[quiltycats]

As much for fun as for the fact I am nosy, how did you get in to spinning?

For me it was through showing my sheep this year and having a conversation with a spinner who told me that if I by passed the drop spindle stage of painful learning then chances were I'd enjoy it, and there fore make more progress.
 She was right!!!

[FiB]

I work in the woods with children (Im a Forest School leader) so string and rope feature strongly, including making natural cordage.  Once you get into that, a drop spindle seems like a natural progression ( i saw stick spinning and a drop spindle in one of my german kindergarten books).  I nearly always have wool carders and drop spindle in my craft basket and find children love coming accross it and having a go.  I love the drop spindle and have found its given me a good undersatnding for whats happening.  I am actually finding wheel spinning much more difficult (too many variables and thinkgs to go wrong!)!!! 

[SallyintNorth]

I am actually finding wheel spinning much more difficult (too many variables and thinkgs to go wrong!)!!!

Apols for offering advice when none was asked  - but that's me, eh?

And apols if you've already tried all this... 

• Treadle.  No yarn, an empty or disconnected bobbin, just treadle.  Treadle clockwise and anti.  Practise stopping and starting.  In both directions.  Practise going as slowly as you can, find the spot on the circuit where a push on the footplate will just send the wheel around 360 degrees.  Treadle while watching the telly or whenever you are sat for a few minutes.
• Okay, now you and your treadle are as one, and you can already spindle.  So now it's just drafting horizontally with the pull coming from the wheel not gravity    And it's perfectly okay to use park-and-draft on a wheel, so do that for a while until it all starts to come together.
• Keep doing a bit of (2) every day if you can - 10 to 20 mins, tops.  Until you love spinning on your wheel 

What wheel is it you've got?

[SallyintNorth]

And now to answer the original question!

Re: How did you get in to spinning?

That's easy!  Fleecewife and jaykay 'enabled' me!      Abetted and assisted by ellisr and BH.

I'd always felt somewhat wistful watching those groups of spinners in a corner of a tent somewhere at country and livestock shows, but never felt emboldended to encroach on their togetherness.  (So now those of you who saw 'Spinners' Corner' at the Scottish Smallholder and Grower Show will now realise why I was so passionate about engaging passers by and giving everyone a go. )

After Lanark last year, BH suggested I got some rare breed sheep, I selected Castlemilk Moorits because I really, really like them, and then I thought that maybe I better see if I could use their fleece as well as their meat.

Emboldened now with spinners here, and with having started knitting again after ellisr posted her really useful and very easy wristwarmer pattern, I joined the same Guild jaykay goes to, she set me up to have a go on her wheel, I struggled and wrestled and made terrible rope, snapping knicker elastic, and a general mess, and absorbed all the attention of the poor, very kind, lady sat next to me (jaykay was in a workshop so had had to leave me to it) for about 4 hours.  During which, once or twice, for about 8 seconds a time, I felt what it would be like to make yarn.

I liked that feeling    so after Christmas I joined the Guild, took out one of their loan wheels, and persevered.  I acquire physical skills very slowly, so it took me a loooooong time, but eventually I 'got' it.  No looking back now! 

[Bionic]

For as long as I can remember I have liked 'crafty' things.
Wanting to be able to spin was just an extension of that. A previous partner bought me a secondhand spinning wheel that came with carders and a niddy noddy and lots of roving.
That was about 15 years ago but I couldn't really get into it then and the wheel was put into the garden shed 
Its only since I moved earlier this year and have more time that the wheel has been resurrected, given a dust off, a new band and hooks and I joined a local guild. I love my spinning, although not that good at it.
I can't wait until my next year so that I can spin fleece from the sheep I got this year. 
Sally

[Alistair]

I was locked in a tower and, at the time had really really long hair, and there was a dwarf, or a giant that laid golden eggs maybe, it's all a bit fuzzy now, since I fell asleep after eating an apple that was given to me by a wolf dressed up s my grandma, so getting back to the original question needed something to do with my time.

