Last week I took a 3-day spinning intensive course with Judith MacKenzie McCuin, organized through Carolina Homespun.  It was an awesome class.  Judith is really good about demonstrating everything and showing variations on a theme.  I learned a ton of stuff about spinning and prepping a fleece.  That’s the good news.  The bad news is that I really want to buy a drum carder and combs and start buying raw fleece.  That’s trouble.  Big trouble.

One of the greatest things about the class was being able to spin SO many different kinds of fiber!!  I’ll try to list them all, with some pictures…. the first day we started out spinning Corriedale, getting our worsted spinning technique down.  I had never spun worsted before, so it was a bit of a challenge, but well worth it.  We were also shown how to spin semi-worsted, or over-the-fold, which I haven’t tried yet. Here’s a picture of my Corriedale singles.  I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do with them!

We spun three different kinds of silk: tussah top (wild worms!  they eat anything!), cultivated silk top (aka bombyx, mulberry — they only eat white mulberry leaves), and cultivated silk caps (aka bells, hankies).  I think the tussah was the easiest to spin, although I have spun tussah before, so that might be part of the reason.  The cultivated silk top was definitely shinier, whiter, and smoother.  You really have to pre-draft the caps, and they come out really nobby.

On the bobbin, from left to right, are tussah, cultivated silk, and silk caps. Below are the caps.

Then we were given some 50% merino / 50% silk, which was really nice. I decided to wait on spinning mine, so that I just have white silk on the bobbin. Here it is…

We were also given some bamboo and some ingeo, which I didn’t have time to spin. The bamboo is undyed and the ingeo is blue.

We also had the amazing opportunity to spin some cashmere silk!

The second day we learned how to spin a worsted marled yarn with 4 different colors of merino top. Judith gave us enough merino (3 oz.) to spin yarn for a pair of socks.

She convinced me to try a traditional 3-ply with these singles once I’ve finished spinning them. I think the yarn might be a bit thick, so I might have to knit toe-up socks 2 at a time in order not to run out of yarn. Spinning a marled yarn is a great way to really get worsted spinning down.

We learned about plying on the third day. Judith had us load 3 bobbins with some of her Ramboullet merino machine-spun singles to practice making a 3-ply, and other plying techniques she taught us.  I’m excited about dyeing the plied yarn — it’s really soft! 

After learning a bit more about twist in plying, I’ve decided to re-ply my Sprout yarn before I start knitting some socks with it. I had considered it before, but I’m definitely doing it now. It should be pretty quick and make a big difference.  I also learned that a 2-ply shows off lace well and a 3-ply fills in holes well, so it feels smooth and is great for socks.

Also on the third day we spun some exotics: bison, 3 types of cashmere (brown & white), yak, and camel. We learned how to spin a woolen yarn, and how to full it. There’s a huge difference between fulling and felting, which I never knew. Short fibers full, and long fibers felt. There’s a lot more to it than that, though.

Here’s some of the yak fiber…

Here’s some green bison fiber (dyed green, not from green bison!)…

In this picture, from left to right on the bobbin, you can see some of my handspun bison, brown cashmere, and yak.

After that spinning, I was too tired to spin up this camel

And this camel/merino blend.

As you can see, I’ll be finishing up a bunch of spinning projects from the class over the next few weeks. I haven’t decided yet what I’m going to ply together… or what to knit when I’m done!

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