Spinning Finally

Combing with the English Wool Combs.
See the piles of combed wool on the desk?

A few weeks ago Max brought my spinning wheel up here from Memphis. It sat in a corner and glared at me for a while. So I finally gave in and got out the Murphy's Oil Soap out and cleaned it up. Then it sat in the corner and glared at me wanting to be used.

There was only one problem. Max brought me a bin of fiber to spin, only he brought me unprocessed wool and no tools with which to process it. So the wheel got to sit and glare at me for a few more weeks until Max's next visit when he brought me the fleece I wanted to work on and my English wool combs to process the fleece.

The fleece is a gorgeous chocolate one from a  Corriedale sheep named Peaches. I got it from Martha at Coneflower Farms in Michigan before she went out of business. Raising animals for wool is so intensive that most don't stay in it for long.

So now I have the fleece and the combs, but the wheel had to pout for a few more days until I could get some wool washed, dried and combed. Finally, however, its day came. I've been spinning for the last few days and thoroughly enjoying it. It's the first spinning I've done in over two years.

Me spinning in my cluttered corner.

The thread is spinning up brown with a gray hint to it. I'm thinking it would work very well woven into material for winter curtains for this den that gets so cold in the winter. The den is lovely, but it used to be a breezeway between the house and the garage. It only has one heater vent and an electric heater in one wall. It has two brick walls on the ends of the house and garage and tongue-in-groove knotty pine on the long walls and ceiling. There are two smaller windows on the back wall and a picture window on the front wall looking out to the street. These are covered with Venetian blinds, and some curtains on them would make for a lot of cozy in the winter.

Market Bag

Yay! I finally had a chance to try out the market bags I made from the pattern Cherizac sent me.  They work wonderfully despite my bad knitting. I'm not much of a knitter. These are the most open things I've ever knit, and keeping up with the stitches from the K2 tog, YO and vice versa (knit 2 together, yarn over) drove me absolutely nuts. I dropped stitches right and left.

The second was easier to make than the first.  The darned first one ended up with jut one handle the first time around.  I've got a third one on the needles, and I'm still having trouble keeping the right amount of stitches on the needles.  For the life of me, I can't figure out where I keep dropping stitches.

Still and all, like I've said, they're done, they hold stuff, they're holding together, and they don't look too bad. They're washable and very usable. I can pile a bunch of them in one, and they won't fall off the shelf when I open the closet door. So I'm a happy camper.

The one on the left is holding two large bunches of bananas. The one on the right is holding a box of ice cream bars, a huge bag of crisped rice cereal and something I've forgotten what it was.

What's on the bobbin

Someone on my fiber list asked what we had on our bobbins.  I'm spinning a fleece from a corriedale sheep named Peaches. I can't remember whether she was a Coneflower Farm or a Whitefish Bay Farm sheep. I think she was from Martha at Coneflower, who sadly has stopped selling fleece.

I'm spinning it rather finely so I can use it in weaving scarves. However, the other night I started a gauge swatch to try to make some socks from it.

Edited on 2/22/11 to add link for WFB Farm and clarify Coneflower Farm's status.

ST Video

One of the gals on my fiber list made a video of a spinning get-together she attended last week in southern California. It's a great little video, and I so enjoyed getting to put faces to the names on the list. Here it is:




Enjoy! Spin-in at Carol's.

Fiber Talk

I have a new pair of favorite socks - a creamy orange pair I knit two weeks ago.  Man, it's been years since I knitted socks. My last pair wore out, and I've never replaced them. Obviously, I need to get going on this again.

These socks really are the same size. I've not photographed a lot of socks, so experience beats me here. Laid out side by side, I could NOT make them look the same size. I swear they're equal, even if the photo on the right doesn't look like.

These socks were knitted from the S.O.C.K.S. pattern by Claudia Krisniski of Countrywool. Claudia did this pattern in 2000, and it's still the only sock pattern I've ever knitted.  Goes to show you I'm not much of a knitter.

The yarn was some I spun. It is a two-ply; one ply being a natural white and the other from fiber I dyed using, I think, Kool-aid. It was dyed so long ago I can't remember.

Last night I started a market bag from a pattern sent to me by Cherizac at http://madhyatmika.wordpress.com/ . I had to rip it because I don't have large enough needles, but I wanted to see how it works. I've never done knitting before that produces a net like effect. Once I get back to Memphis, I'll pop over to the yarn store and get some size 13s and be off to do some market bags.

I'm really tired of the pile of market bags in the closet. They're on a shelf; they're different sizes; they slip, slide, and fall off. I hate to take the Kroger bags into Aldi and vice versa. Guess I'm just silly that way. I found some cotton houseware string at the local Chinese Market in Memphis for $1.25 for 2 balls. I'm thinking it will take about 3 balls to make a bag. I'll update once I find out.

With these I can stuff a bunch of them into one and have a smaller footprint for storage. It's said they hold a ton of stuff, so that's nice.