Transcript for
Episode 90:
Clearing the Decks for a Healthy Spinning Habit
In the last episode, I talked about the advantages of building a daily spinning habit. This week, I'm going to give you four ways to remove friction from your spinning life. What's friction? Anything that makes it harder to get to your wheel and get spinning.
Hello there darling Sheepspotter! Welcome to episode 90 of The Sheepspot Podcast. I'm Sasha, and my job is to help you make more yarns you love.
Last week we talked about how habits are highly context specific. Habits are fragile, and can be disrupted by changes to one's environment. This is true of bad habits as well as good ones. My favorite example of this has to do with American soldiers in Vietnam. Statistics gathered by the US military and based on mandatory urine testing on soldiers leaving military service in 1971 suggest that as many as 34% of US soldiers used heroin while serving in Vietnam, and 20% of them were addicted to it. But in the first year after returning to the US, only 1% of them became readdicted to heroin even though 10% tried heroin again after returning home. Why? Because their context had changed dramatically, and their heroin habit didn't persist through all those changes.
So context can disrupt habits, but it can also support them. This week's episode is about how you manage the context of your spinning practice to make spinning easier. I'm going to talk about four things: the physical environment in which you spin; the state of your stash; how to avoid getting stalled between projects; and keeping the kinds of spinning records that will allow you to leave a project and pick it up again easily.
Your Spinning Environment
If you're having trouble spinning as much as you like, I think the first thing to consider is how you've set up the place in your house where you do most of your spinning. If you need to spend a lot of time getting out your wheel, finding your fiber, and chasing down your orifice hook, you've got a lot of tasks standing between you and actually spinning.
I know from my own experience that this makes a big difference. During the part of the year I'm in Ontario, I have everything I need to spin right in the living room. There's the drawer with the flyers, the drawer with the bobbins, the drawer with the whorls, the cabinet for prep tools and storage bobbins and the one for projects. And the television for the Netflix.
When I'm in Nova Scotia, things are a little trickier because it's essentially one room I don't like leaving anything out.
Guess where I do more spinning?
Can you set up a spot in your house where your wheel is out, inviting you to spin, and where your projects and tools are ready to go? With spinning, as with any other positive habit, you want to make doing what you've already decided you want to to do as easy as possible. So set your space up to make getting started effortless. Organize your tools and works in progress so they are easy to get to.
Behavior Scientist BJ Fogg, author of Tiny Habits (link in show notes), posits that any human behavior happens when we are prompted, motivated, and able to do that behavior. Having an orderly spinning space not only makes it easier to get going (ability); the space can also itself serve as a prompt to spin. And making your spinning space inviting may increase your motivation as well. Win-win-win!
Your Stash
Next I want to talk about your stash. How are you and your stash getting along, Sheepspotter? I've found that having either too much or too little in my stash can be murderous to my spinning mojo. I need enough choices to be inspired, but not so many that I'm overwhelmed. Organization is also crucial for me: if my stash is a mess (which, honestly, is probably about 50% of the time), I am dramatically less likely to actually be spinning, because whenever I go in search of something to spin I'm confronted by the mess, which makes me feel guilty and wasteful and the opposite of creative. For me, regular destashing is also fundamental to a healthy spinning life: having to dig through regrettable purchases or dye experiments to get to what I do want to spin is another major buzzkill for me.
If any of this sounds familiar, consider setting aside some stash management time. I have a free self-guided challenge in The Flock called "Groom Your Stash" that will walk you through my process of destashing and organizing, as well as combining bits of stash for larger projects and freshening up fiber that's gotten compacted in storage.
Project Planning
I've found that it's very easy for me and my spinning habit to get derailed when I've finished one project and haven't yet decided what's next. Sometimes I just don't
have the bandwidth to find fiber and plan a new thing. Here's how I manage this: I like to be working on one (and only one) project per wheel. When I'm in Ontario that means that I have something going on my Sidekick, my Ladybug, and my Electric Eel 6. When I'm in Nova Scotia, it means I have something on my Hansen and my (NS) Ladybug. I like to have one big project going in each place and at least one of what the Guild members call "snack spins"—quick 4 ounce projects. I also like to have a spindle spin going as well, for portability. This way I don't get overwhelmed, I always have some choice of what to work on, and when I finish one project I have others already in progress and can just keep doing. Then, as soon as I can, I get something going on the empty wheel. Et voilà: I no longer get stalled between projects.
Good record keeping
If you've ever taken a class with me, I have done my best to impress on you the importance of keeping good records. And here I must confess that this is a "do as I say, not as I do" situation. I recently unearthed a knitting project in progress using some handspun. And I had no idea what it was. Could have been a sock. Could have been mitts. No idea about the pattern. I consulted my project notebook. Nothing. I finally figured out that it was the beginnings of a set of Ferryboat Mitts, a pattern by Churchmouse Yarns and Teas. I wish I could tell you that this will be the last time this will happen but I'm not that rash. All I can do is urge you to be kind to your future self and give her the information she needs to complete the project when you've been away from it. You think you will remember. You will not.
If you work on multiple projects at once, as I do, record keeping becomes very, very important, because you're going to be stopping and starting. So here's what I try to do every time I start a spinning project:
create a page for it in my project notebook
create a spinning record card for the project, which I keep with the fiber. The ones I use are available as a freebie in The Flock; I'll put a link in the show notes.
attach a plyback sample and a sample of the singles to a shipping label, and keep that with the fiber as well
There's some duplication of effort here, but I find that this works for me when I can make myself do it. I've got the basic info (fiber, wheel, ratio, drafting method) both in my notebook and on the spinning record card, but I like being able to see everything I'm working on in one place (notebook) and also having something that lives with the fiber (the record card).
We've talked about four areas of your spinning life that might be impeding your day to day spinning, and I've made some suggestions for identifying any friction you may be encountering in these areas. We've talked about setting up an inviting, well-equipped spot to spin, setting up your stash to support your spinning, avoiding getting marooned between projects, and keeping good records so that you can easily restart and finish projects that you've set aside.
There's a post in The Flock, Sheepspot’s free online community for inquisitive hand spinners, where you can comment on and discuss this episode. I would love to know whether it's been useful to you, and what, if any, changes you're considering to support your spinning. I'll link to it in the show notes, which you can find at sheepspot.com/podcast/episode90.
That's it for me this time. I'll be back next time with an episode on how to make building a spinning habit—or any other kind of habit—easier. In the meantime, spin something. You know it will do you good.