Monday, March 5, 2012

Embracing the Woolen

I've been spinning for a number of years now, but up to this point, all I've done is worsted spinning.  Since mostly I spin laceweight, or in the case of Goldie's fleece, yarn for cable-y knitting, worsted has suited my needs just fine.
But Onyx's fleece...
Oh my.  It's fluff.  It's wild and crazy.  It's soft, but has a mind of its own, and its mind wants to head in all directions at once.
No way was I going to be able to tame it into a worsted prep.  Even semi-worsted was a foolish hope.
Time for me to bite the bullet and learn to spin woolen.
Specifically long draw.
 (photo with flash)
(photo without flash)
At first, I tried working from memory - I'd seen spinners doing longdraw, and I'd watched some videos once upon a time..
Nope.  That wasn't it.
So off to YouTube I went, and studied the videos.  And tried again.
And, holy shit, it works!
And it's fast!  I've been doing the inchworm short draw for forever, and the contrast with long draw couldn't be more dramatic.  I filled half a bobbin in practically no time.
As with any new skill, I need a lot more practice.  A lot, oh, my, yes.  But I'm looking forward to it.  What a rush!

3 comments:

quantumtea said...

ooh, what videos did you find? I inchworm too.

Bullwinkle said...

Long draw looks soooo cool when it's being done :)

pat said...

I need to do that!!! I experimented a little bit with my last bit of merino fleece, but my long draw was kind of short and I don't think I was doing it right - I'm a little afraid :)