Spinning Lessons

There are a few things that make Chicago better than Maui. One of them is that we are not too far away from a wonderful resource for spinners: Toni Neil's The Fold in Marengo. I first encountered The Fold when I went to the Stephenson County fiber festival with Bonne Marie a long time ago. At the time, I had no real interest in spinning, but Toni carries plenty of wonderful yarn and accessories for the intrepid knitter willing to venture west and north of Chicago. In particular, she stocks Blue Moon products, which I think are some of the lovliest hand dyed colorways out there.

But I digress.

On Saturday, Julie and I packed our wheels in the back of my car and headed up to Marengo to take a spinning lesson from Toni. Just like the last time we were there, we had a wonderful time. Toni is a great person and she makes you feel warm and welcome in her shop. She's always happy to stop and explain something about a particular fiber, and she's more than willing to let you have a little bit of fiber to try out one of the beautiful spindles she stocks. It's pretty easy to get yourself in trouble there.

Goodies from the Fold: (from left to right) Blue Moon Merino/Tencel roving in "Azurite", Blue Moon Alpaca/Blue Face Leicester roving in "Olive Garden", "Sunset" spindle (composed of box elder and walnut) by Steven Kundert, some miscellaneous spinning supplies and the new Knitscape magazine

There was a little bit more, but since it's going off to someone else's home, I'll refrain from posting about it so that it can stay a secret.

That Kundert spindle is not only beautiful, it spins well, too. I wanted another light weight spindle in my collection and this one weighs in at just an ounce, which was exactly what I wanted. Apparently the red coloration in the box elder whorl is due to a bacterial infection in the wood. Paired with the black walnut, it's nothing short of stunning. The shaft is also walnut and the whole spindle feels lovely to the touch. If it wasn't for the real reason we went out to the Fold, I'd already be spinning on it.

Enter Priscilla*.

Beautiful Box Elder Whorl

You may remember a previous entry in which I introduced Priscilla. She's a wheel with some happy good karma, but even though she's somewhere between 25 and 30 years old she's never (to my knowledge) spun actual yarn before. She had no drive band or appropriate fittings for the Scotch tensioning. She was missing a few of the hooks on her flier, and the ones she did have were a little rusty. She squeaked when the wheel turned and she was missing the connection between the treadle and the piece that pushes the wheel. All and all, she was a wheel who needed a little bit of help getting to her maiden voyage. I was actually a little worried that she might have some unsolvable problems. But it took less than 15 minutes for Toni to explain the basics of wheel mechanics and needs and to get her back up and running.

Missing drive band? No problem when you've got a stock of house hold twine.

Missing treadle connection? No problem when that little leather piece was sent ahead of time for me to install.

Squeaky wheel? Nothing a little oil can't fix.

Broken hook and missing spring for the tensioning? More twine and a spare spring and some plastic line to the rescue.

Missing Flier Hooks? Eh? You can spin with out them, the bobbin just won't be as pretty.

The result? Voila Priscilla!

Priscilla the Ashford Traditional Gets a New Lease on Life

You might notice that there looks like there is a little bit of something white on Priscilla's bobbin. That would be a little bit of Blue Faced Leicester single (before we got started, Toni asked us what we were comfortable spinning, and then grabbed an ounce or two of BFL top for each of us -- not a bad way to start) that I actually spun. Can you believe it? I expected that this would be a while in coming, but the wheel and I got along pretty wheel for our first time out.

My First Wheel Spun Yarn

I give Toni a lot of credit for making it happen. She's a very calm relaxed teacher and she creates a wonderful learning environment. No question is dumb and you never feel like you're going to be scolded for "doing it wrong". Her motto all afternoon "if you get yarn, you must be doing it right". While she helped Julie out with some of the basics of her Ashford Joy, I just spent time treadling and getting comfortable with the pace my wheel likes to run at. I must be meant to start out on a single treadle wheel, because I had a lot easier time of treadling than I did when I tried out Julie's Joy. After I treadled for a while, I attached some top and just started to spin. It took me a little while to get the rhythm down between my hands and my foot, but suddenly I was making yarn.

Even I could hardly believe it. It took me a couple of weeks to get to the point where I could make my drop spindle really go. But here I was half an hour after getting set up making something that looked a hundred times better than my first spindle efforts or even my second, third, fourth or fifth spindle efforts did. That was about the coolest thing ever.

So now I'm all set to get some serious spinning under way. I'm going to practice a bit with some of the fiber I have laying around before I start on any of the special stuff I've acquired. And next time I go out to the Fold, you can bet there will be much testing of wheel's that have an itch to travel.

*Apologies to my mom, the wheel's real owner, for giving her a name without consultation. But hey, wheel restoration has it's priviledges. And I think a happy wheel needs a name.