Script for
Episode 122:
10 Pitfalls of Teaching Yourself to Spin
When I started The Flock, Sheepspot's online community for inquisitive handspinners, in 2020, I had everyone who joined answer a question: who taught you to spin? And I was really surprised to learn that at least 60% of the respondents said that they were self-taught. It really surprised me that the number was that high. There are a lot of advantages to teaching yourself to spin: you can go at your own pace, you can follow your own interests, you don't have to travel or even put your wheel in the car, and the price is right (sort of; I'll come back to that in a little bit). But there are also massive disadvantages to going it alone, and in today's episode, I'm going to share ten of them.
Hello there, darling Sheepspotter! Welcome to episode 122 of The Sheepspot Podcast. I'm Sasha, and my job is to help you make more yarns you love.
I've got ten things to talk about today (all of which, by the way, come straight from conversations with my students) so let's dive right in.
Bad information: There is a ton of spinning information on the internet. A lot of it is helpful and accurate. But a lot of it isn't. And as a relatively new spinner, it can be hard to sort the wheat from the chaff. Unmoderated online forums are frequent culprits in sharing bad information.
Bad sequencing: Even great information can be unhelpful if it comes to you before you're ready for it or after you needed it. As I discussed in episode 121, the sequence in which information is presented to you matters, and instruction that really pays attention to that sequence makes learning anything easier and more durable, because early lessons are reinforced by everything that follows.
Bad habits: When you're on your own, it's very easy to establish unhelpful habits and get them so firmly set into your muscle memory that they are extremely hard to unlearn. If you're in the habit of treadling faster than your hands can keep up with, for example, once you've been doing it for a while it's very challenging to slow down. You can save yourself an enormous amount of time and energy by establishing good habits from the start.
Getting discouraged when things go wrong or you get stuck, because you have no support. I have a secret fear that the world is full of spinning wheels gathering dust in basements and attics because the spinner they belong to got discouraged, didn't know how to get help, and just gave up. Seriously, I'm a little haunted by this, both because I believe that wheels want to be used, and because spinning is so much fun. I hate the thought of spinners quitting before they discover how much fun it is.
Getting overwhelmed flitting from source to source looking for information. Let's say that you are trying to solve a specific issue with your wheel or your yarn and you're ready to ask the almighty Google for help. If you're a new spinner and you don't have any more experienced spinners to ask, it can be difficult even to formulate the search. If you get past that hurdle, you may be offered pages and pages of conflicting advice. See "bad information," above.
Not having access to the tips and tricks that can get you unstuck and keep you moving forward. This is a big one. There are so many small tweaks you can make when spinning that will transform your yarn and your experience at the wheel. This can be anything from how to tie a leader onto your bobbin that won't slip, to making a habit of checking your staple length to establish how far you should draft in short forward draw. There are so many little bits of information like this in spinning!
Disappointing results. They say that doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is the definition of insanity. If you're not thrilled by your yarn, and lots of new spinners aren't, it can be really hard to figure out what the problem is and how to fix it on your own.
Making essentially the same yarn over and over, usually because you don't know that there are different things you could be doing that would change your results. (If this is you, you should check out my free 1 Fiber 5 ways challenge in The Flock).
Not knowing what not to worry about. This is another big one, and I have to thank Liz Gipson for this formulation. In one of her rigid heddle videos she points out that when you're new at something you don't yet know what's important to pay attention to and what not to bother with, and that part of her job as a teacher is to tell her students what not to worry about. And I've really taken that to heart. That's why one of the things we do in Spin School, in Module 4, is to get students working with their handspun right away, before they really think their yarn is "good enough." And students are amazed at how good their lumpy-bumpy early yarn looks in their projects. They've been sweating over every inconsistency as they spin, and a lot of those inconsistencies aren't even going to show in their final project. Another example: I think it's worth getting good at making joins in your spinning, and students can get really hung up on getting them perfect. But the fact is that bad joins usually just disappear into the fabric, and the really wonky ones can usually be fixed with a quick, simple split splice.
Your time is valuable: Finally, to those of you who are going it alone and teaching yourself to spin, I want you to consider valuing your time as much as you value your money. Because free usually isn't really free; often what we don't spend money on requires huge investments of time. One thing I know for sure, based on my own experience learning to spin and those of many of my students, is that a good spinning teacher can get you to making yarn you love and feel really proud of way more quickly and more easily than you'll get there on your own, by sharing good information in the right order, preventing you from acquiring bad habits that you'll need to undo, supporting you when your stuck or discouraged, sharing those all important tips and tricks, and telling you what to pay attention to and what isn't really going to matter in the long run. Whether you work with me, take classes at festivals, watch videos on Long Thread Media or Craftsy, you don't have to go it alone.
If you're ready to get some help and you'd like to work with me, you can find out all about Spin School, my course on the fundamentals of spinning, at sheepspot.com/spin-school.
There's a dedicated discussion thread in The Flock where you can comment on this episode and discuss it with me and other listeners. The link is in the show notes for this episode, which you'll find right inside your podcast app. To join the conversation, just open up the description for this episode, click the link, and you'll be taken right to the thread.
If you haven't joined The Flock, Sheepspot's free online community for inquisitive handspinners, you should! You'll get access to all of the freebies I've created for the podcast, as well as several self-guided spinning challenges, our weekly spinning check-ins every Friday, and lots more. Join us at theflock.sheepspot.com.
Darling Sheepspotter, that's it for me this week. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back next week with a series of dispatches from my retreat. You don't want to miss it. Until then, spin something. If you're in the northern hemisphere, you might have time to get in some spinning outdoors before it gets too cold. I promise it will do you good.