Drop Spindling for fun

I know have my favourite take along project in its own little carry all.

Remember this bag I created for the Woolybutt summer challenge. It's just perfect to contain my drop spindle and current bit of beautiful fibre.

The drop spindle is just fun and I love this beautiful dyed tussah silk top from Fibreworks.

The spindle is made from Banksia and I bought it at the Australian Sheep and Wool show in Bendigo. It spins just nicely.

You can see how much I've done! Yes, sadly, yesterday at Rose St. was not very successful. In fact it was a very dispiriting day. It was a quiet day overall, however, the two other textile stalls went along OK, I just seemed to be very uninteresting with few lookers, much less purchasers. Unfortunately, it happens. That's the life in a market and I have to respond by looking at what I had and where it can be improved.

Let's see, not enough variety in the neckwarmers and I suspect all the 'fashionable black' wearers were not interested in dots of bright colour, so more 'subtle' colours are required. Not enough fingerless mittens and I suspect the lovely young ones who did stop by are a bit more price sensitive, so some more of my new design, the lace up fingerless mitten. And more shawls! I really made these for the summer, but they seem generally popular.

So there's my to do list for the next to weeks, when I try again at the Craft Victoria's Craft Hatch in the city library.

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