I like prepared roving, myself. My spinning class, back in circa 1990, was taught by Sandy Sitzman, at Northwest Wools. They still sell her yummy dyed rovings, but I don't know who teaches their classes. I also took a dyeing class from her out at her house in the Banks area, I think. I do remember the house vividly though, it was a geodesic dome, plopped down in wine country. (Old hippies never die? :-)
I took the spinning class with a borrowed Schacht wheel, and never did learn to spin on a spindle. I've eyed the Respect the Spindle book, and the DVD, but would probably just buy them and hope to absorb the info by osmosis!
I like prepared roving mostly because I am lazy. The stuff that comes from hand carding and preparing rolags is nice to be sure, but I'd really rather not do all that work if I don't need to.
I prefer the whorl to be at the bottom of the stave, mostly because that's what I learned with and I can't wrap my brain around a high whorl because I've never seen them in use. I also definitely prefer a smaller diameter, relatively heavy whorl, made of stone or metal.
Bill is definitely a better spinner than I am. Touch base with the fuzzy one next time you see him, or send him an email.
Lurking in quilt stores... now that is dangerous. Is this perhaps the influence of kargashina? I started getting into quilting partially through her... after a few projects and a really cool class out at OCAC, I realized I didn't like how much work I had to do to make them - I mostly liked buying fabric, thinking about stuff, and playing with the colors and such. The thing about quilting is that it takes SPACE to do, unless of course you're doing little bitty things - very different from knitting, crocheting, tatting, etc.
So... if you do want to try it, let me know and I will open up my stash of quilting fabric for you to play with and steal stuff from (with maybe a few select fabrics off-limits).
And if you want to try a low-whorl drop spindle, I think I have a basic one around here somewhere that you could borrow.
So far with the quilting I have a couple of bag projects queued up to see how much I like it before I commit more. Mostly what I want to get out of it is being more precise about my sewing, learing to use the rotary cutter and more work with color theory. I don't love traditional quilt designs, but I've seen some interesting things I like in a few of the celtic quilt design books that use quilt blocks instead of bias tape. And the batik fabrics are extremely drool-worthy.
low-whorl, heavy(I've been known to add weights) and I prep my own wool, because I like the fluffiness of it as compared to commercially prepped rovings. Probably all of this is impatience; I think everything happens faster with my setup than with others I've tried.
I have a high whorl that I like and I buy roving (at Abundant Yarn and Dyeworks in Sellwood). I never took a class, just got books from the library and taught myself with them.
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I took the spinning class with a borrowed Schacht wheel, and never did learn to spin on a spindle. I've eyed the Respect the Spindle book, and the DVD, but would probably just buy them and hope to absorb the info by osmosis!
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I prefer the whorl to be at the bottom of the stave, mostly because that's what I learned with and I can't wrap my brain around a high whorl because I've never seen them in use. I also definitely prefer a smaller diameter, relatively heavy whorl, made of stone or metal.
Bill is definitely a better spinner than I am. Touch base with the fuzzy one next time you see him, or send him an email.
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So... if you do want to try it, let me know and I will open up my stash of quilting fabric for you to play with and steal stuff from (with maybe a few select fabrics off-limits).
And if you want to try a low-whorl drop spindle, I think I have a basic one around here somewhere that you could borrow.
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