Today I give you the Hands-on five-day challenge! If you accept the challenge you will be able to explore the roles of your hands in spinning by switching them. You will give yourself the opportunity to explore and get a deeper understanding of both your hands as spinning hand and as fiber hand.
Enroll in the free Hands-on five-day challenge here
In last week’s blog post I switched hands in wheel spinning and spent a lot of time reflecting over the roles of the hands as spinning hands and fiber hands and what happened when I switched. I needed to switch due to a sore thumb in this case. But in all my spindle spinning classes I encourage my students to switch hands for reasons of ergonomics. Either way, switching hands made me reflect and look at my hand roles in a new light. It also gave me a new understanding of what they actually do and potentially can do.
A spark
I was quite caught up in this switching hands adventure. To get an understanding of other spinners’ experiences I wrote a short post in a spinning forum about my new adventure and asked if the members switch hands in their spinning. I got a lot of interesting responses – some did switch regularly, some found it scary but wanted to try and some dismissed the idea. It was one response in particular though, that caught my interest and sparked this whole challenge. J replied and wrote about how she switched. She ended her reply with: “Great challenge!”. And then I realized that I should indeed turn it into a challenge. So I did.
Many of you, over 700 people, have taken my previous challenge, Fleece through the senses and there are over 1000 (!) comments in the challenge. This collection of comments, reflections and insights is so valuable. To me as a course creator and spinning teacher, but especially for us all as spinners and spinning students. There are so many things we can learn from each other!
Hands-on five-day challenge
So, this is how it works: This is a practical challenge where you will get five text lessons over five days. Each lessons has a theme where I encourage you to explore the roles of your hands by switching them. In each lesson you will also get a practice to work with. The challenge is in written English but if you feel more comfortable writing your comments in another language you are welcome to do so.
The purpose of the course is for you to explore the roles of the hands in spinning. The goal is to to get a deeper understanding of both your hands as spinning hand and fiber hand.
Each day of the challenge the lesson will be available at the course page at midnight UTC. If you enroll in the course after that you will get access to the lesson the next day. 15 hours after the lesson has become available you will get an email about it. You are free to work with the lesson whenever you like and for as long as you like.
You can take this challenge at any spinning level. It might even be more challenging for an experienced spinner than for a beginner. To take part in the challenge you will need a spinning tool of your choice – spindles, spinning wheel or e-spinner – and prepared fiber anyway you like it. If you work with spindles it may be a good idea to work with two spindles of the same kind. You will need around 15–30 minutes a day to work with it. You also need pen and paper to take notes of your findings.
A student teacher
This challenge came about through my own learning process as a spinning student. Throughout the challenge I give examples of how I have practiced and learned from my hand switching experiments.
I made a preview release this week for my patrons. One of the first patrons to accept and enroll in the challenge was a bit hesitant to be the first to comment on Day 1 of the challenge, but she did after a while. When she wrote her comment I realized that she was totally right and I enrolled in the challenge myself and added my reflections in the comments. Thank you G for pointing this out to me. You will not be the first to comment now!
Thank you J for lighting the spark for the Hands-on challenge!
Happy switching!
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