Sunday, June 05, 2011

Spinning world goes round and round...

Not too long ego, I decided I wanted to graduate from a drop spindle to a spinning wheel.

I was on Craigslist and found a walking wheel for only $15 dollars! Of COURSE I had to get it.

Unfortunately, there was no spindle, it needs some leather replaced and I decided I REALLY wanted a treadle.

I mentioned this on Facebook and ... SURPRISE... someone has just what I wanted for sale.  So now I have two!


I played around a little and then a friend wanted some silk spun up.  1/2 pound of silk later...


The picture shows about 1/4 of the total yield.  This is a little heavier than lace weight.  It really was  a joy to spin. 
I used tinker toys to make a niddy-noddy. It is kind of cool, since you can spin it to put tension on the yarn.  I steamed it and then let it dry under tension to se the twist.  .

Once set, the hank (1 of 4) was ready to send off to its new home  :)

After that was done, I started spinning up some of wool I had.  It is absolutely lovely.  I do not want to spin up too much until I have a client who wants it or a project in mind.





I then picked up some (non-white) alpaca roving at a local store.





The color on the bottom one did not come out true. It is a lovely grey mix.  The dark chocolate is pretty true.  I started spinning that up into some light lace weight (about 20 wpi), some of which I plied up to make some ply to do some glittens. 
  

Single strand

Double ply.  Color (again) not very true.