A Spinning Wheel

Lately, I've been working on socks.  The same pattern, but different yarns.  As I venture deeper into the realms of textiles, knitting and spinning, I discover nuances I never knew existed.  The green pair of socks are knit up from the wool that I dyed in the green koolaid.  They came out beautifully and I love the softness of this pair. The blue pair I knit up next.  This wool was spun and dyed by a friend of mine and it was done "in the grease" which means the wool was picked clean, but spun with the lanolin still in the wool, and not washed out.  There was a bit of a stickiness to it, which I compensated for by keeping talcolm powder close by and each time my hands became sticky, I put a small amount of the powder in my hand and rubbed it in to my hands to absorb the surplus and knit more freely.

From this project I learned that you have to keep track of every stitch and take your time when you knit socks up.  I also perfected my kitchener stitch, and as you can see the toes have a lovely professional look about them.  It was worth the extra effort to really take my time and learn it well.  For all the previous mistakes I've made making socks, I have to say I've learnt so much.  As well noting down every single row and what it was, keeps you on track and I even develloped my own code so I would know each step that was coming up, how far along I was and that just kept things easy and fun.  Instead of sitting down and trying to get the project all done at once, I divide it up into jobs.  The cuff, the leg, the heel flap, turning the heel, the foot, and the toe, each become a seperate section and after completion of each section I take a break.  I go slowly and don't think about what I've already done and how much more I have to go, and what comes next.  It just takes away from the enjoyment of it and tends to create mistakes.  I just focus on the section I'm working on and it all works well.  I ended up unraveling my lovely lavender socks and have already started making a new pair out of them with the correct tension, (Hint: keep things tight) and the correct size.  I'm almost finished the first one and already it looks so much better.

I had some excitement yesterday, when a dear friend came over with some goodies for me.  A few rubber stamps to make cards with, some spool knitters, a little vintage fabric some other things, including nom-noms, but most importantly and happily a spinning wheel.  It's tiny, which suits this place perfectly This is the side of it, so you can't see the wheel, but you can see the arm that goes up and down turning the wheel, and you can see the bobbin and flywheel on the spinner.  As you can tell it has a triangular shape to it and is very compact.

Here you can see the wheel and the treadle, which you pump up and down to make the wheel go round and round, twisting up the fiber and drawing in the yarn and winding it on the bobbin.  It's pretty amazing the way it works.

It took me a while to get how it all worked.  My foot did not quite grasp how to get the wheel to go in the right direction at first.  As well the early tension was difficult and all over the place. Thick and thin, and it looked unwieldy.  I also suffer from performance anxiety, which manifests itself whenever I'm watched doing something, no matter how well I know someone, I just don't perform well.  Oddly enough as soon as my teacher and dear friend left, I decided to give it one more try instead of waiting until today to play with it, and low and behold it came to me, easily.  In fact, in no time I was spinning away and loving every second of it.  It's so peaceful and mesmerizing when you can just get into sitting at the wheel and working on creating pretty little bobbins full of fiber. :D

So yesterday was the best day I've had in a long time.  While my friend was here, we went for a walk in the park and had a yummy meal together, we talked and laughed, we spent time spinning... ok ok I was learning ... but we did get to spin together, which is something we both had wanted to do for a long time... Next time I think we're taking the wheels to the park... I should mention, I have the same wheel as my friend and they are sisters, much like my kick spindle has a sister.  I feel blessed to have such good friends and the opportunity to spend time with them.