Spinning yarn isn't the usual hobby someone takes up, it's one of those hidden ones you kind of stumble over whilst trawling through the depths of Craft based blog posts.
I first discovered Hand-spun yarn back at University, whilst studying my Drawing and Applied Arts degree in Bristol. In my second year, we were given a semester to explore and create a body of work around the idea of Generation Lost.
For me, this was exploring skills and hobbies previous generations in my family had learned and past down- namely Knitting. Both my Mum & Nan are prolific knitters, they're absolutely fantastic at it. Every year throughout Primary school, my Nan knitted my school jumpers, and my Mum once knitted a huge Jemima Puddle-Duck cuddly toy for me as a child.
They both tried teaching me on separate occasions when I was a child, neither were successful. My mum would try to show me the stitches but she went so fast that before I got the hang of casting on, she'd knitted half a scarf and I'd lost what I was supposed to be doing. My nan had more of a 'banging head against a brick wall' scenario going on after calling me cackhanded for being a leftie. I just couldn't get my head around using my right-hand as a child, even just using scissors was a nightmare.
Over the years since then, I've taught myself to rely more on my right hand and become ambidextrous out of modern-day necessity.
It was safe to say, a knitter I was not.
So when the Generation Lost project came up, after 10+ years, I tried giving knitting another chance. It was not a success....again. I managed the tiniest square of knitting but even that took days of dropped stitches and cursing the fibre gods. Enter Spinning yarn...
I'm not sure where I came across it, most likely within the dark depths of a random craft blog. But once I found it, it found me and I was hooked. I started off buying simple rovings and a drop spindle. And soon expanded with a pair of hand carders to make my own rolag blends.
Soon my University project became about the lost craft of hand spinning yarn. The final piece I exhibited for Generation Lost was a line of handspun yarn on the wall leading to video footage of me spinning, which you can watch below, along with a little handmade animation of knitting.
Since then I've pretty much caught the bug, I've been spinning on/off as a hobby for years. It wasn't until recently I realised the joy of sharing it to friends and through social media. I was inspired to share it further and teach others to hand spin their own yarn, and so Woollen Wytch was born.
Thanks for reading x
