Lara Neel - The Journal Gazette

Sequins or beads in my yarn? Yes, please.

Spin Control, by Amy King, is mostly an "aspirational" book for me right now, but I love many of the ideas in it.

I call some books aspirational when they have a ton of great ideas that I don't think I'm ready to use yet. (I have a lot of cook books that meet that criteria.)

Lara Neel - The Journal Gazette

Core spinning - a fluffy fiber wrapped around a core of tightly-spun yarn.

I don't mean that this is the wrong book for a beginning spinner like me.

Amy's writing has a brisk pace and a cheerful tone, so she makes everything sound super-easy.

Lara Neel - The Journal Gazette

Some examples of different fiber preparations.

Do you want to spin fat singles of yarn? Do you want to experiment with more than 2 plies? Do you wonder, as I did, what the heck "core spinning" might be?

Amy addresses all of this, and a lot more, with lots of sharp photographs to back up her wonderfully clear prose.

Lara Neel - The Journal Gazette

This is how to rig up a homemade lace bobbin - using foam pipe insulation!

Spin Control lets me see past this stage of my spinning. Right now, I'm just working on getting a continuous thread that is about an even thickness.

Later, I will want to make bulky, bouncy, skinny, boucle, or (WOW!) beaded or sequined yarns.

I know that learning about spinning, like learning about knitting, will probably always be a receding horizon. I will always have more to learn, and I love that. Spin Control seems like it will be a great complement to many of the steps in my journey.

p.s. - If you want to see some of Amy's fantastic writing, check out her article over on Knitty Spin about spinning an entire sweater's worth of yarn (and how you can totally do it). She is the owner of Spunky Eclectic.