Book Review Friday

The Complete Guide to Spinning Yarn: Techniques, Projects, and Recipes - Somewhere in the back of my mind I am fully expecting my Kindle and iPad to stop functioning eventually.  Whether this is a result of old age and living on a fixed income and can't afford to replace expensive gadgets, or the result of the zombie apocalypse, I have not stopped buying paper books.  I am especially fond of books detailing old-world methods of doing things, particularly things that require no electricity, such as food preservation or making clothes.  If that makes me a "prepper", I guess I'm a prepper.

I mean, if the world as we know it ended tomorrow, would you know how to dress a wound, treat a bee sting, or knit continental style without being able to search for a goddamn YouTube video?

I am a self-taught spinner.  I got a lovely Kromski spinning wheel quite a few birthdays back, and while I can put out a decent yarn, I never really felt I knew quite what I was doing.  Other women talk about treadle counts, replicating results over several bobbins, and I was in despair because I mostly just wing it as I go.  I was hoping this book would teach me actual, reproducible techniques that would help me create exactly the yarn I want consistently.

While this book covers a LOT of area in spinning yarn, it doesn't do so in very much detail.  It's a thin book of 144 pages, a lot of which is filled with large color pictures and some charts.  While the color pictures are nice, and very helpful for a visual learner, I was disappointed that it didn't seem to give much practical advice for getting consistent results.  You try counting your number of treadles per inch when that inch could happen in three seconds or thirty, depending on what's going on with your fiber.

Maybe it's the way my brain works, but I did not find this volume very helpful.  It felt more like a teaser for a much more in-depth book.  The recipes in the back for various yarns are more dependent on color changes than anything, so if you don't feel like dying your fiber (or spending a fortune on pre-dyed fiber exactly like it) that portion is not very helpful either.

This would be a good book for a beginning spinner who maybe has their own drop spindle but is wondering whether to take the plunge and buy their own wheel.  In that sense, it gives you a good idea of whether you'd enjoy wheel spinning, and it does have a handy section on drop spindle spinning.

For a slightly advanced amateur, like myself, this was a disappointment.  I find it far from "complete".  Three out of five stars.