campers

I originally picked up a $20 USD beginner drop spindle kit from Walnut Farm Designs on Etsy to find out whether I'd enjoy spinning. (I suspected I would and I was correct.)



This is not a complex tool. You could DIY with a chopstick, a whittling knife, and maybe a sacrificial CD or something. But I decided I'd rather have a tool that, I hoped, someone who knew a dang thing about spinning had designed.

I was also told that not only does the fiber type make a difference (flax, wool, silk, etc.) but the breed of sheep (etc)! This makes sense, but I confess I have never thought much about sheep beyond the Shearing Incident a friend got into during high school. Corriedale wool was recommended to me by a family friend as a great starter fiber even if one wants, ultimately, to spin something else. I have ambitions in the cotton, bamboo, and (sigh) silk directions that will undoubtedly never be realized as I prefer finer yarns and threads, as someone more comfortable with cross stitch, embroidery, and hand sewing! I also live in a hot climate so staying cozy in wool isn't in the cards.

This is one of those skills where one can understand the physics just fine (conservation of angular momentum, among others) but founder on the physical skill. I picked up a book, Abby Franquemont's Respect the Spindle: Spin Infinite Yarns with One Amazing Tool (Interweave Press, 2009) because I couldn't figure out what was going on in YouTube videos and thought photos plus text explanation in a reasonably widely recommended book might work out better.

Franquemont suggests that it normally takes spinners two to six weeks to get the hang of this. Anecdotally (me, I'm the anecdote), this tracks. I'd been traveling but it was about two or three weeks of frustrating ????? attempts before I produced a tiny bit of the world's jankiest yarn.



(Yes, it broke. Which is fine; wonky beginner yarn is normal for early learning curve spinning! The fact that yarn happened at all is encouraging! Now it's down to more practice.)

I kept foundering on starting the yarn at all. My guess, as a novice, is some combination of the following:

- not nearly enough twist in the leader. It should, apparently, be twisted to heck and gone to work at all, not milquetoast weaksauce twisting.

- I kept switching to a fiber that was gifted to me by the family friend because it was prettier. (Look, everyone in fiber arts I've met is weak for pretty/pettable fiber!) She had, however, warned me that this would be harder to learn on and that the Corriedale I showed her from the kit was a much better "starter" fiber. The russet yarn/fiber is the Corriedale.

- I kept messing up the physical motion of switching my hand positions from adding twist to the leader to starting to draft, which is the part where you're tugging the fibers gently apart from your supply and "feeding" them to the spindle as you hold the yarn (+ leader, to start) pinched so that the twist is forced to transfer from the leader to the fiber-into-yarn as the spindle spins and "releases" the twist. I kept losing the pinch so that the twist "escaped." Or I just straight-up dropped the whole assembly!

- I kept trying instead the Turkish spindle (which is low-whorl?) that came with the wheel as an extra, and couldn't get the hang of it after acclimating (badly) to the high-whorl spindle you see in the photos. Maybe later!

Regardless, as I wait for a replacement leather footman joint so I can fix up the secondhand Ashford Traveller spinning wheel, I will practice with the drop spindle! What I like about this is that it's much more portable than a spinning wheel. The family friend also told me that a drop spindle is a great way to get started because it's much slower than a wheel, and it helps one become acquainted on a more physical, direct level with the mechanics of spinning. According to her (and I believe her), spinning with a wheel becomes easier after one becomes fluent in spinning with a spindle.

Down the line, perhaps the poor cat will have her massive amounts of hair worked into cat-hair-supplemented yarn? She's a medium hair with almost no guard hairs to speak of; her fur is incredibly soft, softer than most cashmere I've handled. I'm sure she's thrilled (not) at the prospect of furmination. :)

Pilot Vanishing Point Seashore for scale.



Singer Model 20 SewHandy. This was a working "child's toy" miniature hand-cranked mechanical Singer sewing machine, likely from ca. 1950. You can find the manual online [PDF].

Someone clearly took good care of this machine. It's not rusted to hell and gone; the mechanical action is extremely smooth, which suggests it was oiled and maintained regularly.

(I need to obtain a phone tripod instead of trying to operate everything one-handed while holding my phone!)

Next step: threading the machine!

I dyed the undyed "tan" pieces black using Eco-Flo black leather dye. Came out well! This is allegedly more environmentally friendly/sustainable; for my purposes it also means that it's less toxic while still wet. I've seen reviews that say that even with a leather finish top coat it's less proof to water/rain and the older, more toxic dyes perform better, but fortunately a pen loop is unlikely to have to deal with that. If I were doing tack for horses that would be a different story.

I used disposable nitrile gloves while applying with a sponge, although this stuff is more "Please don't drink it and don't get it in your eyes" than "being in the same zip code will kill you."

For the top finish, I used Eco-Flo Satin Shene, which is water-based. It's said to perform less well in wet weather conditions, but for a personal hobby project, that's fine.

Again, the blacks won't match, but that back piece is not going to show most of the time when it's on a notebook. This is for myself and I don't mind.



I then got held up because I needed to iron/press the discounted cotton I bought ages ago to sew in the elastic and I was in a Zoom call surreptitiously crafting. :) I ended up just soaking the fabric, folding it in half, and laying it in the sun to dry on a much-abused patio chair.

At least all the holes are punched, which is the part I find the most tedious. Ironically, I love stitching, which is also "tedious" but fun tedious. :p

The current WIP is painting a design on the front pocket piece of the dyed leather, but I may have to do that indoors as the leather paint dries too quickly in my climate. We have a forecast of a thunderstorm anyway.

In all honesty, if one wants weaving guidance, r/weaving is terrific.

But for a simple potholder/pin loom exploration, I decided to explore a Hello Loom. The Hello Loom 12 is $11 USD. I could have made myself a DIY version with notches in scavenged cardboard, but it's a cute, clever design (laser cut in plywood) and doesn't break the bank.





This is more sensible with worsted yarn or similar, I'm sure, but I had inherited DMC embroidery floss so I double-warped with that.



Brief experiment with poorly designed string + sawed-in-half bamboo chopstick heddles. Entertaining but I ultimately snipped them off because they didn't work well. (I had not expected them to.)



Some small progress. I'm weaving random stripes of whatever color seems fun; there's no particular plan for the final product other than "it's fun to make, portable, and keeps my hands busy when I'm on the go." BPAL imp and small embroidery scissors for scale.

The plastic yarn needle works better than the punch-out wooden one. I'm currently using a blunt metal tapestry needle.