What have I been doing?

What have I been doing? Why spinning of course!

On what? Well..look for yourself!

It's my new spinning wheel! I'm in love. It's a used Ashford Traditional from a nice lady off of Ravelry. It came with 4 bobbins, oil, high speed maintenance kit, lazy kate, threading hook, flick carder and a pound of raw kid mohair..(I'll go into that in a later post and show you all the nice pics of my picking out V.M.)

Anyways, onto the spinning.

This is 102 yards of 2 ply Merino. I got a nice fingering weight here. I'm working on lace weight, but I figure I should get the hang of the wheel and see what tension and twist I can actually put on a string of yarn.


2 skiens of Colonial. Not the softest, but it sure is warm and colorful! The two skeins are 88 and 91 for a grand total of 179 yards! I filled two bobbins worth of singles to do this vs. trying to fill each bobbin halfway. I wasn't even making enough yarn for a hat. I love the colors, they remind me of Arizona. My husband isn't too fond of them, but good thing he's not wearing the hat! :D


Mmmm..I love this pic. Yarn! Who doesn't love pictures of Yarn!?


Merino singles. I'm thinking of trying to do singles for a shawl, but I'm not sure I'm entirely sold on that idea. Singles aren't as strong as plied but, I'm not going to wearing the shawl every day. It'll be more of a special occasion or "traveling" shawl. You know...for when I've made my millions and want to drink wine in Italy.

A woman can dream can't she!?


Kid mohair.


First..let me say, holy bunnies..is this the softest yarn. I have yet to really feel "organic" cashmere and I'm told this is one of the softest, but this is soooo soft and...smooshy!

Second..this is hairy. Holy cow is it hairy. I did a recent skein of mohair that didn't have so many locks poking out, but it's such a challenge to spin by itself. I found myself having to peddle the treadle so fast that it might take my finger off if I touched the wheel. Not good. But then, I'm still a beginner spinner.

Although, this yarn (my husband laughs every time he sees it) looks like I accidentally spun a bunny through my wheel, it's really soft. I'm thinking of making my daughter a toy out of it. A tiny bunny she can carry around with her. She's into the pocket animals.


Mmmm...yarn...


Here's some more Merino. I love the colors. Very rustic to me and it reminds me of living in the North Woods. Pine trees, plaid coats and Christmas by the fire place.


Here's what it looks like spun up. This is 60 yards of Navajo plied yarn. I love the Navajo plying. I'm going to do another skien and make a hat. Can't have too many hats. Specially here. I always seem to loose them to the kids. :)


There you have it folks! My spinning adventures..and you're the lucky people to see the first few skeins I've spun on my new wheel! Thank you too all those that helped me get it by buying my patterns! I'm enjoying it immensely!

Garter stitch dog coat

Well here it is folks. The finished dog coat. :D I hope that my cousin likes it..more so..I hope her little doggie likes it. It's made from lamb's pride worsted weight, cream and turquoise, so it has a double thickness. It's WARM!


I love the colors. In the magazine it's a red and pink held together, but I decided to work with the turquoise and white since it was more a "boy" color and didn't seem to heavy. I think it would match a Schnauzer, don't you? :D




I made the buttons from sculpy clay. I was going to do the schnauzer buttons for it, but the more I thought about it, the likely hood of that actually working isn't very realistic. I figured since the button was so small the schnauzer would have to be at least 3/4 of the size of it, but with the holes and tacking it on to the coat, you wouldn't be able to make it out. I spose I could have painted it. Ah well, another day.


I did put it on my model though. Isn't he darling?! He just looks tickled pink to be trying on a giant wool coat right after a nap!


Actually...I woke him up from his nap for the picture. Can you tell? Doesn't he look just rested after his beauty sleep?


Ssshhhhh...he's going back to sleep. :D


Well, there's been an update on my spinning wheel. If you don't remember, there was that nice lady that was going to sell me an ashord traditional for $150. I was so happy about it, I couldn't wait. I was going to take the 2 hour car ride out there to just try it out! Then...at the last minute...she writes me an email saying that she's going to keep the spinning wheel but I can buy the other one. The problem is...it's needs major fixing and bobbins. I wasn't overly happy about that. But, what can you do? I don't think I'm going to get the old spinning wheel since I don't know where I could have it fixed around here. I'm sure there's places but, I'd rather not have to worry about that. If I was more experience and knew what I was doing, I'd feel more confident about taking it and restoring it. But, having never owned one, I wasn't very sure I could do that and feel comfortable in it. Anyways, if anyone knows where there's great places for spinning wheels..let me know. :D

Spinning Wheel

Ok, here's the spinning wheel pictures I promised you. I finally got the pictures last night, and I'm still debating which is the better buy. Right now I'm leaning towards the Ashford Traditional.

This first one is an Older Norwegian Traditional. The flyer and bobbin (I always want to write boobin for some reason..talk about a faux pas!) are off at the moment. She says they fit fine, but they do wiggle a bit and seem a little loose. She's not sure how it spins as she bought it this summer and spent her whole time gardening, so ..no spinning time. :D She's going to try it out this weekend and let me know. It's older and has had much love, this one is $90. No extra bobbins or lazy kate.



This is the Ashford Traditional. There's no nylon cord...it's a cotton drive belt. But that can be easily remedied. There's a lazy kate and extra bobbins for an extra $20. This one seems to be my better choice as I'm a beginning spinner. And at $150 for the wheel, plus the $20 for bobbins and lazy kate it's $170.



Any thoughts from the pros out there?