Since I bought my Ashford Joy 2 spinning wheel, I’ve already made several yarns with it. I just love the compact look of the wheel, the double pedals and the ease of spinning with well working modern wheel. It’s also lightweight, so it’s easy to grab along and take the spinning outside of the house.

I happened to find the Joy 2 cheaply via Ravelry spinning group, with many bobbins and the carrybag, so I didn’t have to pay a fortune to get it.

First yarn which I actually finished, was spun from Tale & Tendrils Elbereth, 100% merino wool. Merino felt quite different from the finn lamb, which was my “testfiber” in my first spinning attempts. In a way, it felt stickier and harder to draw, but once I got hang of it, it actually was really nice to spin.

The result was still lumpy, uneven yarn, with too tight spin, so if you try to knit or crochet with it, the result is really stiff. But anyway, you had to start somewhere, right?

I’ve bought most of the wool I’ve spun from Nunoco‘s Etsy store. When I first came across to their store, thanks to fellow spinners in Finnish group, I fell in love with the beautiful colors of the fibers.

So from first Nunoco fiber order, I was able to spin a bit better yarn already. I wanted to make gradient yarn, without knowing how to actually do that. So I just spun 2 singles with all the colors split in parts and then plied those together. Looks more like fractal spun, but I loved the yarn immediately, and it will be a cowl when I have time to knit from it!

Second one turned out even better, you could see that learning had payed off and the yarn was already thinner. I spun all colors after each other and tried new plying technique, Navajo-ply, to get the colors in their own segments.

I have many projects going on at the same time, so while I spin with my Joy, I also spin with spindles. I actually was able to finish a yarn for my boyfriends daughters socks, which was made of cotton candy colored finnwool I dyed myself!

Also, from this yarn, I’ve knit for the first time from yarn I spun myself, and boy I feel proud! It’s so soft to knit, I hope the little girl will love her socks when they are finished, since of course, I spun too little of the yarn, so I gotta spin some more before getting both of the socks done.