So, yesterday’s Yarn Manifesto (if you’re just joining me, then you don’t know yet that I’m prone to those; if you’ve known me a while, you’re mentally patting me on the shoulder and murmuring “We know how you are, Abby, it’s okay”) has generated all kinds of comments and emails. Tons! Just tons! And you […]

I returned from the Spin-Off Autumn Retreat, overloaded and fatigued with mind racing. Recovering, thinking over the prior week’s events, I sat with my cup of strong coffee catching up on blogs, and one of the things I found was Cassie asking the question, “Should everyone spin?” You know, I never thought to consider that, […]

I really had every expectation of blogging from the Spin-Off Autumn Retreat (SOAR). “It’s a resort,” I figured, “there’ll be net and plenty of time and it just won’t be a big huge deal.” I couldn’t have been more wrong, and the fact that I could have gone with such expectations is a clear indicator […]

Yesterday morning, while frantically attempting to locate coffee, figure out if I knew where all my spinning wheels were, what I was shoving in the truck when, and what time I’d manage to hit the road, I ran into Stephanie, who I think had probably had more coffee than me at that moment — I […]

The long-awaited Pagoda Shawl is finally done! Let’s recap the story. At some point early this year, Pippi gifted me with some fiber in her Pagoda colourway. And of course, that prompts me to say, “Check out what Shannon did with that fiber also!” Here’s how mine spun up: I spent a while pondering what […]

Updated 2015: check out my overall “Getting Started” advice! Getting started with handspinning does not require a huge investment. Although there’s no reason you can’t spend as much as you like, and start right out with expensive equipment and materials, it’s not required at all. The next set of instructions is for making the cheapest, […]

For those of you who have been wondering about Batt Club, and if there’ll be another, and what you have to do to get in, here’s a quick update. First, I have decided to do Batt Club again for Winter 2007. Maybe I should have called it Fall 2007 — but perhaps, with another day […]

I’m hearing a lot of new spinners talking about what kind of wool fiber they’ve been told is the right thing to start out with, and then relating to that, what problems they’re having as they branch out to other types of wool. The more I read about the issues folks are encountering, the more […]

Here we go with round one of my series tackling some of the classic debates in the handspinning arena. A few of you laughingly commented this might be an odd choice of timing to go picking fights, what with absurd heat waves going around and how that affects temperaments — but then again, perhaps a […]

Freshly updated, now with more questions answered, Fri Aug 10 09:02:08 EDT 2007! It’s common nowadays for a lot of folks in the fiber world to use the word “roving” to rever to any unspun fiber. The thing is, this isn’t really accurate and doesn’t give a clear sense of what the preparation really is […]