Finally I am a spinner
My mom has been spinning fiber since the 1970's. We used to live on a small farm in the Lorane Valley (southwest of Eugene, Oregon). We had sheep and my mom would hand process the fleece, using an old wringer washing machine that I would sit and crank while she fed the wool through to clean it. I remember coming home from school to boiling pots on the stove. Not dinner mind you, but pots of wool and lichens and walnut shells and whatever else she happened to be using to dye the wool without chemicals, including dried bugs! She would then spin the wool, sometimes to weave and sometimes to knit. None of this was very interesting to me at the time. Mom continues to spin today but the sheep are long gone. Mom and dad, now retired, live in their motorhome and travel. Every nook and cranny of the motorhome is stuffed with wool or yarn. It drives my dad nuts but he puts up with it. Mom has figured out every way imaginable to store the wool to take up the least amount of space. She has a small traveling wheel that sits by her chair in the motorhome and is always ready for a little spinning time.
I've always appreciated the finished product and have even knit a few things with some handspun that my mom has given me. Until last year when I first went to the Black Sheep Gathering with her (mom's been going since the event first started). I bought some cashmere and she spun it for me. Then we went to the Oregon Flock & Fiber Festival. After that last fall, I said that I might want to give spinning a try so mom immediately loaned me an extra spinning wheel that she had and gave me some wool/mohair blend that she said would be easy to start with. She gave me a quick lesson and sent me home to practice. It sat all summer long until my mom came back to town and we went to the Aurora Spinners' Guild Fiber Festival a couple of weeks ago. I bought lots of roving and couldn't wait to get home and start. That afternoon I spun my first bobbin of yarn. It was easier than I thought once I got the hang of it. Now I have watched my mother do this for years and I get the whole idea of it. It was just a matter of putting it into practice.
So this is my second bobbin and I still need practice but I think I'd like to try plying now and spin up some of that roving that I bought. My deal with myself is that I need to at least put a dent into it before June 20th when we head to Eugene for the Black Sheep Gathering again . . . . . so I can by some more.
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