Meet Charlotte

(Charlotte is the spinning wheel. I'm the one spinning.)

Charlotte is my baby. She is a Schacht Ladybug, a birthday/graduation/in-debt-to-my-mother-forever present. I came home for spring break in March and a few days after my birthday my parents took me to Sheep Street, a wonderful yarn and fiber shop near Morgantown, IN. I was told that when you pick out your wheel, you should go somewhere you can actually try them out, and I had a blast going from wheel to wheel. The shop carries Schacht, Ashford, and Louet wheels. I fell in love with the Ladybug. It's a great wheel for someone just starting out, with the ability to upgrade as you go. The parts for the Ladybug are pretty much interchangeable withe parts for their Matchless wheel, a higher-end wheel made of nicer wood. But the red wheel of the Ladybug caught my eye. Plus, that was the only wheel they carried in stock. The Schacht Spinners group on Ravelry also answered any and all questions I had...they're a great group of spinners!

I bought 4 oz of Shetland wool at the shop as well, and finished spinning it that night...


As well as everything else I had in the house for spinning my drop spindle...



I think I was hooked from the start.

Beginnings Ramblings

It seems like everyone has a blog these days to talk about themselves and their daily doings. Since I'm starting a new part of my life, I felt that this warranted a new blog!

I chose the name "Spiminarian" because I'm a spinner...and also a seminarian. Well, I will be in August. I don't claim to know anything special about faith or spinning, so this will be a place to share my struggles as I try out new fibers (bamboo is hard to spin!), read new theological books (there's a stack waiting on my desk), and try to figure out what I am really going to do with my life. Hopefully my struggles will be interesting, or at least amusing, to others!

What do spinning and faith have to do with each other? Well, my lovely subheading says that I'm "spinning my own threads of faith," which is a nice little metaphor. However, since getting my spinning wheel (a Schacht Ladybug named Charlotte) in March, I've found that the act of spinning is incredibly soothing and meditative. I've tried meditating before, but I'm not very good at sitting still. When I'm spinning, my feet are moving and my hands are helping the fibers to twist. The act itself is repetitive, so my mind is able to relax.

I won't lie though; most of the time I just spin and watch TV.

So to end the ramblings, I'll post a picture of something I recently spun for my friend, Hannah, who is an awesome knitter. Hannah loves thin, thin yarn, and so I tried my hand at laceweight yarn. She bought 8 oz of Louet Blue-Faced Leicester, undyed. Here was the result: