spinning 'round.....

On Friday , in Hyde Pak, I met my first real "live" blogger from Counting mermaids ...admittedly I was a little nervous as I had little idea what to expect( what if we didn't click or worse still really didn't like each other?). I hadn't even thought to ask JT what she looked like. However I thought I would be quite easy to spot, in my head-to- toe freeform crochet outfit ( just joking and no offence to those who enjoy this artform but I truly just don't get it.....).After a pleasant 15 minutes playing spot-the-craft-blogger, JT turned up and we somehow recognised each other.

Remember all of the knitting books I had up last week, for sale or swap? Well lucky for me, JT was interested in a few of them and I was very keen to find someone to teach me to hand spin wool on a drop spindle. Take a look at the Counting mermaids blog and the amazing ,covetable wool that JT makes and you can see why I was a little bit excited about this swap. A few emails later and it was all a done deal. So Friday saw us in the park, talking and spinning ( rather awkwardly on my part but I'm sure I'll get the hang of it).Even though I've only just begun I've found that there's something very satisfying about the process. I can't wait to try knitting something from wool I've spun myself.
As part of our swap JT put together a spinning kit for me with a drop spindle, Kool Aid for dyeing wool,wool rovings and batts (some of which she had hand dyed herself) and a wonderful "magic" ball of her own hand dyed and spun wool. I can't wait to see what falls out as I'm using it. The girls also had their own parcel to open - a notebook made from vintage Golden book covers. Here take a look yourself....

At the very bottom of the bag were these little labelled packs of all sorts of fibres.....my own little fibre library!

Oh, and JT had mistakenly made a batch of caramel slice ( they were meant to be shortbread with chocolate but the recipe seemed to be quite misleading) and had brought along a container of it for me to take home. I don't know about you, but anyone who can make up a batch of caramel slice by mistake is a winner in my books! Needless to say I came away from my spinning lesson a very happy camper indeed.......thanks JT and stay tuned for some pictures of my first attempts!

Comments

[Michelle]

Lucky you! :)

[Tiel S-K]

were you spinning in the park? Is it something that is quite mobile to do?

What a great blogging person to meet up with.

[risa]

ahh! i am super happy to have found your blog through the calendar swap! i recently learned how to use a perucian drop spindle, or puchka. well, i can´t really say i learned since i still can´t do it, but i started to learn and it really is fun. i´m hoping to learn to use a spinning wheel when i get back to the states in the summer.