What you see on the left is a skein that I spun for my mum’s birthday in the April of 2013. What you see on the right is the first ever skein I managed to spin on my wheel in January 2013. So, 4 months of improvement in one picture.

It wasn’t an arduous task, I didn’t have to work hard at it. I just kept spinning and learning and spinning some more. When I’d finished my very first skein, I was utterly thrilled. Not because I’d made beautiful yarn – I thought it was a bit of an ugly duckling. It was the pure joy of knowing that I had made something from scratch, just with my own hands and my own tools. It wasn’t beautiful yarn, it wasn’t anything I would have chosen and bought, but it was my yarn that I’d made myself.

I stashed it away and moved onto the next spinning project. But eventually it came out of the drawer and became an infinity cowl. I chose a project to suit the yarn – alternating double and treble crochet stitches to create a bumpy fabric. And now I have my own pure handspun merino cowl to keep me warm, and remind me of my very first adventures at the spinning wheel.