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.  

Way late posting

Quick update, I've started teaching at The Yarn Garden in Portland, I'm test knitting a cool lace shawl, and I have two patterns for sale online!

A swatch for the test knit.

Pattern one for sale, Portlandia Hat.

Pattern two for sale, Cable Loop Cowl.

Sock Summit Recap

It was great!!!

I took a class on knitting and designing fair isle socks with Janel Laidman.

Great class, already designing a sock, here's the swatch.

I volunteered as a TA for Syne Mitchell in an eTextiles class, also very cool, working on putting some lights into my knitting (no swatches yet).

I got to meet Stephanie Pearl-McPhee.

I had VooDoo Donughts.

I finished knitting a pair of stripy socks for me.

And, of course, I shopped!

Hand knit green cowl (made by me, worn at Sock Summit), yellow fluff is a verb for keeping warm BFL roving in the Nugget colorway, blue fluff is Sincere Sheep BFL roving (they are destined to go together in some project or other), and the yellow yarn is Jezebel in colorway 710.

Earrings by Jennie the Potter.

Blue and white merino/bamboo blend sock yarn.

The Jezebel 710 pictured above, this time on it's own on my desk.

Blue Moon Fiber Arts, rare gem colorway in Earth.

Hand dyed alpaca lace weight yarn in the limited edition (oh my) colorway Broadway from my new local yarn shop Yarn Garden.

More alpaca lace wight in Silver.

And yet more in Provence.

And some merino lace weight from the Carolina Homespun booth, this is going to be knit up into a stripy shawl with the Silver alpaca.

I had a great time all weekend, it was like summer camp.

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.

Day Twelve

I didn't spin yesterday because my shoulder was unhappy, too much spinning.

Day Ten

More spinning!

Day Nine

Just a little spinning today, same roving, new spindle. Well not new, just new to this project.

Days Seven and Eight

I posted Thursday's spinning very late at night/early in the morning yesterday. I didn't spin at all yesterday, because we went to Mount Saint Helens.

Today I did yesterday's spinning.

And today's spinning.

Day Six

Riveting, I know.

The big chunk of fluff attached to the spindle should be spun up as yarn on the spindle, but I was busy today and did not spin as much as I should have. I will work on it a little more before I go to bed.

Day Five

Day Four

Day Three

Day Two

Tour de Fleece

The Green Monster and some Spinning

The big greenie is done!!! Two shots of it unblocked, proper blocked shots tomorrow.

A closeup, the lumpy bottom edge will look like lovely leafy lace once it's all sorted.

And a bigger shot, you can see we're still unpacking, please excuse the half empty boxes in the background.

And this year I decided to participate in the Tour De Fleece, where you set a challenging spinning goal and spin every day that the Tour De France rides. My goal is simple, to spin every day. I've been neglecting it.

So here goes, day one. A little bit of roving from Lorna's Laces. I forget the name of the colorway.

Green Monster Update

Back to square one, or more accurately, where I was Tuesday night when I finally admitted that it wasn't going to work.

1:30 pm (Thursday)

I now know that I can knit 10,000 stitches in about 30 hours.

And I'm Back

I'm working on a shawl/scarf design. I fell in love with this lace motif, and it hasn't been cooperating. I gave up, started designing the way that it wanted to work, and was well on my way to finishing the sample (and pattern) today.

Tuesday evening.

Then I realized that I had been optimistic with how big the thing would be and that there was no way I'd have enough yarn to finish. My only choice was to rip out the 80"x6" of knitting that was already done. That's 480 square inches of knitting and more than 11,000 stitches (yay math).

So this morning I set up my knitting station, comfy chair, computer loaded up with knitting podcasts (thanks Wonder Mike for getting me through), some water, and my chart.

I put on an inspirational outfit.

And I sat down to knit.

8:30 am (Wednesday)

11:00 am (Wednesday)

4:00 pm (Wednesday)

1:15 am (Thursday)

The yarn is the Pistachio colorway in Atlantis, a really great Silk Seacell and Rayon blend hand dyed by my friend Angela.

The pattern is coming soon, it will be available at Windy Knitty in Chicago.

Pinkerton Shawl

Half plain, half mesh.

The artsy layout.


The basic unedited shot.


Knit up in a nice yarn in shades of blue gray and back.

Opening Day

Josh won tickets to the Cub's first home game. It was cold, grey, and rainy. We had fun anyway.