Happy Birthday to me!

A snapshot of my yarn haul from yesterday.

A closeup.

Dream in Color, a yarn manufacturer in the Chicago suburbs, had a warehouse/mill ends sale yesterday, my birthday. I brought home about $300 worth of lovely hand dyed yarn for $75.

It was great!

My Wheel!

The story is that my Mom aquired this wheel back in August. I had taken a spinning class this summer, and loved it, but spinning wheels are quite expensive. So I contented myself with the much slower process of drop spindeling. A friend of my Mom's asked her if she, "knew anyone who wanted a spinning wheel?" Boy did she.

She kept this secret for a few months. They took the wheel apart, bought a new suitcase to fit it, flew here, rented a car, left their luggage (with the wheel) at my house, came downtown to meet me for a birthday dinner, and suprised me with instructions on how to put my wheel back together. We did so the next morning, drove it waaaaay out to The Fold, in Marengo, IL. There, the lovely Toni gave it a quick once over, replaced/improved the scotch tension brake, set me up with a leader, and discovered that my wheel wasn't working.

What I had thought was "a little stiffness" from years of dissuse was actually the wheel starting to lock up on itself. Turns out the connection between the foot pedal and the wheel axel has a nasty tendency to do that. We ordered a kit to replace the axel and connecting parts, but it won't get here until mid December. In the meantime I've replace a missing nut on the axel bolt, which seems to be doing the trick. I keep having to adjust that jont, but the wheel isn't locking up anymore. So it should be useable until the repair kit arrives.

Yay! I love it!

Happy Birthday to Me!

My parents surprised me with a spinning wheel.

It's the 1964 model of the Ashford Traditional wheel, made from '64 to '66, in '67 they changed how parts of the wheel looked, so I know it's older.

This is a photo from Ashford's site.

I'll take a few pictures of mine soon.

Bleated Birthday?

A little birthday sheep (doesn't everyone need a birthday sheep?) inspired by a typo.



About baseball sized, knit from mystery gray (natural undyed) stash wool and some dark brown wool nylon blend sock yarn. Bobbles for the ears, legs, and tail.