In a spin
Over the weekend I was talking online to an expert spinner; and so, of course, I mentioned that I had tried it, but of all the fibre crafts I'd tried, that was the one I'd been absolutely pants at. So she then asked me a number of very pertinent questions, such as: what sort of spindle did I use? What sort of fibre had I been trying to spin? Had it been pre-prepared in any way? How far had I got before concluding I was no good at it?
I explained I'd been using a drop spindle, so she then asked me if the whorl was at the top or at the bottom. I said the bottom. I was using wool roving which (as far as I was aware) hadn't been pre-prepared, and I'd spun about 100 g of what might very charitably be called art yarn. Then I remembered I had a photo taken at about the 50 g stage, so I showed her.
Her response was "Ha. Hahahahahahaha."
I said, "Yes. That's about how I reacted."
She said, "No. That's not what I meant at all. You need to learn not to be so hard on yourself. For a first spin that's absolutely amazing."
"Really?" said I.
"Really." And then she proceeded to show me a number of other first spins she'd seen online, and... OK. She was right. They were all a lot worse than mine, other than one sample which was early but still not by any means a first attempt. And that one was about the same.
The problem was that I had been, as it were, spinning in a vacuum (which makes me sound like some kind of sub-atomic particle). I'd had no appropriate standard of comparison. The only two things I had to go on were a) I knew what properly spun yarn ought to look like, and b) I knew how fast I normally pick up new crafts (which is extremely fast). But, as it turns out, nobody ever picks up spinning straight away. It takes a lot of hours of practice to become even half decent. I'd have been much better finding an online group with some experienced spinners in it and seeking feedback from then, rather than just posting the above photo on Facebook (which I was on at the time) and going "oh look, I've found a fibre craft I'm absolutely terrible at". While I had a lot of friends on Facebook, neither of them knew any different either.
Anyway, now that I had an actual experienced spinner being encouraging, I did what I should have done all those years ago (admittedly at that point I didn't really know where to find one, other than one of my aunts, but she uses a wheel so probably can't advise on drop spindles) and asked her for advice. She said a drop spindle is fine, but (given that I no longer have the one in the photo) I'd do better to get one with the whorl at the top, as those are, apparently, easier to use. She also said it helps to prepare the roving by straightening it out a bit first; you can do that by hand or there is a device you can use called a diz. This is nothing more than a thing with a hole in it; it's the hole that is important, so the "thing" can be pretty much anything, from a simple disc with one hole in the centre to a flat sheet (of any shape you like) with multiple holes for different final thicknesses of yarn. You choose the hole nearest in size to the gauge of the yarn you want to produce (but not smaller), and you pull the fibres through it, which straightens them and lines them up. I should think it's also a useful aid in keeping the thickness more consistent. I explained I wouldn't be using wool or silk, and she said that if you don't use wool you don't have to pre-steam it, and she doesn't recommend spinning silk anyway ("that way lies madness", as she put it). She has spun nylon and viscose, and she says she also very much doesn't recommend the nylon (I don't fancy that myself), but viscose is quite nice to spin and you get a subtle sheen. Vegan Yarns do quite a wide variety of types of roving, so at some point in the future I'm going to have to experiment. This one, however, is filed firmly under "not just yet".
There are a lot of people in the SCA who spin, and most of them do it because it's interesting, because historically that was how you got usable fibre (whether thread or yarn), and/or because it enables you to get a really good grip on the technicalities of things like plying (toss a metaphorical stone on the main SCA Discord, and you're more than likely to hit someone who can tell you about the construction of the Coppergate Sock in precisely the way d'Artagnan can tell you about Bach's composition techniques, and will make your head spin just as fast). All those things are fun, but none of them is my main motivation. I'm all about the colours. I have an absolute mania for heathery, natural-looking colours, and there just isn't enough commercial yarn like that; so when I do see any, I'm inclined to snap it up. (There is Stylecraft Highland Heathers, which is great but doesn't come in nearly enough shades for my liking.) But if you can spin your own, it's easy! You just dye clumps of roving in two or three complementary shades which are quite close together (a doddle to do with liquid dyes, since you can mix them easily), then you spin them together; and that way you can be as subtle as you like, or you can go for more contrast if you feel inclined. It's totally up to you.
I am not doing this yet. I already have the usual stack of projects on the go, plus sprang and ganutell to get into. But it's always good to find out you're doing better than you thought.
