I am down to the last strokes. The body is now knit and I have almost finished the first sleeve of this top-down stranded knit sweater. The pattern is “Agnes” by Kirstin Wiola Ødegård. I have knit lots of stranded knit mitts over the years but this is only the… Read More »On my Needles
In my silk workshops I often meet spinners who have tried spinning silk at some point along the way but, after struggling with the fibre, they have written it off as being just too difficult. I did the same with cotton a few decades ago. In fact I was so… Read More »Revisiting a Fibre or Technique, Defining Moment #8
When I first began woolcombing I did not appreciate how much the act of dizzing would improve my spinning skills. Not only did dizzing reveal the best draft length for the fibre at hand, learning to draft out a consistent tape of fibre trained my hands in how to work… Read More »Skillful Dizzing, Defining Moment #7
Analyzing and Describing my Handspun Defining Moment #6 was when I took the time to learn how to analyze and describe my yarn in both quantitative and qualitative terms. Quantitative being those things I can measure and qualitative being what I can see or feel. Paying attention to my tpi,… Read More »Defining Moment #6
Fibre Prep: This post is a nod to my friend Marjorie, who nudged me to present this topic sooner rather than later. Yet another defining moment for me was when I realized I did not need to spin from a fibre preparation just the way it came. Many spinners tout… Read More »Defining Moment #5
My ability to spin a consistent yarn took a huge leap forward when I recognized how to change the grist of my yarn without making changes to either the fibre prep or spinning ratio. I could spin a thicker yarn by simply working closer to the orifice and a thinner… Read More »Defining Moment #4
Defining Moments 1 & 2 were things I realized near the beginning of my spinning journey. This defining moment came to me in two parts, many years after I learned to spin. Together they have made a huge impact on my spinning. I most often spin using a continuous backward… Read More »Defining Moment #3
Last weekend marked the last of 2020’s line up of spinning workshops. What a great group of people I have had the good fortune to work with over the past year….talented, inquisitive, creative, adventurous and hardworking. One of the things that kept percolating to the top of my mind as… Read More »Defining Moment #1