Spinning: October 2005 Archives
This wonderful fibery blob is one of my favorite purchases from MS&W -- half a pound of wonderfully hand-dyed fiber from Spinner's Hill. It was love at first touch when I encountered this bag of fluff. In fact, I felt almost drawn to it. It's as if I cound divine the silk content blended with my favorite color.
While it would be possible to work with this on a spindle, methinks it would take quite some time. Now that I have a wheel at my disposal, it seemed like a good time to pull it out and think about what I want it to become. And I realized something that I hadn't thought about before. What do I need to do with this to get it into manageable pieces for spinning? Do I just rip pieces off and start into it? Should I card it or comb it? Is there some magic that needs to be worked with this proto-yarn to prepare it for spinning? I just don't know. Up to this point, I've only spun from the fairly highly prepared stuff.
Anyone out there care to point me in the right direction? I'm sure that if I keep reading Alden Amos, I will get to the answer, but it's a long book, and I'm still working through the section on how humidity affects fiber...
I might not have been at Rhinebeck, but a very kind and enabling friend helped me increase my "flock" of spindles. Julie bought a Golding ring spindle at MS&W, and has said nothing but wonderful things about hers. Even though I am beginning to bond with my wheel, I still get a lot of pleasure out of working with my drop spindles. I like the rhythm of spinning on a drop spindle and they are just a tad more portable than most wheels. For me, there's also something special about having a beautiful took in my hands.
A little gift sheep from Julie is helping out with the display of my new toy. The butterfly in this spindle is handcarved out of cherry and the shaft is walnut. The whorl is 2-3/4" and the whole spindle weighs about 1.3 oz -- which is a wonderful weight range for me because I like to spin fairly fine singles.. According to Carolyn, who volunteered to bring it back to Chicago, and handed it off to me today, it got some test spinning by both Claudia and Leigh -- which I am certain will give it some happy spinning vibes to start out with.
I'm quite taken by this little butterfly. Simple and lovely but not completely perfect -- exactly what a handcarved item should be. The cherry and walnut and brass complement each other well. It's the sort of thing that I keep picking up to touch and inspect. A clear sign that I need to get some wool on this thing and see how this baby spins for myself.
Today is a two-fer in my blog world. I've also updated the book blog with a review of Lucy Neatby's "Cool Socks, Warm Feet, if you're interested in my thoughts about that book
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.
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*.
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!
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.
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.
