Choosing a First Spinning Wheel

I purchased my first spinning wheel in December of 2023. We had already bought our sheep, but they had yet to be delivered. I was curious about the wool and wondered how difficult it would be to spin it. I can not emphasize enough that I knew NOTHING about wool, yarn, spinning, knitting, crocheting, etc. So, I decided that I would learn about spinning. I downloaded a bunch of podcasts about spinning and listened to them on a 10 hour drive to visit my family in New Mexico. (Probably not the best way to go about it.) The vocabulary alone was completely overwhelming. Drafting, singles, woolen, worsted, flyer, long draw, scotch tension.... and the list went on and on.

After a few hours, some of it started to sink in, but since I wasn't even a knitter, I really couldn't make any connections in my mind. Spinning for a project? Not really possible when you don't know how to knit, crochet, or read a pattern. I did realize that before I learned to spin, I should probably get the knitting basics down. So, while in New Mexico, I picked up a book about knitting scarves that had excellent directions in the back of the book that included pictures.

I also decided to watch some videos about spinning so that I could try and wrap my head around some of the vocabulary by at least having a visual aid. It didn't take long to find Jillian Evie's YouTube channel. I watched a lot of her beginner videos and had a better understanding of what I had been listening to on the drive up. It made sense to start with a spindle, but since I would be dealing with entire fleeces getting a wheel also seemed to make sense. If you look up the prices of spinning wheels, however, it becomes clear that buying a wheel is pretty big commitment. And how do you decide which one to buy when you don't even know what you are doing? So I looked on Craigslist to see if I could find a used wheel. I found two. One was in New Mexico and was $750, and the other one was in Kingman, Arizona and it was $250.

I was really only interested in the second wheel since $750 was way more than I wanted to invest in hobby that I had never even tried before. There wasn't a lot of information in the ad but there was a picture. My daughter was able to use the picture to determine that it appeared to be an Ashford Traditional spinning wheel. We then looked up "Ashford Traditional" on YouTube and found that Jillian Evie had a video about restoring an Ashford Traditional wheel. We watched that and I decided to purchase the wheel. I called the woman the next day and made plans to pick it up on my way back home to Nevada since my route goes through Kingman. She was very nice and she said that the wheel was working but that she hardly ever used it. Her mother in law was a spinning teacher so she had purchased the wheel thinking that she would try learning but she never really got the hang of it and the wheel had just been sitting in her house taking up space. Her grandkids would play around with it but no one actually used it and she couldn't tell me much about it other than it did work.

So I purchased the wheel. When I stepped on the treadle, the wheel went around, but not knowing anything about spinning, I had no idea what else to look for. I took it home, cleaned it, and oiled it. I watched the restoring video again. My wheel seemed to work, so I watched the beginning spinning video and practiced my treadling. Finally, I took out some of the generic roving that I had purchased on my trip and tried to spin. Nothing went right. I couldn't get the fiber to draft. The twist kept going into my fiber supply. The fiber did not uptake onto the bobbin and I ended up with a big tangled mess that looked nothing like yarn. I practiced just using yarn so I could get the feel of it. I was able to get the wheel to take the yarn up and onto the bobbin. Later, when I tried again to use roving, I again ended up with a tangled mess. I just couldn't seem to manage to draft and treadle at the same time. I also kept getting hung up on the wheel. It felt like there was a point when it got to the top but it just didn't seem to want to go all the way over and sometimes it would just stop and sometimes I would end up treadling the other direction. It felt like I had to push with my toe and then press with my heel to keep things going smoothly. Add in trying to draft fiber and I pretty much just gave up. The picture shows my best attempt.

I felt like there might have been something wrong with my wheel but I just wasn't sure, since I had no other experience to compare it to. You don't know what you don't know! So I decided that I needed to find someone to teach me in person because I clearly wasn't going to learn from a video. I also wanted someone who knew how to spin to try my wheel and let me know if it was working correctly.

In the meantime, I had called "The Woolery" and talked to them about my wheel. My wheel had only come with one bobbin and there was no "Lazy Kate." They helped me to determine which style of bobbin to purchase and explained why I would want a "tensioned" Lazy Kate. I also purchased an "Ashford Maintenance Kit" and a student spindle. (Add another $185 to my investment)

When it came time for my spinning lesson, I carted all my stuff down to a local yarn store where I would be meeting my teacher. The main thing that I wanted her to do, was to try my wheel and let me know if it was working properly. After trying my wheel, she told me that it was not working properly. She said that an experienced spinner would probably be able to use it, but it would be difficult to work with. If I was to try and learn on this particular wheel, I would probably end up feeling frustrated and would miss out on the enjoyment of spinning. Luckily, I had brought my new spindle, and she spent the rest of the time teaching me how to use it instead. I had tried using the spindle at home and had similar results to my wheel spinning. Since, I knew the spindle couldn't possibly be broken, I had no excuse for that! (Note- The spindle picture is after SEVERAL attempts! It took me quite a while to get the hang of it!)

By the end of the hour, she had given me some tips about pre-drafting fiber. She had also brought some different fibers for me to try that were much easier than what I had been working with. I highly recommend corridale as a first fiber to try because it was so much easier to use. While I had been busy parking and drafting on my spindle, she had looked up some "reasonably priced" wheels that would be good for a first time spinner. Since new wheels can easily go for over a thousand dollars, I really appreciated this.

In the end, I decided to purchase a new Ashford Kiwi 3. I absolutely love it. It takes up so much less room. Also, the treadles fold up for easy storage and easy transport. I find that it is much easier to control the wheel when there are two treadle pedals to use. In all honesty, my first spins with the new wheel were just as bad with my first wheel. But, with practice, I have improved considerably!