Spinner Spotlight! Larraine Childress

How do YOU spin TWF?! We know that our customers are some of the most talented and inspiring spinners around and so we've invited them to show off their talents with a braid of our fiber - from start to finish - right here in our Instagram feed!! Introducing @lschildress !! ENJOY!!

I'm Larraine Childress and I live in Eagle River, Alaska. Spinning is an essential thing for me to do and being retired gives me plenty of opportunity to sit at my wheel. My interest in handspun yarn began in 2008. It was in the stars that a WA knitting group I had recently joined had several lovely spinners (enablers!). I've had the pleasure of taking several wonderful classes taught by Judith McKenzie.
Spring won't appear in the Land of the Midnight Sun for awhile yet and I'm in desperate need of some 'green'. This is Green Memory on Finn.

I'm not a big fan of high twist yarns. I usually spin and ply with the lowest ratio on the regular head for my wheel. Most often I use a short backward draw. This braid was split in half across the middle; those two sections were also split in half and I flipped the green sections. Then I alternated spinning the nests for each bobbin. A loaded-with-color, squishy 2-ply barberpole.

This is Elsie. We have been spinning together for about nine years and I'm still learning what she can do! She is a Lendrum double treadle folding wheel. I have the "complete" wheel which included a jumbo plying head and fast flyer along with the regular head. She was the 4th wheel I tried and she was the perfect fit! It was important to me that my first wheel be lightweight (14 lbs) and portable. Although I had a bag made for her, she easily accommodates a seat belt and usually rides shotgun.

This is definitely going on my needles for a Spring time cowl! Approximately 262 yards, 10 wpi.

I want people to know how much I LOVE spinning TWF! So much so that I went back and did some research on Etsy. My first TWF fiber purchase was in 2010, African Sunset on BFL and Black Hollyhocks BFL. (I can't bring myself to spin it yet). Maybe I'm waiting for it to tell me what it wants to be?