Save the Date: Spinzilla!

On your marks! Get set! SPIN!!! This fall, the Spinning & Weaving Group of TNNA is planning an event named Spinzilla to be held during Spinning and Weaving week, October 7-13, 2013. The challenge is to form teams to see who can spin the most yarn during spinning and weaving week! Spinzilla will be a…

Dyeing Colour Wheels at Place des Arts

The joy of working with effectively the same group of students at Place des Arts over three terms is that we can build on what we have done in the term before. Since September, these students have learned to dye fibre using immersion and hand-painting techniques but we never delved too much into colour theory….

Spinning: The Beginning

This is a guest post from Liisa, one of our studio assistants and dyers. Her undeniable passion for yarn and fibre, knitting and craft totally won me over and in December 2012, she moved to Vancouver from Finland so that she could join our studio. This is her story of how she learned to spin, from…

Spinner’s Bucket List

Last Friday, I was talking about setting goals for improving your spinning and Sandy commented, asking about my “bucket list” of 80 things to do with spinning. Here’s my starter list. I’ve broken the items up into four categories: Knowledge (background/general info), Skills (ability to do these things), Control (ability to do these things with…

Spinning Goals & Progression

Do you have new year’s resolutions or goals for your knitting or spinning? At the start of this new year, I asked my spinning students to set some BIG goals for the next eight weeks of spinning classes. “Bucket List”-type goals for their own spinning improvement. Things like, “oh, over the next eight weeks, I’d…

A booth at Bates Motel

…or the reason why I was up until 5 am on Knit City set up day. So one of the lovely set decorators for a new A&E TV series, Bates Motel, came by the studio a couple weeks ago to see if we had any yarn she could borrow for a film set. One of…

Spinning Dyed Fibers Blog Tour!

Handspun, handknit. Tweedy and plied. Colorful and subdued. There is so much activity going on in the Spinning Dyed Fibers class on Craftsy, I thought I should share a couple! I’m also very happy to be able to share with you this blog tour for the spinning class. Several of my personal spinning heros have…

Spinning Dyed Fibers

Several weeks ago, I was out in Colorado filming one of Craftsy.com’s first spinning class offerings, called “Spinning Dyed Fibers“. And I’m so excited that it’s finally launched and available now! You all know I love colour. I’ve been dyeing and spinning and indulging myself in colour since early 2005. I’ve had spiritual encounters with…

From Russia with Love

Okay, so they’re not actually from Russia. My first Russian spindle is from Carney’s Turnings, which I picked up at Fibres West about a month ago. And then I became so enamoured with it, I hunted down other spindle makers, finally discovering the amazing Lisa Chan at Gripping Yarn. She’s turned over 1,000 spindles and…