spinning my wheels

I have adjusted my woolee winder to wind the bobbin more evenly by rotating the moving eye a bit. Looks better, doesn’t it? Used to look like this:

Can’t wait to give this next stuff a spin on my wheel:

My first go at handpainting roving! Or dyeing fiber of any kind, for that matter. This is Lanaset/Sabraset colors at far too high a depth of shade. Next time I’ll go a little easier. Now for the closeup:

I spent most of Sunday at this, and had great fun. I spent most of Monday recovering, as I was having far too much fun to notice that I was demonstrating very poor ergonomic behavior for someone with a spine in the shape mine is in. But ooh, pretty!

A winding tale

I got a WooLee Winder for my wheel! I can make smoother yarn faster, and not watch the bobbin or stop to change hooks. This is the greatest thing since the bait casting fishing reel . . . wait, it’s the same thing, isn’t it? Applying it to a spinning wheel flyer was brilliant, go Robert Lee for doing it & Son Nathan at theWooLeeWinder.com for making it available to us happy customer types.

I have some 80%Polwarth 20%silk roving hand dyed in “summer garden” colorway from Francine at Rovings to start on now that I can use the wheel a little better. Isn’t this pretty?

Oh the cleverness of me! I made this with a Wal-Mart basket ($15.00), some twine, and a few knitting needles. This is a tensioned lazy kate, which works very nicely:

I’ve paused in my learning to spin obsession to start yet a new one: I’m collecting stuff to start dyeing my own fiber. So far I have a 1st class collection of Sabraset/Lanaset colors, a few additions to my library including Color in Spinning by Deb Menz, and Hands on Dyeing by Betsy Blumenthal and Kathryn Kreider, and a few supplies. Soon I hope to actually get my hands into the colors. This is going to be fun!

Here’s my latest FO:

This is the Headline News Cabled Newsboy Cap from Stitch ‘n Bitch Nation. The yarn is Patons SWS (Soy Wool Stripes) in the denim colorway which has a nice hand (thanks to the soy) and self-stripes with a long color repeat. It was a quick and fun knit, Zack was satisfyingly delighted with it, and it fits him! I like it so much I think I’ll knit me one too.

I think I’ll go get busy now. I have a lot of toys to play with!