The world keeps on spinning, spinning, spinning....

Not a lot of free time at the zoo to have a creative outlet anymore. But, that is ok. Busy is good. Taking MBA classes, working.....moving life forward. Last Spring I had inquired at a local (well, 45 miles away) fiber shop about spinning classes. They were not offering any at the time, but the owner Rosemary told me that she would put my name on a list and if they had one coming up she would give me a call. Sure enough, last week I got the call. 2 hours a week for 6 weeks. Spindle, wheel, everything spinning. I quickly called my sis and we didn't have much debate that it was time to sign up and move our spinning forward!

Thursday was the first class. Rosemary from the Rose Tree Fiber Shop armed each of us with a half a pound of raw fleece. She taught us how to pick it, "charge the cards", card the fleece with hand carder, and use our spindles. I quickly learned that using the hand carders is going to take some practice. I can't seem to remember each of the steps to transfer the fleece and get to the final step where I can roll my rolag.
A close up of the fleece. It is a grey Romney sheep from Iowa.

She sent us home with the supplies and a little homework. We are supposed to pick through all of our raw fleece (time consuming and yet hand conditioning with the lanolin), practice with the hand carders and create 3 rolags to bring to the next class so that we can start working on the wheels, and also fill up our spindle with yarn so that we can learn how to use the niddy noddy and clean the yarn. Fiber goodness.

Some people enjoy spinning in the "raw". I am enjoying the process, but think that most of the time I will tend to stick to my prepared fibers.

We have a small class (only 3 students) and so we are getting lots of attention and direction from Rosemary. She has such expansive knowledge and can easily point out what you are doing correctly/incorrectly. For example, when I am using my spindle, she pointed out that I was "de-gutting my rolag", which meant that I was clutching the fiber too tight, and not allowing it to flow quite so freely to my spindle. This was pretty funny to me, because it made me realize that is what I have been doing all along with my wheel & spindle, and that is why I would end up with a little "ring" of fiber at the end...I was de-gutting and pulling the fiber from the inside of my rolag out first! I loosened up how I was holding the fiber, and things quickly turned around.

What were some of your fiber foibles and struggling points as a new spinner? Do you like to work with raw fleece?