Spinning – Page 6 – Hazel Purls

Sparrow Wings

I’m lucky with the spinning; if I finish a yarn I don’t want to use, then I know plenty of people the yarn can be passed onto.

When I finished my BFL I knew that I didn’t want to make anything for me with it. The yarn was lovely and everyone else loved the colour. So I gave it my mum. In no time at all she’d knitted a mini-wingspan with it:

She cast-on half the number of stitches specified in the pattern and worked until the yarn had almost run out. She then worked an i-cord cast-off on the neck-edge of the resulting shawlette.

We love the way the pattern shows off the subtle colour variations in the yarn.

Spindle spun Blue-Faced Leicester

Firstly a quick update. In my last post I mentioned that my phone was languishing in a bag of rice. I don’t know if it made a difference, but my phone survived. Hurray! Here’s the stash:

Now, onto the Blue-faced-Leicester. I dyed the tops at the start of this year. You can see me starting to spin it in January. So, after months and months of spindle spinning (not constant spinning, only occasional spinning) I’ve plied together two spindles worth and have a lovely skein of yarn.

The singles:

I made a box lazy-kate. It’s “designed” to take the spindle or knitting needles (I slid the first spun cob onto a knitting needle). The spindle occasionally fell out as the cob was unwound, but the knitting needle worked brilliantly. I’m keeping my free lazy-kate for future plying projects.

I plied over a couple of evenings on my Dryad wheel. The second cob had a lot more yarn (by length, not necessarily by weight) so I finished off by Andean plying (I didn’t get into too much of a tangle and at one point discovered that the bed-knob at the bottom of the bed was a great holder for the resulting bracelets of yarn).

Sadly, it’s November. It gets vaguely lighter at about 8am and is dark again by about 4pm. The last few days have been ones where the lights have stayed on all day in the house. Even at noon. So in the end I bowed to the inevitable, and photographed the final skein in the warm glow of artificial light:

I may be a little quiet for a week or two – as paid work will take priority. If I do post tell me to stop procrastinating and get on with my proper job Smile . I’ll be back soon…

A new wheel

Today my new wheel arrived and was promptly whisked out to a craft group meet-up. I took her to bits, gave her a polish, put her back together again and put on a new drive band.

I then wondered what to spin on her.

I fished out of my stash some white, grey and “black” Shetland tops took a length of each and thought about a marled yarn. Then Secret Spinner walked past and said that she was planning a gradient yarn with her Shetland. What could I do? I decided on a quick spin of a small amount of gradient yarn.

I put the tops into groups working from white to black. For the transitions between white and grey, then grey and black I held the two adjacent tops together and drafted them together. This produced a marled rather than carefully blended single. If I was going to do this on a larger project I would go to the effort of blending the transition colours together before spinning.

This evening, once I’d got the wheel set up at home, I checked the assembly instructions (they can be found on Ravelry). I discovered that there are two bobbins for spinning singles and one bobbin for plying! I checked my bobbins and found that two have a whorl that is slightly larger than the remaining bobbin’s whorl, so assumed that the odd-one-out is the plying bobbin.

I’m planning on Navaho plying my blue BFL. But I don’t want to learn on that project. So this gradient spun Shetland was the ideal candidate for practicing on. I got in a tangle a few times (I think leaving the singles to set for a day or two would make things much easier). However, I ended up with a beautifully balanced skein:

It’s now soaking to set the twist. What shall I knit? A winter hat, a beret, a small scarf or a Mobius cowl? It’s not a huge skein, but I should be able to get something useful from it.

As for my new wheel? She is a delight to spin on. I’m about to upgrade the flyer on my Traditional to a lace flyer, so the Haldane Lewis will fill that gap and provide me with a lovely wheel for spinning 4-ply to DK thickness yarn.

Repairing the Haldane Hebridean

My Haldane has had a rough time of it recently. She was a working wheel, but when in the kitchen the front bearing went missing (this is a piece of leather that slots into the front maiden on the Mother of All). While the bearing was missing the flyer was placed on a shelf. I thought it was safe there until the day something was grabbed off the shelf and the flyer was knocked onto the hard tiled floor. Even as it hit I knew something was wrong. The flyer arm was broken.

This happened quite a while ago and I’ve been feeling very guilty about it.

Anyway, last weekend the central heating was serviced and the leather bearing was recovered! A slightly warm but otherwise unharmed part!

This gave me the impetus to look at the broken flyer. I decided that the best approach was to glue it back together. I didn’t want to use PVA (which I usually use for gluing wood) as it would need clamping and the flyer is a really odd shape for clamping. I was also gluing wood to metal as well as wood to wood, as the flyer arm had broken near the middle of the flyer revealing the spindle that runs through the centre. In the end I chose an epoxy resin glue. I lightly sanded and cleaned up the areas to be glued; mixed up the epoxy resin and glued the part together. It didn’t take long at all and this morning I was able to test it out.

I’m pleased to say that she works! Now all she needs is a dust and polish.

What a week!

It’s been just over a week since I last posted – and boy I’ve been busy!!!

On Saturday I went to the local spinning group and chatted and spun until I completely lost track of time.

On Tuesday evening I decided to fix my 60’s Ashford Traditional wheel – as the hub had come apart again. I took it apart and cleaned up the inside of the hub ready for gluing:

I then discovered that I didn’t have any clamps to hold the hub while it glued.

On Wednesday I went out and bought the clamps and a few other tools. I also got some brass tubing I’m going to try as bushes in the bobbins of a different wheel.

