I have finally completed my first spinning project. I have made 3 beautiful 50g balls of natural coloured merino. When I say beautiful I mean as only a mother could love. They are quite uneven and inconsistent in their texture and tension, but not too bad for my first set.

My next dilemma is deciding what to do with them as I am unsure of their yardage. I think that I will make a beanie of sorts and have been hunting for a top down pattern. I found a good one at smallknits.com called Karlchen. (She also has some great non sock patterns for self striping yarn).

As you can see in the picture the balls are beautifully wound on my new ball winder. I have been stalking them on ebay for the last couple of months. New ones cost about $65 and the price variations on ebay have been huge. I ended up getting one for $7.50!!!! The reason I got it so cheap was that the seller said in the description it said that the feeder was badly bent. I decided it was fixable so I bid on it, won it and when I got it, bent it back into shape.

One thing that I have been doing over the last couple of weeks is learning to spin.  I recently inherited my grandmothers old Ashford spinning wheel and was inspired (forced slightly by guilt) to get it fixed and to learn.

There is a wool farm/business/shop not to far from where I live called Viginia Farm Woolworks.  They run spinning and weaving classes and workshops.  They were also able to get my wheel back into  working order. 

The one thing that I have noticed about spinning is that once you have the wheel it is an incredibly cheap hobby.  It only cost me $10 to get the wheel fixed, $20 for some extra bobbins, $5 for some merino fibre and then after another $10 for a lesson …. I was spinning.

Virgina Farm have a spinning group on Thursday nights.  I have been twice now and have received some great instruction from the owner, Jenny.  The first week she got me started on spinning singles with some merino tops. I went home and practiced and half filled a couple of bobbins as instructed.  On my second visit ( a few weeks later) I learnt to ply them together and made my first skein of yarn.  That night she also taught me how to prepare and spin some raw fleece using a flicker carder. 
I am absolutely astounded at how quick I have picked it up and that I am able to produce my own yarn.  It isn’t perfect by any means but I know that it will only get better.  I don’t know if this is something that I will continue doing as a hobby.  At this stage it is just a skill that I wish to learn. 

My goal is the make a teddy bear for the new bub from some  beautiful raw fibre I bought.  I think it is Corriedale and it is a dark brown colour.  It was so cheap, only $4 for 400g which should be just enough for the bear that I have in mind.