hers - mine's bigger :-D

So - here's the desk in my kitchen. On the far left on the desk, is the bag of fiber that came with my wheel - I forget what it is, exactly - other than wool from New Zealand, but I was able to work with it pretty well. Next to it is a blend of wool, silk, and cashmere. Then some roving I got more recently, Gypsy Girl, merino/Tencel blend. Then a variety pack of wools from different English sheep. On the chair, on the bottom, is a bag of Merino, and on the top, a bag of Blue Faced Leicester that Linda gave me because she discovered that she doesn't like to spin. Hidden in there somewhere is some black Wensleydale, which I confess, I had to get because I'm a Wallace and Gromit fan, and that's the cheese that Wallace always talks about (silly, I know). The only thing not in the photo is a huge bag of dark brown Lincoln, and that's because I'm spinning it up. Anyway - you can see I have my work cut out for me.

One last photo - Toni plied my beginning yarn for me and made it into a wee skein! So thoughtful of her! As you can see, I'm clearly a beginner (hey - I had only been spinning for an hour :-D), but stay tuned for the next episode of "Adventures in Spinning" and we'll see how things go :-D