And then instead of fixing the wheel – I started a new group on Ravelry (Ashford UK Spinners). That kept me really busy for the rest of the week. I’ve now produced art work (well a banner and an icon for the group):

I’ve read hundreds of messages, replied to lots, posted lots of others and got a team of moderators all ready to start. I’m really hoping we can make this a thriving forum (and that I don’t post too often!)

Anyway, last night I returned to the broken hub. It didn’t take long to glue it together and add the clamps. I put the hub spindle back through the hole to ensure that the two sides lined up correctly, but removed it once the clamps had been fixed:

I propped the wheel up between two chairs overnight:

This morning I put the wheel back onto the legs (the hardest part of this was lining up the hole in the hub spindle and getting the hub pin to go through it). And this evening I’ve given the wheel a polish, connected the treadle, re-found the jumbo flyer and added a drive band. I’m not sure why she’s now stood on the table:

So, a very busy week indeed!

Spinning in Public

Tomorrow in WWSIP day. That’s world wide spin in public day. One day I’ll actually manage to do some public spinning on that day! As I said in my last post, I did some public spinning last weekend. I took my traddy and the blue BFL along and sat spinning in a field in the wind and sun with my friends. I was a lightweight and only did a couple of hours. My friends went for the whole day and even set out a table with some of their dyeing and spinning.

Tomorrow is also the day my craft group meet up. Guess what I’m taking? That’s right – the blue BFL. The next thing I spin is going to be long draw. It’s much, much quicker.

I think I’ve decided on the Navaho plying technique. And depending on how long and the thickness of the final yarn I may make something like gloves (although they’ll be co-ordinated gloves, rather than an identical pair)!

I should go and get my stuff organised for tomorrow then. Smile

Lovely time spinning

Today I had a lovely time spinning at my local craft group. I took my wheel, spindles and my weaving but in the end I sat down and started to spin up the newly dyed blue BFL tops.

I’m spinning this short backward draw (fairly worsted style but I’m not being too precise about this). I’ve not split the top lengthways and I’ve tried to minimise the amount of pre-drafting I do. I’m hoping that this keeps the colours clear and elongates the area of each shade.

Of course I was reminded how slow worsted style spinning is compared with long draw when I got home and photographed progress. Still my back is much happier for the better spinning position Smile

The colour shift is really nice – so do I spin two singles and make a two ply (good for lace – if my spinning is even enough!) but that’ll have lots of barber pole effects when the light and dark blue mix or Navaho ply to make a three ply that’ll retain the colour shifts, but make them shorter? Decisions, decisions! For the moment I’ll keep my options open and spin two bobbins of singles.

Test-driving my new spindle

Yes that is the blue Shetland tops I dyed months ago.

Saint Swithin’s Day

Today we went shopping in a field.

Nevermind! We still had fun at Fibre-East.

It was lovely seeing my friends’ stalls in particular Secret Spinner and FibreTastic at Spindependance and CamiKnitter at Outward Images.

There was sheep shearing (AKA child entertainment).

My daughter’s knitted dress was admired. I was asked for the pattern and got the details wrong! I said it was “Crazy Waves”. It’s actually the “Crazy Wavy Toddler Dress” from “Sock Yarn One Skein Wonders”. Here’s my daughter wearing it about a year ago:

I didn’t quite follow the instructions when making it – I decided I didn’t fancy picking up 128 stitches on one side of the waistband and 160 odd on the other! Therefore started by casting on 128 stitches and working 1 row 1×1 rib and 1 row knit for a few rows to give the waist band.

I bought a weaving book that I thought was out of print (I always manage to find a gem on the P&M woolcraft stand!) and a beautiful rim weighted IST spindle (it spins forever!) My son was shown how to ply on a beautiful Turkish spindle. However, he was bought a peg loom and as it’s only a week until the school holidays… I can see peg loom bags and scarfs being this year’s summer holiday projects!

As for St Swithin’s Day? Well I’m pretty sure it’s rained for the last 40 days (at least). It’s now gone 11pm and so far I don’t think we’ve had a drop…

Finishing yarn

Saturday was spent in good creative company, where I treadled and counted and plied up all of this:

The orange is spindle spun and is noticeably finer than the pink and purple which was spun longdraw on my Ashford traditional. These yarns were from Shetland tops dyed by me using food colour.

I love the transformation process from fibre to finished yarn. My singles had been sitting for a long time before being plied, which meant that the twist had “set”. This means that the singles were not too active (uncontrollably twisty) when plying. However, if you want to test the freshly plied yarn is balanced, then it’ll kink back on itself even if it’s perfect!

The trick is to either make a sample at the time of spinning the singles, or take a length of the set singles, fold it back, tie a knot then soak the sample in water to reset the twist. Usually, however, I’m afraid I just look at the plying and guess. If I’ve guessed incorrectly, I can always put the yarn through the wheel again, either adding or subtracting twist as necessary.

After winding the yarn into skeins and adding ties, the skeins scrunched up into an uncontrollable mess! Fear not. A soak in cool water to thoroughly wet the yarn, remove from the water and squeeze out the excess, and there you have it – a beautifully balanced skein (or three)!

For my fellow crafters, who saw my innovative Lazy Kate from knitting needles, for the spindle cobs: In future I will be adding a wrap of paper round the spindle before I start spinning. This will aid the sliding of yarn from the spindle to the knitting needle and prevent the catching of yarn on the wrong side of the needle which does make unwinding the wraps near the centre more tricky!