It’s been a LONG journey to get to now! We’ve kept sheep since 2015, I received my DIY spinning wheel kit in 2018 as a gift, I finally finished staining and putting it together in 2021, and I’ve just learned to spin in 2025. Holy sheep, that was a process. Oh, and by the way, time absolutely flies!

Look, there are a lot of reasons this happened the way that it did. Life has been a trip over the past ten years, for sure. You know it, I know it. Looking back, I’ve learned a few things and I’m going to share them with you. Hindsight is always 20/20, or so they say.

Some Mole Hills ARE Mountains

I DID start building the spinning wheel right away! I did, I really did. However, we had to pack up the entire circus on short-notice and move to Kansas pretty much 5 minutes later. We made many trips back and forth between Florida and Kansas to move the farm implements, cats, horse, and sheep. Then it was pedal-to-the-metal getting moved in and getting settled.

Our new barn went up in early 2019 and then I had a major life-changing surgery right afterwards. As soon as my rehab and recovery was over, the pandemic hit. In 2021, I was determined to finish building this silly wheel or bust.

I finally finished putting the wheel together in October of 2021.

Sometimes It’s Better NOT to DIY

I really should have just asked for a finished/pre-built wheel and then maybe I would have started spinning years earlier? In the beginning, I tried to learn to spin on some roving I hand-dyed, but I got really frustrated right away because it wouldn’t easily draft (it must have gotten felted during the dyeing process). I pulled the wheel out here and there over the years and tried to learn, but there was always a hurdle I couldn’t seem to get over.

First, I tried to spin while sitting on the couch (absolute wrong chair to sit in) in the living room and had the wheel on the carpet and it kept moving away from me. Then the leader was slipping on the bobbin because I tied it on wrong. I didn’t understand tension or the difference of the whorls. (At one point, we thought there was something wrong with the wheel, but it was really just me.) I got very frustrated every time I tried to learn because I really didn’t let myself have the time to learn. I couldn’t be patient. I didn’t feel like I had the time to do any research, read, or watch any videos. Finally, I gave up. I just wasn’t in the right place in time.

It Took a Blizzard For Me To Learn To Spin

We just had an ice storm, followed by a blizzard on the 5th, followed by arctic air and negative temperatures from the Polar Vortex. We got 17 inches of snow! That’s the most snow we’ve ever seen here. (Other years with this amount of snow were 1993 and 1900.) The day after the blizzard, everything in Northeastern Kansas was shut down, even the roads (so the snowplows could work unhindered). Hubby was home because his place of work was closed, and he said, “Why don’t you try to spin?” I agreed. We were essentially snowed in.

He brought my spinning wheel downstairs and put it onto the hard floor in the dining room this time (I was back and forth to the kitchen because I was making sourdough bread). It wobbled! After all that careful staining and building! We folded up some non-slip (for under rugs) and put it under one corner. I sat on a normal chair from the dining table. The wheel tried to move away from me, so I pushed it up against the wall.

I sold a few sheep to a pleasant young lady from Missouri this last summer. She is a talented hand spinner. I told her of my trouble learning to spin and she suggested I watch Jillian Eve on YouTube. So, I watched her “How to Spin Yarn On A Spinning Wheel the First Time (Absolute Beginner Step-by-Step)” video, had some epiphanies, and corrected some of the mistakes I was making (e.g., tied the leader on correctly).

“I felt like I had discovered fire!”

All of a sudden I was SPINNING! My brain was blown. The sky is the limit. The world is my oyster. I felt like I had discovered fire!

It’s The Physics of Spinning That Fascinate Me

I took all the time I needed. I dropped everything else for days. (My house is a mess right now.) I’ve watched so many videos and been “in class” in front of the wheel or combing or washing wool that I’ve given myself headaches and had sleepless nights thinking so hard on yarn!

I’ve learned so much about different weights of yarn, different sized whorls, spinning ratios, Scotch tension, bobbins (you can never have enough), drive bands and wheels, drafting techniques, WPI, pre-drafting roving, wet-setting yarn, thwacking, etc. There is a lot of technical information to know about yarn and spinning to be able to consistently make yarn of a certain color, weight, and type and it takes great skill. Yarn spun by an experienced hand spinner is definitely tradesman level work and is of high value.

The most fascinating part to me is the actual twisting of the wool to make it stronger by itself and then plying it with another to make a yarn. The fibers are doing so much down at their level that we cannot even see. Wool is such a gift and a great renewable resource from Mother Nature.

My First Yarn

My first yarn was made on a large whorl and doesn’t have enough twist. It’s more of what they call a floofy “art yarn”. My next yarn will have more twist and be made on a smaller whorl, so it will look more like the traditional yarn you’re used to seeing.

The final stats on this hank are: approximately 80 yards, weighs 5.2 ounces, is 50% Gulf Coast and 50% Merino wool, and was spun on an Ashford Kiwi 2. It fluffed up a lot when I wet set the yarn. It’s so very soft. I probably won’t make anything with it, just keep it so I know where I started and where I came from.