Dorothy Northcutt Gray - Fine Art

So last night at the Shire of Owl's Nest fighter practice (which does triple duty as a craft-along and a general social time) I received some good instruction on basic spinning using a drop spindle from THL Beldthora. She uses low-whorl spindles made with pre-Columbian whorls obtained from eBay. I got a better idea of what I'm supposed to be doing, and how to do it. I will continue practicing with that BFL top that came with my spindle, and then maybe dive into the beautiful aplaca/silk roving

I spent an hour or so this morning fumbling with my new top-whorl drop spindle. The result is some lumpy but probably quite usable yarn. It looks like the two ounces of wool top (from Bluefaced Leicester sheep, and luxuriously soft) will go a fairly long way, even with the large amounts I am spinning. Even though my finished yarn will no doubt work, I am finding the process a lot more laborious than it appears on the instructional videos I have been watching - which is, of course, to be expected! All I know to do is keep re-watching the videos and practicing, until I run out of top. I've got some incredible alpaca/silk roving but I do not want to try to spin that until I have a better idea of what I am doing.

(click for larger view)

I am taking the summer off from school, and I have been using the free time to learn some new things. I have become very interested in fiber arts, especially anything to do with wool and other animal fibers.

My focus so far has been nalbinding, which is an ancient - very ancient, - technique of using a single needle to create a fabric made of loops. Most of the stitches involve using the thumb of the left hand to manage the loops while the right hand manipulates the needle over and or under the loops in various ways. It's amazing the many different effects that can be had by simply varying the direction of the needle's entry through the loops. For instance, the York stitch and the Oslo stitch: the setup on the thumb is exactly the same for these two stitches; but in the York stitch, the needle goes through the top loop from behind, but in the Oslo stitch, the needle comes in the top loop through the front. The result is two very different fabrics.

I am also going to at least attempt to learn to hand-spin yarn using a plain drop spindle. One, because I am fascinated to know how it all works, and two, because a lady of my SCA persona's time (10th century Northumbria) would certainly understand how yarn and thread is made. I ordered a set from Lunabudknits on Etsy which includes a cheerfully painted wooden top-whorl spindle and two ounces of wonderfully soft Bluefaced Leicester top wool and as soon as I get my courage up I will be diving right in!