Spinning – Page 7 – Hazel Purls

Slow but Sure

Progress on all my various projects has been slow. However, this weekend I grabbed my trusty Ashford Traditional spinning wheel and an assortment of other paraphernalia, and went spinning with a group of other crafty people in a local village hall.

It’s the first time I’ve done any spinning in three months!

I continued working on turning my sugarflair dyed Shetland tops into singles, then I started plying. I didn’t quite manage to finish plying the first two bobbins while I was at the group (I had the challenging task of getting the wheel and the lazy kate home with all the yarn still connected). However, in the evening I finished those bobbins off.

Today was the first decent day since the weekend, so I skeinned the yarn, washed it to set the twist and hung it on the line to dry. And while the sun thought about shining, I took some pictures.

My Shetland tops have progressed from these:

To the singles:

To the finished yarn (picture carefully cropped to hide the fact that I’ve spent even less time in the garden than I’ve spent spinning):

I have two more bobbins of singles to ply into a second skein. I’m hoping it’s not another three months before I sit at my wheel again!

Some current projects

A small update of some of the things that are currently on my wheels, spindles and needles.

A long time and spinning with my son

Well, it’s been over 2 months since I last posted an update here. The reason: I moved in August (as you know) and then moved again three months later. I’m just beginning to catch up with myself.

In the meantime I’ve continued with the spinning (everything’s currently work-in-progress) and started another knitting project Smile

Recently my son’s been showing more interest in spinning and knitting and so we’ve re-visited the summer fibre project and started spinning the Jacobs wool we dyed and carded. The other evening I plied it up on the spindle for him (Andean plying with a spindle makes more sense than with a wheel) and we started knitting it tonight.

Pictures are of my son spinning the single:

And of the plied yarn:

Changing my mind

The fibre I dyed a few days ago is now dry:

However, I’ve now decided that I would prefer to spin these on one of my wheels (perhaps at the next spinning group) and possibly use the resulting fibre to make something like: Semi-Precious. I haven’t decided yet whether to ply them together or use them individually.

So, I needed something else to spin on my new spindles:

These are also dyed with food dye. However, this time I’ve used only 1.5 oz of fibre for each so I can use these for smaller projects (perhaps fingerless gloves?).

My spindles have arrived and I’ve been using the heavier one (which is a 1oz spindle) and has a turquoise whorl:

I’m still getting the hang of using the spindle. Initially I found that it wobbled a bit – but that may just be user error because when I get it spinning properly it keeps going smoothly for a long time. However, I may just have to buy another spindle from one of the recommended uk makers to compare.

Spindles and Food Colour

I keep finding myself standing around and wanting something for my hands to do. I think that the solution to this may be to have another go at spindle spinning – so I’ve treated myself to a couple of fairly lightweight spindles.

Now I’m waiting for the spindles to arrive and wondering what I’m going to spin on them. So, last night I dyed up some Shetland tops using Sugarflair paste colours. These behave just like acid dyes on wool, but are safe for me to use in the kitchen with the cooking equipment (in our new house I don’t have room for my saucepans, bowls, jars and other utensils I usually use for dyeing). There are some lovely colours. I experimented last night with Dusty Pink, Claret and Grape Violet (the dusty pink and grape violet both split slightly – but that just adds some interesting variation to the colours).

I’m finding dyeing with the food colours much more fun than dyeing with proper acid dyes. I don’t need to take so many precautions about breathing in dust or making sure any spilt powder is thoroughly cleaned up before the children find it. The colours are in a gel form in the jar (so not so easy to spill) and can be removed with a cocktail stick. In fact – I got so stuck in last night that I forgot to take the precaution of wearing plastic gloves – and dyed my fingers a bright red (fortunately that’s mostly washed off now).

My braids of top cooled overnight and were rinsed this morning and are now drying over the bath:

Frothy Coffee

August

Well, the rest of the school summer holidays have gone past in a blur of packing and moving. The move is the result of a job change for my other half. Some of our belongings have gone into storage (including 2 of my wheels and the four shaft loom!) but most have made it to our new temporary home (including all of my wool stash – except raw fleece).

Once we were mostly settled (there are still boxes – but nothing urgent) I managed to try blending some different fibres on the drum carder.

I’ve not tried spinning anything other than wool – so this was a fun experiment. I had some soybean fibre to try – but it’s very fine and slippery – so I’ve blended it with moorit and black Shetland tops and a little bit of sparkle for good measure.

I found the soybean fibres very hard to control – they liked bunching up on the drum carder. However, repeatedly passing the batts through the carder helped to break up the clumps of fibre and the resulting batts look lovely (for some reason they remind me of frothy coffee!). I’ve been spinning these longdraw on my Dryad wheel. So far I have two bobbins of singles spun – which I plan to make into a 2-ply yarn. As yet I don’t have a plan for this yarn (perhaps a Mobius shawl?).

If it’s a nice day tomorrow I’ll take some pictures and publish them here.

Day 2 of the school holidays

Today I thought there was quiet and occupied playing in the lounge. Only when I heard “boing!” … “oops” did I discover that I was now short of one retractable tape measure:

My son and I have carded about half of the wool we dyed yesterday. So far we have three different coloured batts. My son also did a small amount of spinning on the spindle. So far he’s finding “spin, park and draft” to be a successful way to proceed.

I thoroughly enjoyed making the batts from the different coloured fibres we randomly dyed yesterday – so I think I’ll be using this method for my own projects in the future.

Additional details

The wheel has No. 4 written in a number of places (including under the table, under the treadle and on the tensioning device on the mother-of-all). Is this the 4th wheel the maker made?

There are also three letters that could be initials underneath the tensioning device on table of the wheel (the mother-of-all needs to be removed to see this):

Another wheel

Today I picked up my latest acquisition. It’s a Dryad wheel. It has a 26inch diameter drive wheel and is double drive. The previous owner used this wheel to spin enough thread to weave 10.5 metres of suiting fabric! It was also apparently on TV with its former owner and therefore had its original Dryad label removed.

Here’s a picture of the new wheel next to my Haldane. (The Haldane is sulking – when I picked it up to move it ALL its legs fell off!)

Close-ups of the mother of all, flyer and back maiden:

Treadle:

Pegs and wedges for the wheel (including marks on each one so that the correct wedge is replaced in the right slot:

The edge of the wheel (showing the joint) and the hub of the wheel:

I’ve given the wheel a quick clean and oil in key parts and spun a little bit of yarn to try it out. My only problem was finding an orifice hook small enough to thread through the orifice (all my other hooks are for the Ashford Traditional and are much too big). My DH has fashioned me a temporary one from a paper clip (though even the paper clip was too big and a new hook had to be formed!)

My next job is to give her a thorough clean and polish and then I’m looking forward to doing some serious spinning on her. In the meantime I need to find her a space to live in my house…