Lendrum Spinning Wheel, Learning to Spin

Well, last week I took a drop spindle class.  And Saturday I started a spinning wheel class that lasts for three Saturdays. Now, I had every intention of renting a wheel, but I found this used Lendrum last week and just had to bring her home.
 
From what I can tell she is probably 20+ years old, and is in pretty good shape.  The age guess comes from some searching about Lendrums on Ravelry (I'm desertwind on Ravelry).

Learning and practicing with the drop spindle helped.  But, without having help from my spinning teacher, this would be incredibly frustrating.  It's like walking and chewing gum at the same time.  Youtube videos and things are great, but having someone to teach really helps with the steep learning curve.

I did have a bit of a catastrophe last night while spinning.  There is a plastic piece that connects the "footman" (the long skinny wood piece attached to the wheel) to the pedal.  It snapped in two! 

First, hubby and I fussed over what we have in the garage that could be used to fix it. Then I surfed Ravelry for some ideas.  Finally, hubby cut a piece of nylon rope and attached it where the plastic connector was. He is going to cut me a couple more back-up pieces and depending how it works, I may or may not order a replacement connector.


My spinning teacher, Cheryl, gave us quite a bit of fiber in the drop spindle class.  She gave us a large amount of this soft, yummy puff that came from a local sheep named Homer.  Apparently Homer is a mixed breed sheep with perhaps some merino in his heritage. I'm planning on making either a hat or fingerless mittens with the yarn I making.

Using a variety of wools she supplied us, this is what I spun for the drop spindle class.

It was interesting how different each of the wool fibers are.  There is some grey stuff in here that I hated.  It was like spinning barbed wire. Not something you would want next to your skin.  There is also a bit of yummy white merino in the skein as well.

She also gave us some small bits of superwash merino,  silk, alpaca, and some other things to spin.  I haven't gotten to any of it yet, but the alpaca is soooooooo soft! Yuuuuu-mmmyyyy!