A tale of two skeins

Remember my CD drop spindling on my holidays, well this is the second half of the 100gms of First Editions tops.



I then plied both with some soft beautiful light blue reeled silk that I had in my stash. (Don't know how it got there, I'm not really a light blue person, but how can you doubt the wisdom of the stash and the choice of the perfect colour?)

These are the resulting skeins:







Now I don't know if you can tell but they're differents.

The one on the right is the holiday skein. It's beautiful with a slight wrapping to ensure the tops are highlighted. I love this skein.

The other is the home skein. It's finer - I was trying for the same, it's pulled apart in several places and whilst, on it's own is a lovely skein, I can't sell it.

I can't in all honesty sell a skein the knitter is going to have to manage. I'll knit it up and where it's week, I'll rejoin and generally work around. This is definitely NOT what people expect when they purchase handspun wool.


But what is the difference? Spinning on holiday, Spinning at home in front of the television. And maybe I've answered my own question - relax and concentrate!

Happy spinning!

CD Spinning

I've been spinning on my CD spindle while I was away in Sydney.

Tomorrow is the 9"x5" Quality Makers Market, about to be renamed to the Ivanhoe Makers Market, and I'll be there spinning the rest of this top from First editions that I bought on my way to Harrietville this year.

Last month was my Autumn sale and proved to be reasonably successful. We're currently trying ways to improve the market and get more stallholders and attract more visitors.

Come and see us!

PS Don't you just love a photograph on a glass table?

Another fibre sandwich

For the second year in a row, the HWSG weekend in Harrietville had a group fibre sandwich. The originator of this wonderful weekend long build was unable to be there, but in her honour one was built and she will be receiving her bundle.

This was the pile that was created and duly split up into about 60 bundles.

This was mine.

As it is the school holidays we've decided to have a holiday with the boys, so I'm closing down all activities, blog, shop, etc.

However, it isn't a holiday without something to do. Even I'm not that good.

I decided that I would card the fibre sandwich and spin it on my new CD drop spindle. This sounds slow and relaxed to me.

I carded the lot in one go, which is rather more than you 'should'. So the bits that were left over were carded, separately and just laid on top. I'm going to split it up across and create a rolag rather than spin it in a worsted way. Should be fun. I'll probably ply it with purple again, when I get back.

There are a few holiday projects packed away, but more of that when I'm back.

I do however, promise to sketch......

CD Spindles

Last Saturday at Experimental Spinning, we played around a bit more with drop spindling. One of the ideas was to make our own.

Spin-off magazine and a quick search on the net revealed an array of different 'home-made' drop spindles. CD spindles had already been mentioned and these proved both popular and successful.

Once we found that the grommets mentioned were wiring grommets (thanks to ztwist for her intrepid research) and were easily available at my local hardware (Danahers, Mitre 10) it was a quick and easy job to construct the CD.

Here are the ingredients: 1 or 2 CDs, depending on the weight you might like, a 1/2 inch wiring grommet, a 10mm, 12in long piece of dowel and a cup hook.

They were very quickly put together:

1. Grommet inserted into CD

2. Dowel inserted into CD

3. Cup hook could be screwed in by hand, as the dowel wood was soft.

This could be prettied up with all sorts of colour or whittling or anything that takes your fancy...I haven't even sanded mine yet!

The great surprise is that it spins very well. It's an ideal vehicle for teaching and I'll be getting my beginning spinning students to make one in their last class and we'll practice.

Thanks to moorecat for the 'Park and Draft' method of teaching spinning, as it was quite successful. This allows you to spin in two separate actions:

1. Hold on to a close spot on your fibre, give a spin and build up the twist.

2. Park the drop spindle between your knees and then draft out the fibre.

3. Wind on and repeat.

Eventually, it is very easy to combine the two actions and become continuous.

References: Spin-off, Spring 1999