Friday, November 03, 2006

Yet Another New Baby!

I've been a bit busy the last few days so I'm a bit slow to tell you of my exciting news! This is no reflection on the news but...



I've got my very own Spinning Wheel!! It's a little Westbury wheel and is neat and well thought out with a balanced wheel and I've also got a Jumbo Flyer and Lazy Kate to go with it! No you may think I've been too busy spinning to be able to tell you this but you are far from the truth. As a condition of DH buying the wheel for me for Christmas I must have a serious sort out of my clutter - no easy task as I am an undeniable hoarder! So far so good though, I've put new shelves up for all my books and have had a rethink of my storage solutions that is a better use of space but it's not easy to fit all this into the day whilst looking after DD who is being seriously active and curious about everything. And on top of all that I've been trying to keep the wood pile filled up and sawing up logs every other day, or so it seems! See what I meant about who the DIYer in our house is!
I went over to Mum's to go and pick the wheel up from a lovely couple in her Spinning Guild and spend some time there getting the feel for my wheel - hardest part was getting the tension right. Until we got that right neither Mum or I could really get it spinning nicely. Anyway there's a load more stuff I'll need to learn to get this right so don't be expecting any hand spun goodies for a while yet!

We did have a go at dyeing yarn as well whilst I was there using 'Easy-Peasy Dyes' (which really live up to their name) and some unwanted 4ply white yarn that was 75% wool donated from My Mum-in-law who was clearing out her stash. We did 3 lots. This 1st one was done in the microwave with red and yellow and zapped for 10 minutes and then overdyed with blue and zapped again- not too garish a result!

This one was done on the hob and sat simmering for half an hour like something out of Macbeth: "Hubble Bubble.... etc" as Mum kept saying in suitable old crone tones (not her normal voice I hasten to add before you get the wrong idea!). This was meant to be 'Sky Blue' according to the recipe book (yes, you can get a recipe book for the dyes!) but looks more like a Sea Green. Anyway the general plan is to use it for a shawl of some sort, not sure which yet. Mum also has 4 hanks of hand dyed in a lovely shade but I'll leave it to her to tell you about that.I have been trying to fit some knitting in as well as everything else and have some FO's to show that are in the process of being blocked, etc so no photo of that just yet but really I'm itching to get my hands on my wheel!

One thing that I have joined up to is the Warm Hands KAL and have already nearly done a pair of Fetching. It's such an easy pattern I'm not surprised that everyone is making them but if I make them again I'd make some adjustments for me, namely to make them a bit longer as they just about cover your wrist and I like them to be longer. Plus I found the picot cast off seemed to curl over and was a little too loose for my little hands to I unpicked them and did some k2togs to make them a bit snugger for me and did an ordinary cast off, pretty though the picot was. The yarn BTW is Colinette Skye from the bargain bin so no idea what colour it is but, and this is really cool, the pink shades formed a spiraling stripe that wound it's way up the mitten. As DH said it's like a Helter Skelter. But then he did also say I'd left the fingers off the mittens!

5 comments:

artyfartykat said...

What a beautiful wheel, I bet you can`t wait to have time to play!!

The dyeing looked brill, I really think the idea of a shawl in the sea green yarn you dyed would be beautiful.

I`m also a 'you never know when you might need it' hoarder!! And you just never know....!

Anonymous said...

Oh another person who got a wonderfull wheel. Oh your wheel is lovely. You will soon get the hang of it and then there be no stopping you. You will get addicted to spinning yarn ..at times simply for the sake of spinning

acrylik said...

Oh, your wheel looks gorgeous! And what an incentive to get cleared out :)

I love the dyeing you have done, especially the first colourway - gorgeous.

belaybunny said...

lucky you, the wheel looks lovely. And I like the dyeing you've done, they're really pretty. And fetching is looking nice, I wouldn't have thought of doing it in colinette.

Frankie said...

The wheel looks like a beautiful piece of craftmanship. Imagine spinning your own yarn! How exciting - well done. The dyed stuff looks lovely.