My introduction to spinning

My husband asked me to start this blog as a way of documenting the stuff that I do regarding fibre arts. I am a member of the SCA is Australia.  Within the society I am Juliana de Northwood, a mid-rank fencer, I spin and I am known to be outspoken and tell people when they are being dumb or stupid.
Mundanely I am Alonya Cullinan, unemployed administrator and scuba instructor, support person and friend.  I am a kiwi who migrated (awesome for a flightless bird) to Australia for a boy and I am loving it here.

I have been spinning on my own for roughly 14 years.  I went to a group event in Wellington, New Zealand and I saw my friend Catherine Wellington with her homemade drop spindle.  I had wanted to learn to spin since I was a kid when I was given a beautiful Ashford Traditional wheel.  Sadly, I didn't have the brain space for it and the person who tried in vain to teach me gave up.  I think I ended up giving that first wheel away.  Stupid of me.

So Catherine and all her patience taught me how to spin on her homemade spindle.  We were sitting in the little hall on a bench and she showed me how to 'dress' the spindle and, the basic mechanics of spinning.  She lent me a spare spindle and gave me a good length of commercially prepared fibres and off I went.  The rest is history.

My original
Ashford Classic Spindle

My journey didn't stop there.  I knew that I would have to give the spindle back to her so I set out trying to find one as I didn't have the skills or knowledge to make one.  A trip to Golding's Handcrafts in Wellington turned up an Ashford Classic Spindle (90gm), a commercially prepared Romney fleece and a niddy-noddy for about $65.

I didn't know what the best yarn was to use for a 'leader' so I looked through all my knitting yarn and found a length of pure wool, 8 ply.  What a disaster.  It slipped all over the place, I kept dropping the spindle and nothing I did worked.  So I split the yarn and used only 2 strands of it.  I was hooked.  It took me quite a while to get through that fleece.  Probably a couple of years, as I was so bad at it, I couldn't get more than a 25 meters yarn on the spindle.  Hence why it took me a while.


In early 2000, I found an Ashford Traditional wheel in a second hand store for $30.  So I bought it, and took it home.  I had no idea how a wheel worked.   A phone call to Catherine to organise a lesson and a few days later hey presto, I was off and running.  I loved my wheel and was using it at every available opportunity.  I even took it to jousting tourneys, events and to people's houses when we were doing arts and sciences gatherings.

I have loved spinning ever since that first day spinning with Catherine.  I am grateful to her for her patience and knowledge.  She lent me books, gave me pointers, showed me fun stuff and shared her passion.  She has introduced me to this whole new world and I have been stuck here ever since.

Loni