Thursday Tip: Spinning on Ravelry
July 14th, 2016
Tour de Fleece is underway on Ravelry and with it, the spinning activity has ramped up! Each year, concurrently with the Tour de France race, spinners choose a personal spinning challenge and commit to spinning every day of the Tour. While the event is taking place, we all share progress photos and cheer each other on (Go Team Spindlers!). It’s a ton of fun! Since there are new spinners who participate every year, I thought I’d give a quick overview of how spinning projects work on Ravelry.
Fiber Stash
Your spinning starts with fiber, and on Ravelry your fiber lives in your fiber stash, a special tab in the stash section of your Ravelry notebook. Here’s my fiber stash in case you haven’t stashed any fiber but would like to check one out! When you start spinning your fiber into yarn, you can select the make yarn button on that fiber stash entry’s page.
That will begin a…
Handspun Project
Handspun Projects have their own section in your Ravelry Notebook – the one labeled handspun. These handspun projects have their own special fields where you can track your yarn’s grist, WPI, twist direction, the tools and equipment (like spindles or wheels) that you used… you can even name your skeins!
Once you have completed your handspun project and marked it as finished, you’ll find your fresh new yarn in the yarn stash section of your Ravelry notebook, where you can search for it along with the rest of your stash and connect it to projects that you knit, crochet, or weave – just like any other yarn you’ve stashed. It will also stay in the handspun projects section of your notebook for you to look on fondly and easily view the pretty yarn you made!
Christina’s pretty handspun
Here’s one of my favorite projects (also pictured at the top of this post) that I made with my handspun. On this project you can click on the thumbnails and links for the handspun I used and trace all the way back to the fiber. Feel free to click around to get familiar with navigating all the stages of handspun on Ravelry!
For even more handspun inspiration, check out this advanced search to yarns that Ravelers have spun. You will definitely be impressed with all of this beautiful handmade yarn!
