“I collected the silk from my silkworm friends and spun it into thread on my spinning wheel.”

Oh man, the wheel. The wheel. I’ve been playing with it so much over the past week, and having so much fun spinning on it. It’s like a spindle, but better! Everything goes so quickly! I don’t drop it!

Laura came by and showed me how to use it last week, and since then I’ve been slowly working through a stack of Fleece Artist slivers as practice. I’m doing something a bit different with each one, and it’s kind of neat to be able to see myself getting better as I keep spinning.

This is my very first wheel-spun yarn, made from Fleece Artist merino.

It’s wildly, wildly overspun (I took pictures of the “nice” side on purpose, the other half of the skein is full of bits twisted over on itself), but look how nice it looks! It’s so much more even than my last handspun!

I also spun this yarn, out of Fleece Artist BFL.

I love it. It’s definitely the best I’ve spun to date, and I sort of wish I had more so I could really make something out of it. It was my first attempt at chain plying on a wheel, and then whole time I was doing it I was positive it was a disaster and I was wrecking my lovely singles, but it turned out so nicely. This is a bigger yarn, about 7 wpi, and I’ve only got 50m or so. I’m really hoping I can figure out something to make with it, though, because I’m so very proud of myself.