Spinning Wool

One evening on our way home from work, Nicole and I spent some time at the grandmother’s house before heading up to our house. She had her wool out and was spinning it into yarn by hand. It is quite a feat!

Lirja (making yarn like it’s nothing)
& Xhaxhi (not paying attention like it’s nothing special)

I had tried it once before. And had failed miserably. She offered me another chance at it. I took it. I failed. Again. She and Xhaxhi had a good laugh about it though. And they weren’t the only ones.

She called out to everyone who walked by on the road, “Look the girls are learning how to make yarn.” So everyone else who walked by in the road stopped to watch or at the very least kept walking with a big grin on their face. I’m sure we were the talk of the town that night.

I am totally confused & trying to figure out
how Lirja made something so hard look so easy.

Let me try to explain how you make wool into yarn. The wool sits on a two pronged stick. You hold that between your legs. Then with one hand you rub part of the wool between two fingers. It begins to stick together and becomes yarn.

However, in your other hand, you hold another smaller stick that the newly formed yarn wraps around. You don’t just hold it, you have to twirl it so that it continues to wrap around it. So both of your hands are working the whole time. I could never get it to work for me.

I am thankful for Lirja’s help

Lirja tried to help but I was a hopeless cause. So I gave up. Then she gave me a sweater than her daughter-in-law was knitting to see if I remembered how to knit. (Her daughter had taught me last year.) So I knitted to show her that I remembered and she could hardly believe it!

Lirja & I working together

So I knitted half a row on the sweater with the wool that Lirja had made earlier. It takes about a day for her to spin the whole thing. It would take me a lifetime.

Klesti came to join in on the fun while Lirja looks at my handiwork
(I think she knows it’s wrong while I’m totally clueless)

I kept knitting for about ten minutes and was quite pleased with myself before Lirja’s daughter-in-law came and told me I was doing it wrong. I was knitting a sock pattern not a sweater pattern! Obobo. So I ended up getting another knitting lesson.