Spinning!

When I got into weaving, which happened sort of between September and December last year, I made my partner promise not to let me get into spinning.

He’s a very sensible man, so he completely ignored me, and let me do what I wanted. What I wanted, it transpired, was to purchase a £9 drop spindle, some fluffy wool, and have at it.

It’s August 2023 now, so I’ve probably been spinning for about eight months. And I’m so, so glad I started!

To be clear, I will likely never own a spinning wheel and go full Brothers Grimm (what they think Sleeping Beauty pricked her finger on I will never understand; spindles aren’t sharp). Spinning wheels are expensive and also take up a lot of room and I still live in a 1-bedroom flat, which already has to house several guitars and keyboards (not mine), looms (these are mine) and bookbinding materials (also mine). Also 2 full-size tower gaming PCs and 2 nerds’ worth of book collections. Point being, I don’t have space for a spinning wheel as well (except maybe an Electric Eeel Wheel Nano 2… stop it, Jessica).

I can afford a couple of drop spindles. Which is what I currently own - 2 Kromski drop spindles like the one in the picture above, and one miniature Turkish-style bottom whorl spindle hand-whittled by Kerryspindles on Etsy. It’s gorgeous, it’s all spalted and… okay, can you tell I’ve fallen headfirst down a deep rabbit hole of doom on this stuff? And I love that.

I love the whole process, actually, now I’ve got the hang of it. It’s made me more patient, because getting to grips with a drop spindle is a bit of a learning curve, especially once you start using “slippier” fibres (I’ve got a gorgeous set of merino blended with Tussah silk fibres, for example).

The feeling of getting it right, figuring it out, is nothing short of magical, honestly. It’s so cool to me that I can take something that has essentially come from a sheep (albeit the fleece has been heavily processed before it gets to me - ever seen a sunset-hued sheep roaming the fields of North Wales?), and with nothing more than gravity and a bit of a flick to send a weight spinning, I can turn that into yarn.

I also really love that this is an old craft.

Really old. Neolithic, potentially, although some people also believe fibre splicing may have been preferred in some areas.

I’m not religious. I don’t consider myself particularly spiritual, aside from my occasional secular use of things like Tarot cards to help me meditate. But somehow… spinning feels spiritual. It feels like a connection to… maybe not my ancestors, because I don’t know anything about them specifically, but to ancient people. To working people from aeons of history, who may have done something very similar to me when they spun yarn using hand spindles.

And, I totally appreciate this is a fully romanticised feeling. Those people (women, mostly) who were spinning in Neolithic communities, in medieval settings, even in cottage industries right before the Industrial Revolution lost them their jobs, weren’t spinning as a spiritual exercise. They were spinning for necessity. To clothe themselves, and their families, and their communities. I actually imagine some of them would look at my life and ask me why on earth I would choose to spend my leisure time doing what was, for them, necessary labour.

And I don’t even know if I can entirely explain it, except that connection to history, and the joy of making something with my own hands that I can then weave into a scarf or a blanket, something useful and practical, makes me feel grounded. Safe. Capable.

I can tell how much I’ve improved over the past few months, because I’ve been crocheting my practice yarn into a big, ugly old blanket I can’t wait to use come winter. My earliest tries were lumpy, slubby and in the blanket kind of look like big lumps of popcorn.

Now, I can generally create reasonably consistent yarn. Even if my main spin has some thick-n-thin bits, the plying process often evens it out, especially when I do a 3-ply chain-style process like the one shown here.

Much like with weaving, my confidence has grown a lot, as well as my knowledge about my own preferences. I prefer weaving and spinning with real wool, rather than synthetics, partly because I did weave a lovely, pastel scarf with acrylics early on and it transpires I’m allergic to it.

But I’m also interested in sustainability, and in weaving with materials that might be long-term kinder to the planet. I’ve recently bought some small quantities of banana fibre, flax tow (not the lovely, long strands but the “secondary spin” stuff) and soybean fibre. Spinning with plant fibres are absolutely going to be new learning curves, but I’m excited about it, and grateful I live in a world where these are accessible to me.