For years I’ve heard people saying it: “Oh dear, I’ve caught the spinning bug!”. Now I’m about to say it myself. I’ve caught the spinning bug, and it’s quite resistent. And I’m not sure if I really want a cure.
About two years ago, I got interested in spinning. Of course I had been knitting since 2009, and I had encountered lots of spinning knitters on Ravelry, so I decided to check out what the whole spinning deal was all about. I bought a cheap set from eBay, which contained a spindle, a niddynoddy and a nostepinne for maybe 10 euros. I figured that at that price, I wouldn’t break the bank. I got some merino and tried spinning.
I was quite clumsy at first, and it didn’t really occur to me to search YouTube for a good tutorial. So I practiced and the spindle fell on the ground lots of times, and the yarn didn’t want to stay together, and the spindle would stop spinning so fast that I didn’t really get a chance to do anything else but rolling it on my thigh…
I’m stubborn, though, so I gave it another chance at the first Karma Meet (in Den Bosch), when I asked my friend ChristaV to help me. She attached a leader (lightbulb moment) and showed me how to do it. Some other knitters were spinning as well, and it looked so easy… they spun laceweight with no effort at all! I tried again, spun a little, but in the end I lost my interest – too much frustration and too little result.
Fast forward a year. It kept itching. All those other people were not crazy, right, so there had to be some kind of charm in spinning. So I decided to try a wheel instead of a spindle. I bought a second hand Louet S10, and tried spinning on that. Spinning on a wheel turned out to be much easier and more enjoyable than my previous experience. I even participated in the Tour de Fleece, and produced some quite decent skeins of yarn.
In a swap, I gave one of the skeins to another Ravelry friend, Bianca, who knitted a shawl with it (her own design), and it got published in a magazine! Here it was, my humble skein of yarn, featured in a glossy knit design magazine! I felt proud, flattered and like an impostor at the same time…
Then I injured my knee, and couldn’t spin for months. And when I started spinning again, my Louet turned out less than ideal for my knee. The treadle needed to be pushed down past the 90 degree angle, which didn’t feel so good. Also, the Louet made quite a lot of noise, and I wondered if it would be worth the trouble to dissassemble and assemble it again to improve that, if the treadling problem remained. I decided it wouldn’t.
Then, about two months ago, I got a golden opportunity. I bought the Ashford Joy double treadle from my friend Paarsetulp, and finally I had a spinning tool that fit me personally. I spun a lot of yarn in the first couple of weeks, until we went on holiday – I was going to miss my Joy! For almost two weeks, I couldn’t spin. I did knit a lot, for a swap, and later for myself as well. But I did miss spinning. This is when I realized that spinning was there to stay!
When I was back from my vacation, I started thinking about how it all begun: buying a cheap spindle, trying, getting frustrated and giving up. Buying a not too expensive spinning wheel just to try and walking into problems. Buying a much more expensive wheel after thinking about form, weight, portability, and being very, very happy. And it clicked. To give something a real, good chance, I had to buy the best instrument I could buy within my budget. The positive side effect of that is, that if you decide you don’t like it after all, a good, more expensive tool will sell with maybe a minor financial loss (or none) on your side (especially when bought second hand), whereas the cheap, frustrating tool will not be desirable to anyone, and will be a waste of money.
I followed that thought path further, and decided that I might want to give spinning with a hand spindle another chance. This time with a proper budget, to make sure that the chance was a fair one. I looked around at what other people used and loved. There are multiple types to choose from. The traditional stick-with-a-disk, that can be top-whorl (like my first spindle) or bottom-whorl, the supported spindle that needs a little cup to turn in, the Turkish spindle with its crossed arms that produces a center pull ball… Navaho, Russian, Tibetan… so many choices! It is clear that the spindle is one of the oldest and most widespread tools that humans have made (they go back at least 6000 years!).
I decided I wanted to try a Turkish spindle. The construction is so simple and yet so thoughful and practical. You have three parts: the shaft and two arms. The arms go through each other, and the shaft is placed through that. There is an indentation at the top of the shaft for the yarn loop. That’s it. And if you wind your yarn around the arms in a specific way, you create a center pull ball of yarn, called a turtle! You can even take out the shaft for traveling, and both the shaft and the arms when you’re finished, so no winding like on other types of spindles!
On Ravelry I looked for spindle groups and found quite a few. One of them was all about the spindles from Jenkins Yarn Tools. Ed Jenkins makes his spindles by hand and his wife Wanda tests and sells them. They are very desirable and so many people want one that they have recently instated a lottery for the spindles that are for sale, because there are not enough for everyone. I was lucky enough to find someone there who was destashing a Jenkins Swan spindle in beautiful Yucatan Rosewood. I was the first to ask, so she sold it to me!
The next day, the lottery took place and I participated. I tried to win a beautiful Aegean and when the winning numbers were posted on the website, I wondered if I had won. I sent Wanda an email to ask what my number was, and she replied that unfortunately I had not won, but three spindles were not chosen by anyone, and did I want to buy one? Of course I immediately said yes! I knew that it would not be hard to sell this spindle if I wouldn’t like spindle spinning.
Last Wednesday the Jenkins Swan arrived. It is beautiful, and the little nick in one of the arms doesn’t make a difference for the balance. I tried spinning on it and it spun like a dream! I spun the whole evening and made my first messy turtle. This weekend I visited my parents and brought my spindle along. I spun a lot there too, and can now officially say that I’m hooked. I’m eagerly awaiting the Aegean which is much lighter than the Swan, and I’ve even ordered two more spindles… shhhh, don’t tell David 😉 (although I am destashing quite some yarn, so technically I’m not spending extra money)…
a tiny one from FWAussieSpindles (in Western Australian Banksia/Jarrah wood)
and a slightly heavier one from IST Crafts (in Snakewood)
I might start collecting spindles. That way people might not question it that much. When is the last time someone said “Wow, do you really need that many stamps?”?
Oh, I’ve even named my spindles. The Swan is called Kuğu (Turkish for swan) and the Aegean will be called Yunan (Turkish for Greek). I still have to come up with names for the FWAussie and the IST…