Handspun

Spinning, oh how I love spinning! I have taken 4 spinning classes from Elke at Wellspring Farms over the past few months. I try to spin as much as I can after the little ones are sleeping, several nights a week. It is so calming and relaxing to spend an hour at the spinning wheel. Something about it is so meditative and it puts me in such a blissful state. Feeling the fibers running through my fingers and onto the bobbin is such a magical process. I never could have imagined the creativity and beauty that comes out of a handspun yarn. I recently purchased some lovely art batts and rovings from Liz at Hobbledehoy to spin into yarn goodness. She dyes her fibers and blends many of them together with a drum carder. Her work is amazing and her batts and rovings are so soft and scrumptious. They are almost too pretty to spin, but I know they will make beautiful yarns! I would like to try my hand at dyeing fibers this summer. There are a lot of local farms with plenty of sheep, llama, alpaca and goat fibers. I think the little ones would also enjoy the process of putting the fibers into the dye pot and drying them in the sun."Though a spinner's individuality is reflected in a yarn, the process the yarn goes through reaches beyond the individual spinner. The spinner is just one stop on a journey, one in which the yarn is perpetually destined for new hands. When you wrap yourself in a scarf made with handspun yarn, you can trace each stitch the knitter made. This connects you to the knitter through his or her work, just as the knitter is connected to the spinner through theirs. The yarn passed through the knitter's fingers just as it passed through the hand of the spinner; the fiber passed through the hand of the spinner just as it passed through the hand of the person who dyed it, and so on through the hand of the farmer who raised the animal, sheared it, and washed it. This phenomenon joins together hands through a single strand that stretches across spaces and through time. The yarn becomes a bond that connects separate people into a collaborative group, all working toward a common creation. The final form that the yarn takes is not the work of one artisan, but the synthesis of many."
(Quoted from Intertwinted: The Art of handspun yarn, modern patterns, and creative spinning by Lexi Boeger)