Cecile’s best spinning tutorials

Hand spinner Cecile has recently learnt the craft of spinning on a drop spindle. From where you might ask. Well I think she started of learning the basics form her knitting group but the rest she has found out through online tutorials. We asked her if she would share her best online tutorials with us. So here they are:

Spindling basics:

[caption id="attachment_2095" align="alignright" width="225" caption="CD Drop Spindle"][/caption]

A very clear series of video from Abby Franquemont, author of the remarkable Respect the Spindle.
Part 1: To get started on the spindle there is ‘Introduction to Spinning: Part 1’, which explains the staple length, drafting, starting the spindle (high/top whorl), spinning, walking the yarn to keep the tension when winding it on the spindle, ‘park and draft’ and more.
Part 2: Moving beyond ‘park and draft’ ‘Introduction to Spinning: Part 2’ gives an overview of the most common problems encountered when trying to progress beyond the ‘park and draft’ method: spindle backspinning, yarn breaking, how to judge the right amount of twist, joining a new batch of fibers, woolen vs worsted drafting, how to secure your spindle once you want to stop (you will eventually need to!).

From Megan LaCore we have a slightly different approach, with clear short videos to illustrate specific parts of the spinning process:
If you are having problems spinning and drafting at the same time ‘Drafting Wool for Spinning’ shows you how to pre-draft the yarn first.
‘Spinning on a Drop Spindle’ shows you how to then spin it and finally ‘Plying Two Single Yarns on a Drop Spindle’ shows you how to ply it (2-ply).

Alternative plying techniques:

In ‘Andean Plying’ Megan LaCore demonstrates how to create an Andean bracelet, to ply together the two ends of the same cop/ball of yarn.

Finally I have discovered this very interesting technique, illustrated by Rosemary Knits, to do a Navajo ply (3-ply) ‘on the fly’, which means, plying the singles as you spin them.
It looks like a very long post, and you can go right down to the video at the bottom, but if you’re interested in trying the techniques, the edits are well worth reading as Rosemary has tweaked the technique to make it more efficient. This is one of my favorite techniques, as it means no kinky singles to deal with, just spin a bit, ply a bit, spin a bit, ply a bit, and so on and so forth…

The images in this post are copyright of Eddie Roued-Cunliffe. You are hereby granted permission to use them for non-commercial purposes as long as you credit Eddie and link back to this page. If you are using them and talking about this post I would love to hear from you in the comments.