Monday, June 28, 2010

Hooray for Maggie!

Two of my favorite things about my spinning store. I love teaching spinning. I do. And I love being able to have top quality teachers come to my store. This past weekend was Maggie Casey. She is the author of Start Spinning and the star of the DVD by the same name. She also is one of the owners of Shuttles, Spindles and Skeins in Boulder, Colorado.

I've taken some classes with her at SOAR and knew in advance that she is a wonderful teacher. Patient, and kind and she knows how to say things in a way that just make sense and put the student at ease.

Friday night was long draw. There were lots of break throughs and lots of fun.
On Saturday we learned about spinning colored fibers. How to take already dyed rovings and tops and make them into whatever you like. How to blend colors, how to line them up, how to move them around and make them behave so that they are what you want in your project.
No dyeing was necessary to get the outcome we wanted.
Chelsea checked her Facebook and played with her Nintendo DS. hhmmmm.

Sunday morning began with a bit of naughtiness and ended up on a raucous not. We were learning how to spin Big and Lofty Yarns. Chelsea was not at the shop and I did a poor job of getting lunch to the shop in timely manner.
We thought of a few uses for these fat yarns while we were spinning them.
Some of us struggled to give up control of every inch of yarn.
Maggie showed us how to beat up our yarns to make them more stable.
And in between the laughing we listened and learned a lot. If you have an opportunity to take a class with Maggie, any class, do it.
In the midst of all this I did a little spinning. This yarn is four Abby Batts in the New Black colorway. It is a three ply. About 412 yards and about 34 wpi. I need a project for it.
This is 4 ounces of Romney dyed by Amy King in the Threesheeps colorway. I have 12 more ounces of it. It is a 2 ply, about 112 yards and 8 wpi. I like this yarn a lot. I should probably spin the rest.

Right now I'm working on spinning the February club shipment from Amy and working on my shawl...plus there's the moving that is happening this upcoming weekend. Not worried at all. Nope.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Beth,

This was an awesome series of classes. I learned so much that my head is still all explody from what I learned.

I finally learned how to spin Long Draw!!! (Thank you Maggie!!)

Thank you for having such a fabulous shop and bringing in such great instructors. I suck less every time I take a class at The Spinning Loft. :-)

rams said...

Oooo, thank you! I'm signed up for the multicolors class at SOAR and am even more excited now.

Andrea said...

Your yarns look super-delicious!

TXDidi said...

Loved it, loved it, loved it. 'Nuff said.