Busy week and more crapy pics!

Another busy week/weekend down and very little knitting/spinning done. Again, sorry for bad photos, I've still not managed to get my camera working properly with indoor shots. I've only managed to finish 1 of the fingerless gloves, Fetching from the Knitty Summer 2006 issue for my friend Cathy in Tulsa. Her favorite color is blue so I found some very soft and snuggly Dream in Color Classic wool #480 at the local yarn store. They are a bit tight on my hands but I have fat hands and Cathy has skinny hands so I'm sure they will fit just fine on her. If not, she can wash them down a bit in hot water to adjust the size for a better fitting.
here's a picture of the yarn before use, it shows the color the best I could get it.
Not much done on spinning other than I spent a little time trying out the different size bobbins I have. Since my wheel is an Irish tension, the ratio of the wheel is determined by what bobbin I put on. If I want more twist in the fiber as it spins up on to the bobbin, I use the bobbin with the smaller end. In the next photo with the poorly drawn arrow, you can see (try squinting, it may help) the round end with a groove. That groove is where the drive band goes to spin the bobbin, so if the round end is small you have a faster, higher ratio for the twist per inch in your fiber. That round end is basically the only way I can tell what ratio I'm using on this wheel (at this current time, I only have two ratios to choose from) so I can do basically a sport to chunky weight range at this time.
The one good thing about this wheel is that since it is made of PVC pipes, it can be modified easily (with help from my father and his tools) to suit my needs. I've already been gathering materials to build my own tension lazy kate for plying purposes and creating a new flyer unit with Scotch tension in order to get more ratios available to me.

I spent the last of the weekend gathering all of my fiber and getting it ready for whenever I do get around to spinning it all up. Predrafting on the fiber always took the most time on the drop spindle for me because I found it easier to work with and I kept a rhythm of spinning going on when I didn't have to do so much to the fiber. Not so on the wheel. I still need to get all the fiber down to the size I will use but instead of taking it down further, I can leave it in a larger mass and still manage to work with it. I still have 3 more bags of fiber to sort out but as you can see from the picture below I have plenty of fibers to start on. I should finish up with the white practice fiber first but I honestly can't wait to spin up something other than white. Although the fiber is just plain white, it is rather a soft wool and I will have to purchase some more of it when I get to dying fibers when it warms up outside.

Yarn barf

I got my new spinning wheel last Monday night and I finally got to sit down for more than 5 minutes to actually try to learn how to make yarn. 45 minutes later and this is what I had. A small pile of over twisted, broken yarn barf.


Sorry about the pictures being terrible, I should rename the blog "Jennifer's blog of bad knitting photos and piles of wasted fiber on office floor".

The spinning has been slowly going. I got the wheel last Monday night and I finally got to sit down with it late Sunday night. My 1st session was about 45 minutes and I was learning how to spin. I was also learning on how quickly the wheel can yank the yarn right out of your hands. I was mastering that last part quite well by the end of the night. At the end of the 1st session I could tell that 1) I had way too much twist in the fiber and 2) I was doing what's called the "Inch worm" style of drafting. Basically I had a long piece of fiber and was only pulling about an inch out at a time while the wheel was spinning. The little booklet that came with the spinning wheel suggested using the spinning from the fold. Instead of long piece of fiber, you have short piece of fiber and you draft out from the middle instead of the end. I tried that technique the next night and my results were about the same, too much twist and still having the fiber ripped out of my hands. Even though I call (well I must give credit to Carey for the name) my first attempt yarn barf, I did notice one thing I am proud of and that is that the newly fiber was the same thickness throughout. It wasn't as thin as I wanted to get it (that will just take some time) and even though I was getting much better on the drop spindle, I still had thick/thin spots throughout the yarn.

I have managed to complete two baby hats , 1 bootie (with the other on it's way to getting done) and hopefully I hope to have the last baby hat done before Saturday. The K-State newborn hat is a Basic Newborn hat by Jennifer Jackson done in Classic Elite cotton/alpaca yarn. The second K-State toddler hat is a child size Thorpe hat by Kirsten Kapur, which was very simple to do and I may have to make on for myself. The third hat is kind of a joke for the expecting mother. My cousin is having a baby boy and the kid is basically coming into a family of hunting enthusiasts. So I found the brightest, neon orange yarn I could find so the new baby can fit in with the rest of the Harding men. The pattern is actually pretty cute, just a basic ribbed hat and will look cute even in the bright orange. Pictures to come later, I'm still hoping for a good, non-blurry one later tonight.

It's Here!!!

Finally, my new wheel arrived yesterday! After a busy day at work and an evening at Chuck E. Cheese, we arrived at home around 8:30 to find a big box on the front porch. As James brought the box in the house Bailey was more excited than I was about a big box to play in. Little does she know, I have plans for reusing that box. Once inside I raced to the office and immediately open the box, of course there was some assembly required....
But a few minutes later I was done.

My wheel sits in my office waiting for me to come home and just play with it but it will have to wait. I have a baby gift to get done in a hurry since I found out last weekend that my cousin is actually due sooner than I thought and her baby shower is in two weeks. Oops...my bad.

Spinning wheel to come, sometime.

For Christmas James order me a spinning wheel to take the next step in making my own yarn. Now I didn't get anything fancy or special, just a basic beginner's wheel to start learning on. I purchase a Babe's Production wheel made out of PVC pipe that can be converted over to a scotch tension drive later on if I wanted too. I choose the PVC pipe spinning wheel for basically two reasons: 1) cost and 2) with a toddler running around, if one morning I found hello kitty stickers all over it, well I haven't made too much of an investment in it to freak out. As of right now, I'm still waiting for it to show up in the mail. Still waiting.....

My father has been working on converting an old sewing case into a spinning wheel for me as well. It's still a work in progress due to him trying to get all the beans out of the field first but as soon as he's done with the field, he'll be back on it.

I felt a little guilty ordering another wheel before he got this one completed but I thought for a minute and realized that anyone with a hobby has more than one piece of equipment to work their hobby on. I'm going to be no different than my mother who can't stop buying sewing machines or James and his video games. I'm sure once my father gets this wheel working for me, I'll have plenty of fiber to use on it.