Hello and welcome to Woolmaven.com!
I am Kathy McCune a long time handspinning enthusiast from Ohio. We (my husband and I) are sheep farmers and I have Woolmaven.com and another site, FamilyFarmLivestock.com, to help folks get started with spinning or raising animals, in the case of the livestock site.
While I am fairly new to the internet, I have been spinning since I purchased a Louet DT S15 (the wheel I still use today) in the late 1990’s. I enjoy working with naturally colored wools, especially ones that are new to me, and blending dyed batts on my drum carder, which I love!
I believe that as handspinners grow in abilities and interests, we naturally expand our craft to work with new to us fibers or techniques and in the process look for guidance or suggestions to smooth the path, that’s what I’m hoping to provide here.
I am for the most part self taught, which has some good aspects and some not so good ones, like unnecessary struggles that I am hoping to save you from having by putting together this site!
My current interests in handspinning are getting more into dyeing, especially since I can use my drum carder (you’ll hear a lot about my drum carder on this site, it’s one of the best purchases I have made!), and working my way into finer wools.
I have tried fine wools in the past and it has been disasterville, but I gave it a shot recently and the Merino I purchased turned out well, so I’ll be going deeper into fine wool spinning and seeing what shakes out.
As far as the dyeing goes, I just love color and dyeing my own wool, along with using my drum carder, has opened up a world of color play for my handspinning.