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.
I wish..
9 years ago
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