Yep, I'm finally going to do it! I'm going to learn how to spin! Might not be a very exciting thing for a lot of folks but for me it's a big deal. Ever since I was little (6 to be precise!) I wanted to learn how to spin my own yarn. Mostly because I was never happy with the plain old yarn anybody and everybody could purchase at the local yarn shops. So, it's only taking me half a century to finally being able to learn to spin yarn. While living in Alice Springs I had the opportunity to purchase an Ashford traditional wheel for a very good price. Since it included 2 huge bags of fleece (and I mean garbage size bags!) I couldn't go wrong buying it, heck I could always felt with all that fleece. I did use about 1/4 of the fleece for felting and left the rest of it behind at Central Craft when I moved back to the US. I even purchased the maintenance kit for the wheel, I figured I would need it if and when I learned how to use the darn thing. So time when by and I even went as far as putting my name on the waiting list for the next "learning how to spin" session at Central Craft. But ... it didn't happen. Either the class was cancelled and/or I had something else planned so my poor wheel sat there collecting dust.
But, tomorrow is the big day. Our neighbor came and asked me if I wanted to join her tomorrow at the Fiber Art Guild get together here in Warrenton. A couple of weeks ago we had a garage sale, that's when Jean (our neighbor) came by and we started to chat about arts and crafts and I'll be darn, I found out she's a spinner, besides a whole bunch of other things she's really good at. And the best thing is .... she has the exact same wheel as I do so it should be pretty easy for me to follow along as she will be teaching me how to spin. Heck, I already have tons of fleece (the kind I use for felting) and other fiber I can later incorporate into making some wacky yarns. Hopefully I won't get too bored having to learn to spin some good old fashion yarn before I can get into spinning up some crazy yarns. The kind with all kinds of things sticking out. See, once I get the spinning my own yarn down I can move on to yet another thing I've always wanted to learn how to do ... dyeing my own yarn. I've already experimented with dyeing my fleece in the microwave using food coloring as well as the kool aid powder but I want to get into using plants to do it. Of course my husband is afraid my next request will be having to move back into the country so I can finally have my own angora goats and rabbits, besides an Alpaca, a llama and some sheep. He really wouldn't mind since that's just a great excuse then for him to be able to get his manly tractor, snow plow (that's if we end up staying in Virginia of course) and we might just have to get another Australian Sheppard or Border Collie to keep that herd under control. And oh yes, how could I forget .... Sofie could finally have her horse .... a Curly hair horse of all things! Wonder why .... well in case you don't know, that's the only kind of horse hair that you can felt with!
