Old friends, new love.
New Love It all began when I quit my job at the local clinic last April. Well actually I guess it all began in the winter of 2001 during the first evening of my beginner spinning classes with Maggie Casey at Shuttles, Spindles & Skeins in Boulder, Colorado. On that night we learned to choose fiber, scour, tease, card and finally, to use our drop spindles. Really, all in one evening. We practiced all week and returned with some pretty good messes on our spindles. Then we were introduced to the spinning wheel and over the next five weeks we tried them all out. At the end of the classes I tossed my budget to the dragonforce winds of Boulder and bought a Schacht Matchless. Bless my dad. He helped me afford the Cadillac; it was my great fortune that he had worked with Barry Schacht prototyping some parts in the past and was delighted to help me buy one of his wheels.
I should have loved my drop spindle more in the beginning. It is my nature to love the simplicity of form and function that makes even the crudest hand spindle pleasing. But I was smitten with my Matchless, and probably more importantly, I could actually spin yarn with it.
Fast forward to April 2014 and I quit my day job here in Westcliffe to spend more time with my cashmere goats and the fiber. I talked my brother, Bob, a woodworker, into making some beautiful drop spindles for me to sell along with my fiber and other goatie things at the farmer's market. Thinking it would be a good thing if I could actually spin on the spindles if I wanted people to buy them, I plucked out the most beautiful one and started playing. As Rita Buchanan wrote about her own experience in her 1995 article in Spin-Off magazine, "Drop Spindle Basics", those 13 years on the shelf did the spindle a lot of good. I spun pretty good yarns with it, fast too.
I taught dozens of people to spin using drop spindles over the summer; mostly kids, who were at first disappointed that the spindle wasn't an interplanetary weapon, but lots of grown up folks too. Turns out I'm a pretty good teacher. We made spindles with old CDs and lengths of cheap pine dowel. I think these rock for learning to spin; they are just the right weight and that big circumference keeps them spinning and spinning while the new spinner learns to love the draft triangle.
And me, I'm in love again. My new love is an old Bulgarian spindle I got on ebay. Did I mention my three dozen cashmere goats? Cashmere demands a support spindle. Rustic simplicity, form, function. I.Am.Enraptured. Newly challenged, enchanted, charmed, besotted, and smitten all over again I am. Did I say obsessed?
I should have loved my drop spindle more in the beginning. It is my nature to love the simplicity of form and function that makes even the crudest hand spindle pleasing. But I was smitten with my Matchless, and probably more importantly, I could actually spin yarn with it.
Fast forward to April 2014 and I quit my day job here in Westcliffe to spend more time with my cashmere goats and the fiber. I talked my brother, Bob, a woodworker, into making some beautiful drop spindles for me to sell along with my fiber and other goatie things at the farmer's market. Thinking it would be a good thing if I could actually spin on the spindles if I wanted people to buy them, I plucked out the most beautiful one and started playing. As Rita Buchanan wrote about her own experience in her 1995 article in Spin-Off magazine, "Drop Spindle Basics", those 13 years on the shelf did the spindle a lot of good. I spun pretty good yarns with it, fast too.
I taught dozens of people to spin using drop spindles over the summer; mostly kids, who were at first disappointed that the spindle wasn't an interplanetary weapon, but lots of grown up folks too. Turns out I'm a pretty good teacher. We made spindles with old CDs and lengths of cheap pine dowel. I think these rock for learning to spin; they are just the right weight and that big circumference keeps them spinning and spinning while the new spinner learns to love the draft triangle.
And me, I'm in love again. My new love is an old Bulgarian spindle I got on ebay. Did I mention my three dozen cashmere goats? Cashmere demands a support spindle. Rustic simplicity, form, function. I.Am.Enraptured. Newly challenged, enchanted, charmed, besotted, and smitten all over again I am. Did I say obsessed?
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