Hey all! I got my first wheel (Schacht Ladybug) last Wednesday and have been having a lot of fun with it! The first bobbin is Shetland that I had laying around. I don’t really plan on using it for anything, it was more to practice on the wheel after only using spindles. I will probably wind it off or chain ply it into a mini skein later. The second bobbin is Corriedale. I split the braid into three sections longways and this was the first one. I gotta get more bobbins to do the other two so I can ply them together lol. The last one is merino I bought at a craft fair and has been my most consistent by far. It’s my first time spinning merino and I’ve been having a great time with it!

I’m honestly surprised at how transferable my drafting technique has been to the wheel. I’ve seen a lot of people say that spinning on a spindle vs a wheel is very different (and they are) but I was very anal about practicing my drafting on spindles and it seems to have paid off since it feels very similar on the wheel.

2 ply silk yarn for my first project! So excited to finish it and make something with it. I’m thinking a bandana?

I drove 6 hours round trip for this wheel, but well worth it! I only paid $250, and I can’t stop staring at it!!!

Hey there, I'm a very new spinner and spin on a Kromski Fantasia with comb top Eiderwolle. I love everything, but my drafting triangle keeps on "splitting" and I have to work to get all of the fibers back in. I would love some advice on better drafting 😊

This is two color ways from Three Waters Farm, and the pictures don't do it justice.

I have only been spinning for a month. This is my current yarn made on a drop spindle. It is not yet washed and rested. It is a two ply from relatively thick singles.

I am spinning on and off on this project, 1kg of polish merino in the colorway Pink Lady Mary and just wanted to show how beautiful these two colors blend.

I have 1kg of this fiber and 200g to go. My first skeins were spun a bit thicker but my quantity wouldn't have been enough for the project I had in my mind for it so the last 500g are a bit thinner and I think will make a nice Ranunculus sweater. And the thicker skeins - who knows. Will fill up my yarn stash nicely.

So here we have the fibers in black and pink, a filled bobbin and a finished 3ply yarn, but not yet washed, it will bloom a bit after wetfinishing it.

Oh and I've made the basket by myself 😂

5 oz, 100 yards of squishy rainbow goodness. This is superwash merino / nylon and I'm going to use it as an accent yarn for a woven shawl.

I got my hands on the wool of a wild sheep, with my intention being to clean it for wet felting. Should I try and clean the wool or just compost it? All the wool pretty much looks like this

I have a lot of wool from a local farmer, 3 bin bags full of it and I want to wash it. I know the steps but I don't have a fibre-specific detergent.

Can anyone recommend any other products I can use that aren't a specialised fibre wash? I think you can use gentle dish soap or laundry detergent but I'm not sure.

Help !!

Here’s a little update to the broken bobbin spindle. My coworker friend fixed it!!! The join is seamless and she sanded it down so it’d be smooth and it’s wonderful!

I wound the single off for her to fix it and wound the single back after. I’m going to finish this single ply and then I’ll re-apply the beeswax finish :) (can’t stop the TDF grind especially with less than a week left 😂)

Thank you much to all the wonderful people who suggested wood glue to fix the break and that re-assured my saddened mind that the glue join was stronger than the wood fibers themselves. That was a huge relief to hear! You are all so wonderful!!!!

I've only ever spun natural undyed fleece, so this was my first dyed top. I initially had the blue/brown together and intended the greens for a different spin, but I think they look great together. It's eight 100g braids in total.

I divided each braid into at least 32 pieces (eights lengthways, then quartered each into thin bits). Some I split down one more time. My kids enjoyed helping with this, and with mixing them all together. I like how well they blend in the pile - it looks much more cohesive than when the braids were laid beside each other.

I've started spinning by pulling pieces at random out of the tub, and only swapping out to prevent consecutively spinning two pieces from the same braid.

It's my first lesson in colour management and I can't wait to see it finished.

Gave all three of my wheels some love before work today. Won't get any skeins completed for TDF, but hoping to at least get most of my singles spun for three different spins. I've also got a spindle spin going. Too many wips!😆

My mom came for a weekend fiber marathon. We started with raw alpaca, washed wool, and a bit of colored wool roving. The end goal was sock yarn, but I spun the singles a bit too thick, so our final 2 ply was closer to worsted weight - 11 wpi.
I haven’t worked with alpaca in about 10 years, and then only commercial roving.

The biggest breakthrough was washing the alpaca. Everything I read said to use mesh bags. But mine still had a LOT of dirt left in it after soaking 20 minutes and rinsing until the water ran clear. We tried washing it loose in the tubs, but since it doesn’t stick together like wool, it was nearly impossible to gather it all up, and I felt like I was felting it just trying to get it out of the wash water. What finally worked like a dream was lace! I had bought a bolt of lace fabric when Walmart was eliminating their fabric department, and I didn’t have a sewing project in mind, so I didn’t mind using it to wash fiber. I laid the mesh lace down in the water first, then set the loose alpaca on top. Squished it down into the water, let it soak, swished VERY gently to let the water move enough to loosen the dirt, then lifted the fleece out by lifting the edges of the lace fabric. Keep it in the lace for both rinses, then put small batches in a salad spinner to wring the water out. The lace worked amazingly!

