I learned to spin short fibres with Diane on Sunday.
Never have I ever thought that I would be able to spin short fibres like cashmere and camel in the way that I did o Sunday. I also never knew how rewarding it would be to learn the long draw. It's like magic, even more magic than any spinning I've ever accomplished. Seriously, it was just, take your lump of fibre, get the twist in, and then pullllllll...... and lo! Beautiful, fluffy, even singles. After all this time spinning short draw, inching and squinching along, this is like retirement. Nice and easy and so worth all the hard work of spinning well using short draw.
Wanna see?
I hope the photo is clear enough, but you can see that we spun different things throughout the class. At the bottom of the bobbin is a superfine merino, which we spun from the fold. You can see my early attempts being rather big and uneven, and then getting nice and even, and also approaching a good fineness.
The next fibre you can see, which is a pale coffee-brown, is camel. That was also spun from the fold and had much shorter fibres than the merino.
The pale beige-y coloured fibre is cashmere. We learned to make punis with the cashmere, and we also spun it straight, without the need for folding or making punis, because cashmere is so short that the fibres don't really align themselves and easily catch one another.
Finally at the very top, bright white with a bit of brown, is cotton. Cotton's interesting to spin, because it doesn't behave in quite the same way as animal fibres. You can pull out lumps a lot further in cotton than in the other fibres, because its twist lock* tends to lie to you.
I think I like spinning the cotton, but as Diane said, it kinda has to be good cotton. The little bit of brown on the bobbin? Not nice cotton. Didn't like it.
I was really pleased with myself, having learned something new in spinning. I want to spin so badly today, being my day off, but I can't. I have to study poetry and think about my poetry assignment instead. Poop.
Oh well. The week is yet long.
*I learned that 'twist lock' is when you have enough twist that the fibres won't come apart when you're trying to fix lumps in your single. You would have to unroll or untwist your single just enough to 'unlock' the twist and allow the fibres to pull away again, thus evening out the single. This term was coined by the awesome Abby, so none of us really take credit for it. Go visit her blog, though, because she's awesome and knows more about spinning than... well, lots of people.

















