What has gone before

Before I get started, I have never tried blogging before and don't even read blogs, but this seems like a good place to start. Please bear with me as I figure out how to use it.


10 days ago I bought my first drop spindle. I now have a whole sheep fleece hanging on an old airer, a bag of alpaca fur (and more on the way) and bags of stuff all over the place.
Why? Why? How did this happen?

A few weeks ago I rediscovered French Knitting in its modern form, the knitting loom. I now have loads of these things around the floor with projects in various stages of completion, plus a pair of hand made socks (wearable), a woolly hat, (also wearable) a hat with scarf attached to it (wearable if the other hat is underneath it to disguise the large holes where I dropped stitches), and another scarf (wearable in emergencies) and an unfinished grey jumper (will never be wearable and probably wont be finished).

Socks! I have several looms for socks. The proper sock loom that cost over £30 from Amazon ha a LOVELY sock growing on it but very slowly. Too many pegs but the finished sock will be wearable if no one looks too closely at it (not that they would).
The cheapo £2.50 sock looms from Lidl were a pointless waste of time but maybe I'll do something chunky on them later.
However,
a few weeks ago, in Bedford town centre, I met a lovely young woman called Yudit who runs a wool website and blog called monster yarns  ( at http://www.monsteryarns.co.uk) and bought a pack of new system looms from her. They have extra holes and extra pegs so you can fill them with lots of stitches. One of those looms (without the extra pegs added) proved perfect for thick woollen socks for walking boots.
1st one was ok. I bit long in the foot and I got carried away with the heel turning and that's a bit square, but the partner to it was better.

What has this to do with spinning?

I'm getting to that.

Having worked out socks I wanted warmer socks. That means wool but wool is expensive. Maybe it's cheaper if you spin it yourself, I thought.

And so it began......