Wool with a twist

The night before last (Tuesday), was the second class in my Introduction to Handspinning course. It went swimmingly, by all accounts. Even better, 3M managed to catch the moment when two knitters became handspinners (my other two students managed to avoid being photographed). Unfortunately, I didn't think to get their permission to post their faces on the blog, so here's two photos of their first skeins:

aaaand...

It's always a magical moment when a person holds something they've just realised they made themselves. Think about your first knit or crochet project - can you remember the shock that it was something other than a lump of tangled yarn? Handspinning is much the same. You take a sheep's hair and twist it and somehow it all turns into something other than a giant knot.

Anyway. It was a great night. We also went over the process of making a sheep's fleece more spinable. I.e. carding. 3M and the ladies found it so fascinating that I thought you might, too.

First came the hand cards and wool combs - both of which are used to basically brush the locks of wool into a fluffier state that is easier to spin. The next lesson was the drum carder:

Which is the mechanized, and much quicker, way to process a fleece. (I actually shouldn't just single out sheep, since we also carded alpaca and goat hair, too.)

Anyway. Everyone left with a pile of wool (or fiber as the case may be) that she had carded or combed herself. Spinning it is the homework for the next class. I'm evil, I know. If you want more pictures from the class, 3M took a bunch that are all up here.