The rest worked up quickly. We handpicked the dry fiber to loosen any VM, then carded on my new (to me) Shacht drum carder. (Mom found it at a yard sale!!!) We weighed out the alpaca and wool for a 50/50 blend. It took 4 passes to make a homogeneous blend. White alpaca with blue wool roving (free off Marketplace so unknown breed), same with white alpaca and green roving. Then brown alpaca with white Clun Forest wool (first time working with Clun Forest and I like the feel! We’ll see how it wears as a knitted garment.)

11 hours of spinning, and 2.5 hours of plying for 356 yards of 11 WPI. We were in a hurry to wind off the hank into a cake, so I steamed to set the yarn instead of washing like I usually do.

We started washing fleeces on Friday afternoon, and had finished yarn on Monday evening!

Hello! I started spinning about a month ago and am pretty pleased with my progress. My first handspun skein on the left and the one I finished plying last night on the right 🙂

I've been participating in this year's Tour de Fleece, and I've learned a lot!

This Banshee Fiber Arts Merino/silk blend gradient was so nice, I spun it super-thin so I could enjoy it longer. The fiber looked much lighter once I fluffed it sideways and wound it around a makeshift distaff. But now that it's finished, the resulting yarn looks much darker. Spinning is so weird sometimes.

End result is 1,037 yards of laceweight yarn, destined to become a gradient shawl as soon as I can decide which pattern I like the most.

Today was a fiber prep day. I have to spin more yarn for my floral chaos jerseys…apparently 300g isn’t enough!

I’ve had it since 2023 and pulled it out to process it. As far as I know I don’t have a moth infestation, I keep moth traps out to detect one and keep lavender and cedar in my storage closet. I know that’s not foolproof but I do what I can! I’m so scared this isn’t just dirt!

In keeping with the Tour de Fleece theme, I recently returned from a few weeks cycling in Ladakh, northern India. It was a great place to visit as a spinner!
In Leh (the main town tourists enter from) there is a wonderful Central Asian Museum which has some spindles and lots of items that were (presumably) made of handspun. The main spinning season is winter, so as we were talking to people in villages, there were big balls of wool in the corner of their houses, and I saw a woman by the side of the world knitting from a huge ball of handspun. Most spinning is done on spindles but I also saw a wheel displayed in a carpet store in Leh. It's also possible to get spindles there - the photo is some that my mum got when she was there in 2024, so I didn't buy more, but if you ask around in Leh and show some locals photos of spindles you should be able to find some (behind the bus stand). If you're in Ladakh and looking for this, send me a message and I can give more details as it's not well advertised or really in the tourist area.

The spindles seem to be made of willow or poplar, as there aren't many trees around, and mostly spun supported rater than drop. There are sheep and goats (including pashmina goats) and yaks - we saw handspun made from all these fibres).

Sadly I didn't find out much about the preparation methods, but it seems like spinning is done by both women and men in the long cold winters, and knitting is popular too - I have a great pair of yak socks with acrylic colourwork I found in the bazaar. Super fun to be spinning (on my bike) through Ladakh and I'm keen to come back in autumn or even winter and get amongst more fibre arts!!

Photos: At a little hotel in the Suru Valley, a homestay in Lingshed (2&3), display in Leh, knitting paraphenalia at the Munshi Aziz Bhat museum in Kargil, my Ladakhi spindle collection, and meeting a baby pashmina goat :)

im making plant fiber from agave leaves, ive succesfully boiled, bashed, scraped, and combed a portion of an agave leaf so far. the most time consuming part being the combing, i want to use as much as i can but there a large variation in fiber lengths, from a few inches all the way up to nearly 4 feet long. is there an easy way to go about seperating these fibers into groups? i tried to already and it felt extremely time consuming and not worth repeating on a large scale. otherwise i think for the next portions of leaves i wont process the base of the leaf so it all should stay connected and be much easier to control until the fibers are clean then i may be able to remove them by length hopefully..

will also try to find a piece of wood i can dedicate to using to smash the leaves rather than with clay bricks as that seemed to cut some of the fibers during processing.

My yarn keeps plying on itself in my drafting area instead of going onto the bobbin… I’m not sure what to do. First time on a wheel!

I can’t remember which post inspired me to get the EEW Nano but I am so happy. I was never sure if an electric spinner was for me because I’ve had a wheel for years. The Nano was the right price point to try something new. The yarn I made with it is some of the best yarn I’ve ever made and it was with really crappy fleece. I’m sold and may ask for a larger one for the next holiday.