Are you spinning every day in the Tour de fleece? Rav group and Flickr group – see all the wonderful spinning that is being done each day. Can you still join in – why not?
{Images from Mary Heather and K_rivera.} [Thanks Kate for the heads up about this - good luck with the challenge!]
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Start Spinning: The Video is a companion to Maggie Casey’s book Start Spinning: Everything You Need to Know to Make Great Yarn
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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Quick join up members get recycled yarn and “quick knit” patterns to match – join the Leethal Quick Knits Club.
The small-scale designs in Leethal’s quick knits website section, and in the club, are perfect for both beginner knitters, wanting to try more complex techniques without being intimidated by a large project, and seasoned knitters in search of ways to use up yarn leftovers or knit up some quick gift items.
The spun recycled yarns start out as multiple strands unraveled from cast off sweaters, which are then spun on a spinning wheel and plied together, often with other threads or yarns added in the process. The recycled hand-dyed yarn also comes from unraveled thrift store sweaters, mostly wool or wool blends, dyed over in custom mixed shades of non-toxic food dyes (acid set for colorfastness).
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Start Spinning: Everything You Need to Know to Make Great Yarn
By Maggie Casey. Interweave Press (April 1, 2008)
If you are a fibre fiend, or you feel that buying yarn for your crochet or knitting just isn’t enough, or you just love the feel of raw wool running through your fingers, or even if you have a Sleeping Beauty fixation, you will have thought of spinning your own yarn.
Start Spinning is a great resource for the beginning spinner, or for a spinner that has been spinning for a while, but might only really only know one way to do it. And like other pleasurable pursuits, there are so many ways to do it!
Maggie Casey holds the hand of anyone wanting to learn about spinning, and includes information on wool, spinning on a spindle and a wheel, using and maintaining all sorts of spinning wheels, plying and finishing yarn, drafting and wool preparation, and using your hand spun yarn. Maggie Casey is a spinning teacher, and I think that she must be a quite a gifted teacher by the way she explains concepts and skills so wonderfully.
I would imagine that all of the information included in Start Spinning would be available online, but it is such a pleasure to have so much useful information in one volume. This book has tons of clear photographs explaining exactly what to do, and a great troubleshooting section.
It was really refreshing to read a crafting how-to book that doesn’t include projects that get in the way of the instruction and information, and that can date the book so quickly.
So dust of your niddy noddy and get your lazy kate twirling, and Start Spinning.
About the author: Kate is a busy mother of four and has far too many craft projects on the go at any one time. These could include, but are not limited to, crochet, 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.
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This is not your normal pattern book (though it does have 20 patterns) the real attraction is the inside view of the ten Fibre Farms and the different fibres they produce. (book website link)
Shear Spirit: Ten Fiber Farms, Twenty Patterns, and Miles of Yarn
Each chapter concentrates on a different fibre farm, I found each and every one of them totally enthralling. Anne from Meadowcroft Farm in Maine is working on a degree in Agriculture and Resource Economics while her husband restores the old house on their farm. She says running the farm is “part inspiration and part planning”. She loves to create systems and has essentially taken on the entire production process: growing her feed, selling livestock, selling wool and products like sweaters and blankets that create piecework jobs for home knitters and showcase her hand spun and hand dyed yarn. The images of her hand dyed wool left me wide eyed. She goes into some detail of the dying of the wool in that she carries salt water from the river up to the farm. She does quite a bit of experimenting with some natural dyes and some authentic aniline carbon based dyes, though she still favours indigo which she grows. But even with the detail she has gone into, it has certainly wet my appetite to read more. She offers two patterns which show off her use of dyes. I truly loved reading this chapter and wanted a whole book on each – in fact I wanted to jump on a plane and go visit!
This image is just one of the lovely patterns featured in the book – Montana Tunic –
Each of the ten chapters is about a different farm, different animals, different fibres and different skills and experiences in different areas in the USA. Each chapter, is a sample of the lives each of the people live on their so different properties. These are people living out their dream, something we are
not all able to do.
Each farm offers a couple of patterns from bags to adults and children’s cardigans, shawls and berets and socks all from different animal fibres. I personally liked the Mariposa Cardigan for a child from the Victory Ranch, and simply loved the photo of the child with the alpacas. The Welsh Travelling Socks from Autumn House Farm would be an inspiration for anyone to even learn to knit and possibly dye their own wool as well. For those who like weaving Kai Ranch show some hand dyeing and a photo of one of their lovely natural coloured rugs from mohair fleece.
Its a book I would recommend to anyone who themselves wanted their own little corner of the world and to those who enjoy various crafts and seeing what others have made and possibly make themselves its certainly inspiring.
About the reviewer: Janette lives in suburban Australia living out her own dream in her retirement. She spins, knits, and surrounds herself in all sorts of fibre related crafts.
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