There were about 6 of us there to learn and John Pitblado, our instructor, was great! He walked us through all the steps in a very simple, matter of fact way. Thanks to him it felt easy!
After a few hours I had a spindle full of yarn. You can tell from the photo above that I started off pretty rough (the big fluffy stuff near the bottom right of the photo), but finished pretty strong with nice thin, consistent yarn. I was pretty pleased with myself.
After we all had a bit of yarn, John showed us how to ply. First we did some crazy wrap around your hand trick. (I think this was to do Andean plying but the details escape me now). Here's the front view ...
and the back...
Then we spun the beginning and the end of the yarn together into a two-ply yarn.
Here's my cute little finished baby skein and the spindle I purchased at the end of the class so I can practice more (as a tip, the Louet starting kit for spinning comes with a crappy spindle but with fairly nice fiber... I thought it spun up pretty soft).
Here, you can see I actually got some usable yarn by the end of the class. I'm such the proud mama.
Very enjoyable experience! John really is great... I think having such a good instructor really made this easy and fun. Having read a lot of instructions online I felt a bit overwhealmed. Walking through each step with him made it seem easy as eating pie.
Other yarnies out there... try it out. Spinning is fun!
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