Spindle spinning

Spindle Spinning is a fun thing to do.

Its a cheaper option as a wheel takes quite some investment if you wish to purchase new.

Like spinning wheels, spindles come in all sorts of designs.

They also are unique design pieces handcrafted with love.

Spindles can be Top-Whorl, Bottom-Whorl, Supported, Turkish, Navajo and other stiles, and this decides how you operate them. All slightly different.

But all portable, light and compact. You can carry one with you with some squishy fiber to spin, basically anywhere you go. 

Loads of YouTube video instructions.

Of course it takes a wee bit of practice but once you have caught on....

Its quite an addiction I tell you.

If you want to start spinning with little space and a small budget; this may be an option for you!

Unknown white wool

A bargain found at the second hand shop. NZ$10.00 for 2.5 kgs of washed and carded white wool.

Gorgeously soft and fluffy.

I am spinning it up for a jersey, so that requires some skeins.

I am onto the 7th skein now. Still spinning.....

It is not too exciting a job all that white. So I am switching over to other projects to make it more fun as I go.

Its handy to have more then 1 wheel for that reason.

(Added to this post on 2/10/12;)

I have finished spinning this yarn.

It totals at;

1kg

1358.1m

1.36m/g

I think for needles 5.5-6.5 mm

Quite some mountain of wool!

Will it stay white or shall I dye it?

Whos jersey is it going to become?

WWSIP 2012

You may or may not have realised, but yesterday, Saturday 15th of September was "World Wide Spin in Public" day.

Its a yearly event that has been around for a while, so people say.

The aim is to educate the public on the craft of spinning, its history and its place in our community today. A demonstration of sorts.

Most people have never seen someone spinning before.

Sadly a lot of children do not even realise a sheep grows wool that can be processed into yarn for woolen garments.

Some have never seen a sheep, nor seen someone knitting before either. Even here in NZ where we have such a vast amount of sheep!

Times have changed.

Yet spinning, knitting, crochetting, weaving and felting are today surprisingly popular crafts and the fibre craft community is large and steadily growing. Just look at the Ravelry community of two thousand members world wide and think that must be the tip of the iceberg as by far not every fibre craft person is a member there, has a computer or technological fascilities like that to connect with the international community. 

I've recently started a Spinning group in our local town. We only count 5 members as its beginning stages yet.

World Wide Spin in Public day seemed a good opportunity to get some PR done and perhaps find some people interested in joining in with us.

Thus we set out with a small display and our wheels and plonked ourselves in the local public library for a couple of hours.

Unfortunately it was not all that busy that day, but we had a good time anyway.

Some children came and enthusiastically investigated what we were doing. A little girl said "look they are doing Sleeping Beauty!" But a lot of the adults were too shy to come up and have a good look or talk with us. Some did though and were very surprised to see this craft in action. Most of them had no idea about spinning.

Enjoyable!

Angora Merino; spun up.

You may remember the angora rabbit fibre I got given by a friend in Holland

I posted it here on my blog;

http://spinandknit.blogspot.com/2012/03/angora-treasure.html

It is bearly recognisable but it is here in this spun up yarn.

Beautifully soft and with a lovely halo.

I spun a strand each of Angora and Merin /Silk mix and plied it into 466 yards of yarn, weighing only about 85-90 gr. 

I still has some Angora left which was plied on itself and produced 58 yards weighing less the 25 gr of very fine yarn to play with.

So in total the Angora spun up to 116 plus 466 = 528 yards all together........amazing.

I am planning to knit a helix scarf with it, just got to look for a pattern.

Brown and Bulky Merino

This is some yarn I spun last year. It just haddn't made it into this blog yet.

I bought a bag of carded brown merino that felt soft but unfortunately wasn't that well processed. It was a nightmare to spin finely.

I decided to spin it very bulky and uneven in stead. And it came up a lovely and soft yarn probably suitable for needles 8mm plus

Not too much of it but someone will have a lovely warm hat or mittens, thats for sure.

Three !

Really, there is no way to justify it I know.

But why is it that once you are bitten by the 'spinning bug' you see the beauty in these amazing pieces of craftmanship.

I saw this (second hand) beautiful wheel and just could not resist.

Who could????

It is a Grace Wheel, made (still) by Mike Keeves of Nelson in New Zealand.

You can find some info on his wheels here;

http://www.nzspinningwheels.info/grace.html

It is a large Spinning Wheel and has a very different feel to it then my little Pioneer Wheel (by Majacraft) on which you can see Kiki spinning in the photo below, or my first Wheel an Ashford Traditional.

This is solid and heavy and the huge flyer wheel is amazingly decorated with hearts....so pretty.

It is a double treadle, but this one you treddle with both feet at the same time up and down.

The whole wheel seems very well thought out.

Up the top are spaces to insert the orifice attachments, stopper key and yarn-guide for the skeiner when not in use. It has 3 ratios and a interesting tension control system.

The Flyer is very easy to remove, it has 7 bobbins.

The Skeiner you can attach simply to the front of the wheel and then it turns when you treadle, winding the wool from the full bobbin on to it. So Handy!!!!

There is a lot of detail and helpful handy gadgets on this wheel.

You can see here the copper stopper key to hold the bobbin on when skeining as well as the eyelette through which the yarn is guided and kept in place while tranfering the wool from bobbin to skeiner.

It is going to take some time for us to get to know each other but I'm sure we'll get along just fine!

Angora treasure.

I am having a go at spinning my first ever Angora.

Wow this is so light, so slippery and so soft. It literally feels like I am spinning from a cloud.

I think I am achieving a nice thin thread, I want to make it last and get many yards out of this.

Angora is the hair of the Angora Bunny (Angora goats produce Mohair). Hair is different from wool in structure and this requires different skills in spinning. It is also a reasonably short staple compared to what I have bee used to. So it provides for a nice challenge.

This particular Angora came from Holland. I swapped it with Ariette when I discovered she is working on a big project researching different Sheep Breeds, and I send her 100g of Arapawa wool. In return Ariette send me this lovely Angora from her own German Angora bunny, as a thanks.

Hence we both enjoy something new to try and learn from this exchange.

Ravelry offers so much to fibre crafters all around the world. Without it we would not even have known each other. Cool!

This thin thread I intend to ply with something else quite scrumptious.

It deserves it don't you think?

Something like this;

Its a Merino/ silk blend called Cherry Ripe, also very fine.

I'll be busy for a while as with this stuff little goes a long way!