She seeketh wool and flax and worketh willingly with her hands. --Proverbs 31:13

11/14/2005

Do you know what this is?? No idea? It is the alpaca yarn from my scarf. I noticed about 2 yards from the end of the first ball that I had made a huge mistake. I had knitted about half of the length I had done knitting on the purl side and purling on the knit side. Half of my scarf was backwards. I tried to rip it back, but just couldn't manage to pick up the stitches, this stuff is slippery. So I wound it all back up on the ball winder, and will start again as soon as I am less disgusted with myself.

To console myself, I started making a mitten to be felted out of the self striping yarn. The stripes are not very long, only one row each. My skeins are going to have to be much longer, and it already took me, hubby and all the kids to wind these skeins. Or use less colors in each skein. Otherwise we are going to be outside to wind skeins. Still, I like the way it is turning out. Very cute.

Now on to spinning projects. I tinkered with my wheel on Friday, I took it apart, cleaned off any grease I could see, oiled the wood, oiled all the joints and moving parts, and put it back together. I got to thinking about the fact that I have had the wheel for a year now, and it has been set up as double drive the whole time, I never even tried it set up as single drive with Scotch tension. So I switched it. I attached all the little bits that it needed for that that I had had stored in a drawer, and went to Lowes and bought a dowel rod that I whittled down to replace the tensioning peg (I know where the tensioning peg is, but haven't had a chance to get to Tahlequah to get it). It is a little hard to get used to, and at first I was ready to switch right back to double drive. However, I pushed on, and once I got used to the changes, I discovered that I got a much better ply using Scotch tension. It made the nice tight ply that I have been looking for but never really got. (This is the roving from a few months ago that was dyed in oranges reds and light purple. From the same post as the cabled socks, if you have been reading that long).

Then I decided to try to spin long draw. I am putting this picture up so you can see what a horrible time I had. I had an idea in my head of what long draw was, and it worked fairly well. But after I went and read an article on Longdraw at Interweave about long draw I realized I was really doing it all long. So I will try again this evening and maybe have some progress to show tommorrow.  Posted by Picasa

1 comment:

Tracy Batchelder said...

Sorry about your scarf. I hate when I do something like that.

I like the way the yarn is knitting up in the mitten. I think the stripes are just right for that size project.

The more you talk about spinning, the more I want to learn.