From Spin Class to Spinning Yarn: My Return to Handcrafted Skills

For a long time, "spinning class" meant going to a gym for a group exercise class on stationary bikes. I've participated in those, they're a lot of fun. Typically a dark room with some fun lights, very high energy music and usually an even higher energy instructor.

I haven't done that in a while and we have a stationary bike at home (with virtual instructors) so we really don't have a need for gym classes outside of our house. We bought that bike just before the pandemic when gyms were closed anyway, so we slid right into our home gym routine.

Last weekend I took a different kind of spinning class with an entirely different energy: spinning yarn

I'm taking my grandmother hobbies very seriously these days.

I've learned some very important skills, mainly surgical skills. I'm now more interested in skills at home: bread making, baking, gardening, sewing, fiber processing and spinning.

There's a yarn shop local to me where I've sold some of my alpaca yarn. I've been sending my raw fiber away to a mill to be made into yarn because I don't know how to process it myself.

She held an introduction to spinning class that I attended last weekend (and brought my mom).

I plan to attend more about fiber processing since I've just washed my fiber by hand (From Barn to Skein: My First Steps in Processing Alpaca Fiber) and need to learn the next steps (carding is next).

This spinning class discussed types of fiber preparation, types of spinning apparatuses and had us experiment with each kind. This was everything from a drop spindle to a spinning wheel. It was hard.

It's hard because it's a skill that requires knowledge and practice.

One lady in the class said she has tried to learn this online but needs someone to teach her in-person. That's because these are important hand skills that need individual attention. They will be lost if we don't continue teaching them. My grandmother could sew, she made clothes for my mom and her siblings.

Here's how we moved through the types of spinning.

Spindle

• With the left hand, the spindle is flicked to make it spin in one direction. That hand then moves up to the "V" in the fiber while the other hand gently holds the tail of the fiber. The left hand then "drafts down", getting more length to the fiber as the spinning motion twists it up.

Spindolyn

• A variation of the spindle, this device has the spindle supported rather than hanging. Some found this easier to work with than the suspended spindle. I think it felt clunkier and harder to spin the spindle itself. The hand work was the same.

Electric spinner

• This will probably be my next purchase. There's a leader thread in the machine, this was 4-ply. It fed through hooks and an orifice. Those plys are split, the new fiber looped through that opening and folded. The twisting motion is done by the spinner. My job with this machine is to draft and feed it into the machine. My right hand was holding the tail of the fiber gently, while the left hand was pulling the draft and feeding it toward the machine. Because some of the work is being done by the electric spinner, the focus here can be on drafting well which is important for the spinning wheel.

Spinning wheel

• This is hard but motivating to start somewhere and acquire the skills to reach this point. This is larger and can spin much more fiber than the above options for someone who wants to produce faster. There's a leader thread similar to the electric spinner which is around a hook rather than an orifice. Manually, the spin is started and the treadling (foot work, this had two pedals) maintains that spin. I had a hard time keeping the spin in one direction and was so focused on my feet that I'd forget to draft. That's why I'm starting with the electric spinner to get the draft skill before adding the treadle.