September 25, 2008

Spinning with the Spinning Guru!

Now, you may have thought that I had fallen off the blogging bandwagon. No posts in 8 days and all. But I am here to correct you. I was actually taking a wonderful spinning class! Patsy Zawatowski came to Alaska and taught the most amazing workshop on Novelty spinning techniques. I was blown away! She really is the Spinning Guru! Thank you Anchorage Weavers & Spinners Guild for bringing her up here. Over the next couple blogs I will revisit the techniques that I learned. As a teaser here are a few of the things we covered and/or I did for the first time:

Spinning Silk Cap--Hello, can we just move right into a spiderweb?

Spinning Tussah Silk--Dreamy, just plain Dreamy.

Hard Twist or Soft Twist?--I really wonder if your default twist level says something about your personality? I am a soft twist person...I knit loose also. What does that say about me?

Big Yarns--Yes, it is confirmed, I spin everything thicker than the average spinner. I was gently (or not so gently) mocked the entire time for this precious attribute. To my credit, I think my thick yarns are delightfully soft & fluffy.

Thin Yarns--Work, work, work. This is what I need to do. I have the hardest time spinning thin. Which in general is fine except when I want to ply something and have the result be smaller than bulky weight.

Mohair Locks, Angelina & Silk Threads--My heartrate actually began to race when we were allowed to choose our own combinations of these three things, handcard them together and core spin them. Ohhhhhh, I LOVED IT!! Probably, my favorite part of the class.

This weekend I am devoting a lot of time to practicing all the magnificent techniques I learned last weekend. I will return to post lots of pictures.

1 comment:

Jen said...

What does the loose knitting/spinning say about you? I don't know if I knit tight when I'm not thinking about it (I think I'm pretty to gauge) but I definitely adjust my tension according to the project - does this reflect on my middle child personality - adapting my persona to the social situation I find myself in? We might have a knitter's self-help book here.
Sounds like a wonderful class - glad you could go. I think I'm going to reduce computer surfing time and increase knitting time because I have a growing backlog of projects I want to do. Did I tell you the woman who owns the knitting store in town is a RN on my unit? Too cool, aye! You've got to come visit us! much love - keep blogging.