Embracing the Challenge: My Journey in Learning to Spin

Learning to spin has been an exciting journey filled with both challenges and triumphs. It all started from a fascination with the art of creating something beautiful from raw materials. I found my new interest in the world of spinning, eager to learn and create after having taken a couple of wet felting classes in 2022. This blog post chronicles my adventure, the hurdles I faced, and the joy I've found in honing this craft.

Discovering the World of Wool fiber, felting and Spinning

My journey began with a simple curiosity about how art yarn is made. Beautiful hand-spun yarns caught my eye at the Knitting and Stitching show in London in the about 2015 so I bought a drop spindle, the demonstrator made it look so easy but I never really got the hang of it so it languished in a box of redundant craft stuff till I moved house in 2017. I met a lady called Linda, a needle felting master when I first set up a small craft group in my new village and she introduced me to the world of felting and details of local teachers, craft stores, and online marketplaces. I was captivated by the idea of transforming a pile of wool fiber into something 3D with the aid of a barbed needle. I purchased a kit of a penguin and set too, only to discover that there was quite a bit of pain involved and blood, my own blood. The penguin actually looked like it had been in a fight with something big and powerful and ended up in the bin, it was so bad I didn't even photograph it. I entered a hiatus and went back to doing my normal crafts, knitting, dressmaking and embroidery and joined a local embroidery group in 2018 where I had a chance meeting with a local lady Karen, who specialised in wet felting. Linda and I signed up for a workshop and had a great day making Shibori style brooches. After a hard but exhilarating day, I had fallen in love with the wet and soapy version of felting and no blood was shed.

A drop spindle with an acrylic top whorl and a wooden shaft wrapped in a multi coloured green thick and thin single of yarn.