Happiness is a new spinning wheel

Lovely pics:) Thanks for sharing:))

I second Ophelia, great. Dennis

That is soooo neat. I would love to learn how to spin.

Though, I guess I'd have to find some place for the spinning wheel... I'm not sure my roommate would put up with that in our 9x10 room... haha.

Two words: drop spindle

Or, if you don't fancy the drop spindle approach, you can get compact wheels:

'd start saving now though, they don't come cheap.:)

VP

When I was in college my roommate had a spinning wheel and an entire fleece in our tiny dorm room. Eventually, I had to move out--the fleece had a fairly overwhelming odor. Strangely enough, I love it now when my dog is a bit dirty and has a lanolin smell, like a sheep. He's an Irish Water Spaniel and they have an oily coat.

Hi ya sounds good to me...now do keep us up to date as you use it. higz Cher

> Now, off to spin....>

Well, two requests - a girl can't turn that down. :)

At the moment I'm spinning up some fibre I've dyed. Merino dyed randomly blue, mixed with a little black alpaca which I had overdyed red (just to give it a slightly warmer glow). I carded the two together thoroughly so as to produce a heathered yarn that is subtle in it's tonal changes, the alpaca gives a nice depth to the merino blue.

See the fibre and then the thread spun from it:

yarn looks a bit lighter than it appears under normal light (thefibre picture is much truer in colour). The finished product is quite"shot" so it appears bluer or greener depending on the light. I have no idea what I'll knit from it yet.

So I invite other spinners to tell/show us what they are doing - please.

VP

subtle in it's

Oh! that's a shameful misuse of an apostrophe - apologies.

VP

I've just finished spinning two bobbins half full of superwash merino, space-dyed by a friend. I'm now spinning a very fine black silk/merino thread to ply with the superwash and eventually I'll knit it up as socks. Unless I decide Ihave enough for a decently sized stole.

I'm holding steady on my New Year resolution to work out of stash. But 'tis early times...

requests - a girl can't turn that down. :)

it:

> The yarn looks a bit lighter than it appears under normal light (the> fibre picture is much truer in colour). The finished product is quite> "shot" so it appears bluer or greener depending on the light.>

I'll ply two singles together, I do intend it to be quite fine. Because I like to knit from vintage patterns a lot I'm generally dealing with fingering weights or finer.

I hear and see a lot about Kool-aid dyeing online but we don't have that product here in NZ. I'm not keen to deal with toxic chemicals so I use regular food colouring. Is Kool-aid cheaper than standard food colouring in the US? Or is it used because of the particular colours it renders?

VP

it to be quite fine. Because

I'm with you on this Wooly I've knitted that many socks from it all, and I find it most weird now to knit from commercial yarn, like I've got something quite alien in my hands..lol

I love dyeing the fleece in different colours either rainbow dyeing or dye lots and mixing them in stripes on the drum, making stripey yarns.

I tried steaming the rovings but it still runs too much into each other so need to block dye the fleece next and see what that turns out like.

higz Cher

it:

to finish my wee fibre story, here is the finished hank: think it may be destined to be new gloves for my DH. VP

messagenews: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

I'd wholeheartedly recommend having a go at dyeing with food colouring

- it's safe, easy and with minimal outlay you can decide wheather you want to pursue dyeing further.

I use standard supermarket liquid food colouring, oven bags (the kind you roast your chicken in) and my food steamer. I soak fleece in water and vinegar first, squeeze out excess water, put in oven bag and add dye (I mix colours in a cup of water to get the distribution wider), work through wool and then I tie up the bag and pop in into my steamer for about 30 minutes. Let cool, rinse and dry.

VP

Hi Bev, well the easiest and one where you don't need any chemicals at all is onion skins. just collect the outer shells/skins and pop them in a pan cover with water bring up to the boil and slowly simmer till the water goes dark brownish yellow...strain off the liquid, you can cool and bottle this for keeping for later...you can then just add a skein or some fleece to this juice, by putting it back to a pan, and adding some previously wetted fiber, either fleece or skeins.. simmer and watch the yarn change colour... most nat herbs and flowers give greens and yellows but adding a chemical such as copper or alum or other, you can alter the original colour... nettles give some different colours of greens to browns, dahlia heads stewed give skeins a lovely bright pea green colour .. although blackberries stain your fingers they don't give much dye at all and what it does give fades after a while, but the root of the plant does as do other roots barks nuts etc. cowparsley gives a sort of banana yellow if you add fleece or skeins to the dyebath(liquid) which has been mordanted with alum first. If you grow flowers and herbs just try it out...you can have great fun.

On the other hand if you haven't the time to muck about with it all...just buy some dyes there are lots out there to chose from..overdyeing either chemical dyes or natural ones give some weird and wonderful results..

Anyway food for thought.