Introducing Coraline

Last month, I was talking to my boss who has been shopping around for a loom. (I talked her into taking up weaving again, and she’s been having a blast.) I mentioned that I would love to have a spinning wheel someday, and she suggested that I take a look at craigslist and see what I could find. So I did, and one of the first listings I found was for a 1975 Ashford Traditional that looked to be in pretty fair condition. I went down to South Seattle to have a look at her, and lookie what I came home with!!

The woman selling her is a weaver who had bought her brand new in 1975 with the intent of spinning her own yarn to weave. She ended up using her maybe a few times, and she’s been in storage ever since. I paid a couple hundred bucks less than what a new Traditional would cost. I took her to the Spinning Guru at the Weaving Works, who hooked me up with a spring for the scotch tension, an orifice hook and lots of oil, and I was good to go. I took my first wheel spinning class that night!

I realized just how much easier it was spinning on a wheel after using a drop spindle. Drafting came much more naturally, and I wasn’t having some of the problems the other ladies in the class were having. Don’t get me wrong, my first yarn off of the wheel looked terrible! During the second class a week later, Shirley brought out about 1/3 of a raw fleece:

It was really cool to feel the wool before it’s cleaned and combed. I don’t know if I’ll ever go so far as to buy a raw fleece and go through the whole process of cleaning and preparing it for spinning, but you never know! Maybe someday. But for now, I’ll stick with spinning on Coraline.

I already have about 120 yards of this Coopworth/Corridale white and purple mix, and another skein of medium and dark Coopsworth plied together:

Just what I need, one more thing to eat into my knitting time!

Away I spin

This is my excuse for ignoring my blog, as well as most of what’s on my needles:

A couple weeks ago, I took a spinning class at the Weaving Works. I’ve been experimenting with drop spindling on my own, but I wanted to learn from a pro all of the little tricks that I couldn’t pick up on my own, as well as what to do with it after I’m done spinning. Our teacher was amazing, and she taught us quite a few lovely little tricks.

I made one little mini skein during class, and our teacher sent us home with a handful of roving to practice on.

The picture at the top of this post is going to be my first ‘real’ yarn, hopefully. It’s so nice and relaxing to just sit and spin… Except, of course, when I break my yarn or get the extra roving in my hand mixed up in what’s already spun up! So far, though, this has only happened a couple times. As long as I keep going cool and steady, and don’t try to get ahead of myself, it flows pretty well.

Next week I’m flying to Denver for a conference, and I’m going to try and take my spindle in my carry-on. We’ll see how that flies!

The second attempt…

…is much better than the first.

Public Knitting

Happy Knit in Public Day! I was going to head over to Greenlake today to knit with a group of Seattle knitters, but I realized early on this morning that I wasn’t up for meeting a bunch of strangers. I don’t know, maybe subconsciously I knew I would be around a ton of people tonight at the graduation party I’m going to, and the bit of myself that’s introverted wanted to spend the morning alone. Ah, me.

So I went to the coffee shop to knit instead.

Afterwards, I went to the Weaving Works to drool over some yarn, and I picked up a little somethin’ somethin’ for myself. I’ve been good about not spending any money on yarn since I moved, and I decided to reward myself. One of the employees there was expertly drop spinning away, and I got to have a nice chat with her about it. I bought a drop spindle and some roving a while back to give it a shot, and my first attempt was absolutely horrid. (I won’t even post a picture here, it was that bad.) But after watching this lady spin away, I was inspired and decided to give it another shot.

We’ll see how it goes!