Spinning 101

I taught a beginning spinning class yesterday. I was tired afterwards! Beginning classes are challenging for the teacher as well as the students, especially such a hands-on subject as spinning. Two of my students, a mother and her 12-year-old son, had never sat at a spinning wheel before. The third has tried to spin on and off over the years but has never mastered it.

The class was fun. The new spinners got to try Ashford, Louët, and Schacht wheels. We only worked with wool, but I gave them different colors of roving, so their yarns had color as well as extensive texture variation. I showed them samples of alpaca, angora, Cotswold wool, Merino wool, qiviut, hemp, cotton, naturally-colored cotton, and silk fiber and yarn.

At the end of the afternoon, they wound off their yarn and took home their first skein of handspun yarn.