Getting Started on a Drop Spindle Online Workshop

Have you always wanted to spin but haven’t yet found someone with the patience and skill to teach you? You’re in luck–Maggie Casey is here to gently lead you by the hand into the wonderful world of spinning. Learn about the simplest way to spin yarn, with a drop spindle, and use it to start adding twist into your fiber and make the yarn of your dreams.

In this spinning Online Workshop, Maggie:

• Provides a description of the spindle’s parts and styles of spindles as well as materials you need to get started.
• Teaches the park-and-draft technique, showing how to take control of the process of spinning and master drafting, twisting, and storing your yarn on the shaft of the spindle.
• Demonstrates how to spin continuously while standing up.
• Shows how to take the yarn off the spindle and twist two strands together in the opposite direction to create a plied yarn.
• Finishes with techniques for setting the twist, creating a skein, tying it, and washing it.

Maggie will have you making your own yarn before you know it. Enjoy her spinning workshop in a new streaming format, along with diagrams and key information to help you learn.

Online Workshop includes:
Discussion board & Gallery: The discussion board is a great way to interact with other users in the Online Workshop. It’s an open forum for you to ask questions, share your thoughts, express your inspirations, and share images of your work.
Notes: This is a place for you to keep personal notes to help you with your work and the Online Workshop content. Only you will be able to see your notes.
Video Lesson Run Time: approx. 52 minutes
The videos in this Online Workshop are available for you to watch via streaming. For details, see the ‘Navigate Your Online Workshop’ section within the Online Workshop.

Online Workshop Outline:

• Introduction
• Getting Started
  • Drop Spindle Basics
  • Preparing Wool for Spinning
• Learn the Park & Draft Method of Spinning
• Standing & Spinning
• Removing Yarn from the Spindle & Creating a Skein
• Finishing Your Yarn & Setting the Twist
• Wrapping Up

Materials Required:

• Carded wool fiber
• A medium to large drop spindle with a top whorl
• A length of waste yarn
• Two clean, terra cotta flower pots with drainage holes
• A small felt, plastic, or foam ball (about 2 inches in diameter)
• A bowl large enough to submerge your skein of yarn
• Warm water
• Wool wash or gentle soap
• Vinegar
• A cardboard shoebox and a sharp implement to poke holes in the shoebox
• Optional: a niddy noddy

About the Instructor

Maggie Casey is the co-owner of Shuttles, Spindles, and Skeins, a fiber arts store in Boulder, Colorado, where she teaches the art of spinning to classes of all skill levels. Maggie is the author of Start Spinning: Everything You Need to Know to Make Great Yarn and has contributed articles to Spin Off and Knitter’s Review. Additionally, she has served as judge at various spinning competitions.