Years ago, I did a static-image blog post about how to use a half-hitch on a low whorl spindle. Thing is, I did it really quick, after finishing up a dye day, and I was never happy with it for a million reasons, not least among them that my fingertips were stained from dye. What’s […]

The fall teaching schedule is always jam-packed and exciting, and when I get home — usually just before Thanksgiving — I tend to have a huge email backlog from being on the road, and a staggering to-do list that I always expect to complete in the relative lull (well, at least it’s a travel lull) […]

A few weeks ago my husband said to me, “So have you ever heard of EDC?” I thought about that. The only thing that leapt to my mind went way back to being pregnant, when that stood for “Estimated Date of Confinement,” and referred to, you know, your due date. Somehow I didn’t think that […]

Updated as of 11 February 2015, to reflect the latest wheels on the market and latest pricing. Choosing your first spinning wheel is somewhat like choosing your first car. There’s a level on which it doesn’t really matter exactly what it is, because it’s going to do the trick to get you started, and odds […]

In that way that things sometimes go, a wheel followed me home yesterday… It’s an older Country Craftsman, a 24″ Saxony wheel, literally never used. It needs some cleaning up and minor tweaks, but should be a solid enough spinner once those are all squared away. Posting the picture on Ravelry, though, resulted in folks […]

Our drought has finally ended, giving way to record rainfall. However, they say it’s probably too late to save the trees that have been so confused this year, starting with an ice storm, then an early thaw, then a late freeze, then a dry spring, then an outright drought. But this was a beautiful fall […]

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 […]

Well, I had to give Cardzilla a good cleaning after a tweed blend I just finished up, so I figured I’d document the process for all to see. You can really tell the poor guy needs a cleaning. Look at all this trash on the main drum! And the lickerin drum — stuff piles up […]

There have been lots and lots of terrific questions over the past couple of weeks, and it’s time for a Q&A roundup. Let’s start with questions from A Little Bit About Plying, Part 1. There are some absolutely wonderful comments on this post, and I’d recommend folks stroll through ’em if they have a chance […]

I’ve promised we’d be back to more plying talk shortly, and promised a video. There’s more to talk about with respect to plying than fits into one 10-minute video on youtube, so today’s video is the first installment, and covers only plying with a wheel using a lazy kate. Part 2 will cover common plying […]