Spinning Workshop Day 1

I took the most awesome spinning workshop today! It's a two day class taught my the fabulous Jacey Boggs of Insubordiknit.

The class was held in Baltimore and it was so much fun to see old friends and meet some new ones.




Jacey did an amazing job teaching us the different techniques. She had us come up and watch her 5 at a time - there were a lot of us!



It was so much to see how everyone's yarn turned out. We just had to model:





Here's my pal Michael showing his "ball" of coils. You know coils are going to be the next big thing once Michael gets designing with them!



This overspun messy looking (not yet soaked) skein is my first attempt - we learned how to make thick and thin yarn which we then turned into coils and knots and loops and twists.



Here's a closeup of some of the twisty goodness.



Next on the list were "Racing Stipes" and "Tornadoes".


This is not a plied yarn even though it looks like it is. The lace weight "stripe" is applied while you are drafting! Creating thick and thin yarn helps give it definition and variety. The tornadoes were made with mohair and lace weight heavily wrapped over the wool core.




And finally we learned to spin with "foreign objects". We actually learned two ways to incorporate foreigh objects - one with stringing them on some lace weight yarn and the other by capturing the object within the wraps of the laceweight. Both were very cool. Here's my mini skein:



I learned so much today and I am just so excited for tomorrow!