[quiltycats]

 

You missed the part where your first efforts spun gold in to straw for the livestock !

I was locked in a tower and, at the time had really really long hair, and there was a dwarf, or a giant that laid golden eggs maybe, it's all a bit fuzzy now, since I fell asleep after eating an apple that was given to me by a wolf dressed up s my grandma, so getting back to the original question needed something to do with my time.

[Alistair]

Been asleep for a hundred yrs, can't be expected to remember everything

[Fleecewife]

So who kissed your beauteous lips to waken you Alistair ? 
 
I have an aunt who did research with Soay sheep and used the fleece to spin and make the family toasty warm hats.   I avoided her every effort to teach me 
 
Then I got three Jacobs and had to do something with the fleeces, so I taught myself to spin on a wheel (which I bought as a flat pack and stayed up all one night putting it together, with little idea of what went where).  It was ages before I learned to use a spindle but now I love both.   I also love sheep and have kept various breeds and 'fleece special' crosses.  I am totally taken with using my sheeps fleeces to make our jumpers, then wearing them while we look after the sheep......

[goosepimple]

Spinning must be fun, otherwise you'd just stick the fleece on, no middleman so to speak fleecewife.

[Mammyshaz]

I had  many camping trips with OH  to a castle site in Scotland where I was mesmerised by a lady spinning on a wheel as we sat next to the open fire, all afternoon she was there, Friday to Monday. And she was thre the next trip, and the next etc. Sitting on her stool spinning her fleece. I didn't even consider the fact it was possible for me to own a wheel and certainly impossible for me to be capable of spinning 
Then I joined TAS and read the spinning posts and added a few comments. In august SallyinNorth messaged me about a wheel for sale near me. She arranged a meeting, lessons at the guild and away I went, spinning a wheel of my own, like a fair tale dream    ( not I'm very good yet, and now I must practice knitting too to use my spun yarn  )

[Mel Rice]

Back in the UK I used to do historical re-enactment. One of my friends did drop spinning at events and dyed her wheel spun stuff also (she could not use her wheel at events as it was too modern!)
Later another friend made a beautiful (authentic) walking wheel for her and I had a go on that as well as the drop spindles....we tried to encourage all the ladies to carry, and use, their distaf and drop spinner as denotes a spinster.
Now I own two working wheels and have just got a peculiar local one from my neighbours house as they cleared it out after he died. (I wish I had seen it earlier he could have told me how it works....so far can see how you could wind wool onto a bobin with it but there is no flyer/bobbin holder. orifice bit that I can see....I am going to continue to ask the older members of the community about it...but with my still poor german it may be a while...it looks very nice though)

[SallyintNorth]

Mel Rice, there's a group on Ravelry full of folk who usually can identify and help with any wheels, old or new.  Antique wheels, or something, I think it is. 

[Shnoowie]

For me I think it was a whim!   
We'd had our sheep for a year and I hadn't thought about spinning., once evening I was perusing the Bay of Es and for no particular reason typed in 'spinning wheel'; a week later I'd successfully bid and won one.  Think I was lucky as for £100 I got a traditional Ashford wheel, lazy kate, 4 bobbins and two hand carders...was bought a drum carder for birthday/Christmas last year...




Had a spin last night for the first time in ages and I loved it, going to take my wheel to the craft group tonight, I think!

[Lesley Silvester]

I used to do a lot of cross stitch on large gauge canvas which my ex mounted onto plywood.  I bought thrums (off-cuts) of carpet wool in all sorts of colours and designed and made presents for all the family.  One day I wondered if we would save money if I could spin our own wool.  That got me wanting to learn.

Ex bought me a spinning wheel for Christmas.  I think it was decorative rather than functional but a bit of playing round with it helped.  He had also found a craft place that taught spinning so I booked lessons.  While I was learning, I looked at the looms and thought I'd like to have a try so I went on to learn to weave and ex learned to spin.

From that, and bearing in mind we wanted to move to the Isle of Arran and set up our own business, we started our spinning and weaving business, doing the local craft markets.  When we moved, we went into business full-time.