Ah-ha!

I had an Aha-Erlebnis today. During the past year I have been spinning with supported spindles from time to time, and today something suddenly, finally, clicked.

You see, when I was spinning supported, I just spun up a length of yarn, and then rolled it onto the cop. I did watch some videos in the beginning, and never understood why people made a temporary cop somewhere halfway the shaft. I would spin some yarn and then move it to a horizontal position, and of course it would wind up right at the top of the spindle, making it impossible to continue spinning. So why not just wind it onto the permanent cop immediately?

I sort of ignored this little thing that did not click, but it was still somewhere in the back of my head, and today I decided to watch another video because it kept bugging me. And suddenly I noticed that my order was wrong. I should hold the yarn horizontally to wind up the temporary cop, and then move up my arm and just spin on, not the other way around! Of course I wanted to try this out at once, so I took out another little Nunoco sample and my TARDIS spindle, and started spinning.

It worked. And it’s wonderful. You don’t have to stop as often.

Now I also understand people who say they like spinning on Tibetan style spindles more than on Russians. Because I had to stop in between anyway, I never noticed much of a difference, except that Tibetans were slower spinners. But they spin for a long time, which is great once you get into the flow.