any spinners out there?

[shanti]

i'm a new spinner, started lessons about a month ago and loving it!

[surrealAmerican]

1. Where do you get the wool?

... and is "raw" wool less expensive than yarn?

It's the sort of thing I would love to do if I had sheep, but, living in the city, the raw materials are scarce.

[shanti]

5. sorry so late to reply

i'm not sure if i can say that raw wool "less expensive", when you consider the time involved in preparing the wool...i have gotten my raw wool (and alpaca) from ebay and the net, as well as my spinning teacher, who raises shetlands. it's pretty time consuming, especially if you don't have a washer at the ready, but i really enjoy the process from start to finish. it's very satisfying to me. an offshoot of this is dyeing the yarn/fiber myself. i especially like the natural dyes, but that's a whole nother ballgame!

i live in the suburbs, but close enough to the country that there are lots of farms around. my dream is to have about 5 acres so that i could have a few sheep of my own, but it's probably not likely.

[Warpy]

2. Weaver for 25 years, spinner for 15

and one of the reasons I left Boston for NM was so I could feed my habits more cheaply by buying wool right off the critter's back. I soon developed an appreciation for the words "clean and skirted," and rapidly learned to set up a hot plate and scour it outside, pheww.

Right now I'm working on some pale blue Rambouillet, spun lace weight for a knitted lace shawl. I have cotton to try next, and hope it works out better than hemp did.

I get my prepared wool online at various places and my raw wool at the Wool Festival in Taos every fall. I use combs and a diz mostly, using a drum carder to blend color rather than to process whole fleeces for spinning.

My spinning wheel is a Louet S-15.

[Tansy_Gold]

3. I have temporary custody of an antique Austrian wheel

It needs some repairs -- mostly gluing joints and fixing tension mechanism -- and then I want to learn to spin. I bought 12 oz of black alpaca fleece on Whidbey Island, WA last summer, just too beautiful to pass up.

And no time for lessons. . . . .



Tansy Gold, who never seems to have time for anything. . . . . .

[Warpy]

4. Here's one that starts at the very beginning

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_clqBwf8gHs There are more parts to the series. This one is also great, shows you what to do with that handful of wool: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_f9kfS3Z7Y&feature=related

There are nearly 100 spinning videos there. I was astonished. I learned how to spin out of a book, so I produced a lot of rope novelty yarn before I got the hang of it.

[shanti]

8. do you spin in the grease?

i'd like to try it, but afraid it might gum up my wheel.

[shanti]

7. ooh, alpaca

i have some too (both types) and it's like butta to spin:) you will love it!

my wheel is a kromski sonata. it's a "travel" wheel, which is why i bought it, but would like something bigger that will stay put, like a polonaise, so i can spin lace.

[shanti]

6. now i know the genesis of your screenname:)

so you do your scouring outside? i use my machine, hope it doesn't harm the plumbing, but i've only done about 8 pounds total. as i posted above, my spinning teacher raises shetlands. she's a spry 81 and also a weaver. i was at her shearing a few weeks ago, got to pick my sheep too:) i've purchased several pounds of raw wool, alpaca, and angora (rabbit) on ebay and other places, merino, dorset, cheviot, border leicester. it's been fun trying new fibers!

the idea of combing seems pretty daunting. i bought a drum carder and have been using that, but of course, the woolen end result isn't quite the same as worsted. i haven't gotten into blending or dyeing yet (soon).

my goal is to spin lace weight yarn (my teacher calls it thread, lol). after two months, i'm spinning a pretty acceptable dk weight, so someday....then i'll be ready for my polonaise:-)

nice to know there are other spinsters here!

[Warpy]

9. When I scour wool, I put it into a big pot of room temperature water

with dishwashing soap and washing soda. I really want to get all the dirt and a lot of the grease out of the wool. I do it outdoors because sheep are critters and there is always urine and fecal material somewhere in the fleece, no matter how clean the wool grower has tried to keep it. I bring it up to the boil, cool it slightly, and pour off most of the filthy water (also good to do outside, the shrubbery seems to like it) and allow the wool to come back down to ambient temperature slowly. Then I add more room temperature water and repeat the process as a rinse. I use the washer to spin it dry, only, and then spread it out on a screen to dry.

Combing and drawing through a diz is a lot easier than carding, by the way, and gives you pencil roving with all the grass and grit taken out and the noil left on the combs.

I do spin thread weight singles, 2 ply is fingering, 3 ply is sweater yarn, and 4 ply is rug yarn. Eventually spinners learn to do the thin stuff and just ply it to the weight they need.

Spinning in the grease doesn't gum the wheel up and it will make your hands absolutely lovely, the lanolin is a great hand treatment. It's also easier for beginning spinners as the grease tends to hold weaker yarns together better.

[Warpy]

10. Resurrecting the thread: There are SPINNERS groups at Ravelry now!

http://www.ravelry.com Just register and wait for the email. Then jump in and start searching out the groups.

[shanti]

11. yes

i've been on ravelry for awhile now. i don't know what i'd do without it now! it's a terrific resource.