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How I Started Handspinning
by Tulasi Kilgore
For the past five years, the computer has been my primary medium for creating art. Being a trained artist in traditional art tools (painting and drawing) my interest in art recently began to shift back to a more traditional form of creative expression.
After much introspection, I decided to try knitting. I chose this medium because I wanted to learn something I knew very little about (I needed a challenge), it was something I could begin easily with materials I already had, plus it was Y2K compliant. Several years ago, I was heavily involved in weaving and fiber arts so I still had an abundance of yarn left over. I tried learning to knit once before but for some reason I had difficulty understanding it, so I was a little uncertain about giving it another try.
I began with hand knitting. I sat for hours until my wrists got tired, trying to figure out the knit and purl stitches. After a few days, things started coming together and I became greatly encouraged to continue. Immediately I set a goal to knit a sweater, which is a pretty ambitious task for a beginner, but I was determined to do it. After working on my new sweater project for two days I realized that at the rate I was going it was going to take me a year to make my first sweater. This was totally unacceptable to me, so I started looking for alternatives to achieve my goal more quickly.
One day I was at the craft store buying more yarn and I noticed they had a product called "The Incredible Sweater Machine." It was on the top shelf so I had to do a little climbing to get to it. I sat down in the aisle of the store and opened the box to examine the contents. It was a simple manual knitting frame that claimed a sweater could be made in a matter of hours. The samples looked good so I decided to buy it and give it a try. At home I watched the instruction video that came with it, and set it up to start my first knitting project. It was so easy to use. I was able to knit on it what took me 2 days to do on 2 needles in less than 5 minutes! I made a knitted hat in one half-hour. I went ahead and purchased additional videos to learn the basics of sweater making with the machine. They were excellent, and I knitted a child's sweater in two days and my first adult sweater the next week. Six weeks later I decided to invest in a professional knitting machine (manual). It has greatly increased production plus it is capable of making several design textures and two-color patterns. Now I'm really hooked!
Up to this point I was knitting with inexpensive craft acrylic yarns, but as my skills increased my desire for using better fibers did also. The only problem was that designer yarns, and yarns made of natural fibers such as wool and mohair are very expensive, especially if you are buying them in large quantities for projects like sweaters. So again, I needed to find a solution.
What quickly came to mind was to make my own yarn with fleece and natural fibers. Only problem was where to get the materials. My first choice would be to raise sheep, but that's not a practical thing to do when you're living in the city. So I decided to raise angora rabbits ("urban sheep") instead. Once again I had no clue where to find them especially in New Jersey - I've never seen them in the pet stores. Therefore, I posted a message on the Internet stating I wanted to adopt angora rabbits for wool production. To my surprise I got responses from 10 people in the area who raised angora rabbits for sale. I also didn't know anything about raising
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