Tour de Fleece

I think I'm about to get my spinning wheel back in action!  It's been out of commission for over a year.  Most of that year was me not wanting to deal with the fact that it was broken.  Going to the Black Sheep Gathering inspired me to tackle the frustrating problem.  

My wheel, an Ashford Trditional, before I broke it

Long story short:
While disassembling my wheel for transport the pin that holds the axel in place broke inside the hub.
Hub cracked while we were trying to pull the axel out (not knowing that part of the pin was sill inside).
Hub cracked further from moving the wheel 3000 miles without completely disassembling it.
Luckily the glue holding two pieces of the hub together is what cracked, not the wood.
Figured out that part of the pin was still stuck in the axel.  
Tapped out the broken piece of pin with some brass rod (good thing I didn't get rid of a single piece of scrap from my college silversmithing, this only reinforces my pack-rat tendencies).
Glued the hub back together.
Tried to drill out the hole for the old pin (the new one is larger).
It didn't work...

Hub, clamped while glue dries.

The instructions say to take pliers and turn the drill bit by hand.  That's right, take pliers to a smooth sided drill bit and turn it with enough speed and pressure to drill through about two inches of wood.  What?


There isn't enough clearance between the wheel rim and hub for any kind of normal drill so I'm supposed to turn a dill bit by hand, with pliers.  


Through much annoying of people who don't know about wheels, but maybe know about wood or working in small spaces, I learned of the magic that is a right angle drill (or right angle adapter).  I'm going to buy or borrow one today.


And then I will have my wheel!!!


Actually, then I will be able to reassemble my wheel, but close enough.  


Inspiring Black Sheep Gathering photos:

Contemplative Alpaca 

Lamb

Friendly Ram

Pink Goat, not photshopped

My haul

I came home with almost four pounds of alpaca fleece (the reddish brown bag), an angora merino blend (the blue ball), and a braid of merino roving (the tan/cream/plum stuff).  This pile is super intimidating without my wheel, so fix my wheel I must.  

Tour de Fleece Update

I fell off that bandwagon.

My wheel is not yet back together (a few technical issues popped up during our move and have yet to be resolved, or, it's broken) and I hurt my shoulder by spinning too much on my drop spindle. So that was that for my first attempt at the Tour de Fleece.

I just attended Sock Summit 2011 where I bought more roving, so I need to fix my wheel and get back to injury free spinning.

I'll keep you posted.

Sunday's are for Spinning?

I'm copying the Yarn Harlot's idea that one day should be for spinning, so that it doesn't get taken over by the knitting. And we all know that I let things get taken over by my knitting.

So this is what I worked on today.

It looks better in person.

This is the roving I haven't spun yet. It's so pretty.

It's a merino bamboo blend called Galapagos. It's super soft. I can't wait to ply it and make something, maybe a hat.

Dirty Sheep!

More Peanut!  I've been spinning up the second batch of washed wool.  You can see that it isn't quite as washed as the first batch.  The new batch is to the right, the first batch is under it, to the left.  It's not too different, enough that I feel like a slacker though.  I'm pretty sure that the rest of the dirt will come out when I wash the finished yarn.  We will see I guess.  

You should see the floor under my wheel!  I pull out the little burs, plant stems, and short bits of wool as I go.  It gets pretty bad by my feel.  I need to sweep.  

Several Projects at Once

My techno-geek gloves, still very much in progress. These were sort of a prototype for gloves that I wanted to knit Josh. His gloves are pictured below. As you can see I am also not very far along on that pair.




Steph's scarf, also very much in progress. I'm almost done with the second ball of yarn (Stephanie bought three). So not too much more to go.




And some sock yarn I just bought for myself (I had cupons). It is a rather pretty self striping colorway, in a yarn that the Harlot speaks very highly of.





I've been reading the Yarn Harlot's site, and some Elizabeth Zimmerman books this past week. They've got me all worked up and ready to knit (I hadn't been working on Josh's gloves at all before yesterday). Worl wears me down, I arrive home in a semi-comatose state and get very little knitting done.


I've been spinning too, but it looks pretty much the same as the last photos. Today my clunky wheel repair kit arrived! I'm excited to fix my wheel, and a little nervous. I have to drill into the hub of the wheel to install the new axel. Taking drill to wheel is giving me pause. I'll work up the nerve soon.

Spinning

This, is becoming yarn!

I've started spinning the birthday roving.  It's really beautiful.  This photo looks browner than the real stuff, but there's no accounting for computer monitors.  

I wanted to make this into a lace weight two ply.  It might end up being more of a fingering weight though, which will still serve my purposes very nicely.  

Plied Yarn

I put my lazy kate on it's side, hoping that the friction between the bobbins and arms would provide some tension for plying.  I'm not sure it worked, but I was able to ply.  

Here is the first bobbin of yarn next to the upright lazy kate. I managed to get two bobbins of three ply before I ran out of the pink mohair.  Then I got another almost full bobbin of two ply brown.  Yay!  

Playing With My Wheel

I finished spinning the ball of brown roving I was working on.  I have another ball partly spun up on a drop spindle, and a ball of pink/purple to go with it.  

Then I started in on Peanut.  This photo is  a little deceiving because I transferred what was on the drop spindle to the bobbin and continued spinning.  But I did get a fair amount done tonight.  I'm almost out of cleaned Peanut.

More Spinning, and the Kureyon

I started working on the brown wool again. You can see I spun a lot more this time. I have to figure out what to do with the portion already on my drop spindle. This is so much faster, it's great!

Yesterday I also ripped out my Kureyon wrap and cast on for gloves. I wasn't sure that I had enough yarn to make a wrap the size and shape I wanted. And I had read that it wouldn't soften up as much as I was hoping. So I ordered another yarn from the same company that contains a hefty percentage of cashmere. I will make the wrap with that and I will make fingerless gloves from the Kureyon. I am calling them my iPhone gloves (you need your finger tips for iPhone manipulation).

The Kureyon wrap, before destruction.

The new Kureyon gloves, in progresss.


Sandy just said that these are very "Fame!"

First Yarn on the Wheel

Tonight I oiled the wheel like crazy and grabbed some leftover "practice" roving from my class this sumer.  

My first single, the maroon is a "regular" wool (I forget the breed name) and the peach is merino.  The merino was much harder to spin.  You can kinda see that it's thicker than the maroon strands.  

Actually it was all pretty hard to spin because I've only used a wheel for about 45 minutes, and that was months ago.  Once I got used to the maroon, no more breaking or getting all twisty, then I was out of it and had to get used to the peach.  Practice makes perfect, I'm planning on grabbing some inexpensive roving to play with, then on to peanut and some superfine merino that I have two pounds of!  

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.