review

Start Spinning: The Video is a companion to Maggie Casey’s book Start Spinning: Everything You Need to Know to Make Great Yarn by Maggie Casey. Interweave Press (April 1, 2008). (reviewed on Whipup 28th October 2008).

Reviewed by: Kate is a busy mother of four with many craft projects on the go, including, but not limited to, crochet, knitting, sewing, dyeing, paper making, spinning, felting and bookbinding. Kate has challenges in the areas of finishing things, saying no and craft supplies storage. She also has a very very patient and tolerant husband.

Start Spinning: The Video features Maggie Casey herself, teaching beginner spinner (Eunny Jang of Interweave Knits fame), how to handle fibre, and to start to spin singles and plied yarns.

When I first read the book, I thought that Maggie Casey was probably a pretty good teacher, due to her ability to explain and instruct in text. But in person she is even better. At all times, Maggie’s soft, reassuring voice makes me feel as if everything is fine, it is all ok. When I first watched this DVD, I set my wheel up in front of the tv, and followed Maggie’s lesson on spinning woolen style (I was brought up in a worsted style family of spinners). In the past I had tried to figure out the knack of woolen style spinning using books (including Maggie Casey’s Start Spinning), but since I am a visual learner with a short attention span and a need for pretty quick gratification, I had had not much success and lots of frustration. Watching Maggie patiently explain and demonstrate this style of spinning, I found my mojo! It was a happy moment indeed.

While there are an increasing collection of spinning demonstrations available online, it is wonderful to have this resource as a DVD, that I can put on to my TV in the lounge room (can’t do that with YouTube!), with the remote beside me, and replay the bits that I need over and over and over.

The first disc of Start Spinning: The Video has chapters on fibres to start with, about your wheel, getting started, making yarn, more about wheels, plying and finishing. The second disc has chapters on looking at wool, basic carding, long draw, spinning worsted, commercial top, over the fold, and exploring other fibres.

Most of the views of Maggie and Eunny on this dvd are from the front which is fine if you like the look of Schacht wheels. (Schacht were the sponsor of this DVD and their wheels are the only ones shown). There are some views of Maggie’s and Eunny’s hands from the side and from the top, and for my money these are the best bits of the DVD. I really wish there were far more shots of what is actually going on in their hands, it would have really improved the quality of the instructions. I also wish that there were some titles and caption within the chapters. It is more of a sit-and-watch-the-whole-thing-through DVD than a dip-in-and-find-what-you-need DVD. For these reasons, the book and DVD are a great set, the DVD shows so many things that are hard to grasp from text alone, and the book fills in the gaps, for example spindle spinning, and has an index so is easy to refer to quickly.

The book and DVD together make an excellent resource for a beginning spinner.

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