Curiosity got the best of me and as it happens I have a Fricke Woolee Winder.  So I tossed on my pipe to make the bobbin fit, then I tossed on the Woolee Winder (WW) and it didn’t want to work.  The flyer was too far from the bobbin for the gears to mesh.  I sent DH to the Hardware Store one day on a mission, while I was off at a spin in, to find me 2 things, another pipe, same size as the one I already had but shorter, if we had to cut it down, well we could do that and to find me a screw, identical to the one in my WW, he found the screw, but not the pipe.  So off went an email to Doug, maker of the Pocket Wheel to find out where he bought his pipes….he bought them locally, which is not so local for me, about an hour and a half north of me as a matter of fact.  He send me a pipe, 4.5″, and I got it in the mail today.  I tossed that on there, then the WW with the longer screw and started spinning, worked for about 2 min, then the WW lost it’s grip and stop flying.

HMMMMM, now what.  I rememered something from a Ravelry thread about pipe/plumbers tape, it was a Matchless thread to help with clacking as the whorls got older, they loosen up.  Guess what, there was some in my spinning kit, perfect, wrapped that around several times, wanted to add a little “cushion” on there screwed the flyer back on, and yes, I now have a WW that works on my Pocket Wheel , and it spins great, I can’t even feel the added weight of the flyer as I do with some of my other wheels.

The fiber, it’s a Blue Moon Sheep to Shoe kit in one of the Raven Colors – Rook-y.  It really does look mostly black, but i did notice stretch of color as i was plying, so we’ll see what happens to it when i skein it.  There is a bit of a dark dark gray in there and you can see a hint of it in the pic.

Back to playing with my new toy.

Well later that weekend I thought about it some more, which led to me sending an email to Thomas Golding asking about if he could do it and the cost.  I found the cost to be reasonable, considering this was a custom design request.  Well one thing led to another and look what showed up in the mail today:

Whorls 2 3/4″ Cherry Handcarved 5-point star

Style: Aromatherapy

Shaft: Walnut 5/16″ x 8 3/4″

Weight 1.46 oz.

It is absolutely beautiful in it’s simplicity.  The balance is incredible as is the craftmanship.  The spin time….wow, with a flick it’s off and running and i can draft until I am reaching up as far as I can and it hits the ground, which stops the spin of course, but I’m sure if I were taller it would spin longer as it would take longer for it to find the ground .

Yes there has been some knitting and even some finishing, but the 2 fo’s I have are waiting for a dunk and block.  So pics later, well ok as soon as I get over my awe of this spindle, or at least put it down long enough to block the scarf and shawl i’ve finished.

I’m back to spinning.

This last Saturday, I took a little trip up to North Bend (about 50 miles from where I live, on the way to Snoqualmie Pass) to take an advanced drop spindling class with Amelia AKA The Bellwether. 

Forgive the pic, it was after the class was over and we were just kind of milling around, and I thought I need to take at least 1 picture.  I would have taken some earlier but I forgot I had the camera until this point.

Look at all those spindles, yes, during class we were allowed to try any spindle we wanted and use the spindles to learn on .  3 of those spindles made it home with me, pics to follow at a later date…maybe.

So I what did I learn:

1. I learned how to use a Turkish Spindle.  I am even more comfortable using a bottom whorl spindle, which was one of my goals for the class.
2. I learned how to Navajo ply on the drop spindle, it’s tricky, but no where near as complicated as I thought it would be .
3. I learned how to Ply-On-the-Fly, this is a neat bar trick, where you spin your single then navajo ply it before you wind on to the spindle, so when you are done, what comes off your spindle is a finished 3 ply yarn.  I may write it up here once I’m more comfortable with it.

All in all I had a great time, and it was definitely worth the trip out to North Bend to take this class, and I look forward to taking more classes with Amelia, but she’s just a tad farther away, in Sequim WA .  That’s a ferry trip and a floating bridge away, so it’s not exactly easy for me to get out to her LYS to take a class, but I’m thinking I may have to find a way, she is a joy to learn from. And now my addiction to spindling has brought my drop spindle collection up to 26 drop spindles, Amelia says I’m getting to the point where I’m a collector, but I still have a ways to go to catch up to her.

Apparently, my new Rose has been off having some fun when I wasn’t looking, she had a baby!!!  now if only I could figure out who the father is?

Let me introduce Pocket, he’s a Pocket Wheel, and since i’m not very creative and the name fit him, he is hence forth dubbed Pocket.  Yes technically he would be my 6th wheel, but I sold my first wheel, that’s the Louet I sold before we moved back to Washington.  So that would make him my 5th wheel, except….I sold the Lendrum.  Let me say that one again, just a bit more slowly…

I  S O L D  T H E  L E N D R U M!

Sachi, is in the process of buying my Lendrum, well i guess it will be hers soon,  We’re doing a lay-a-way, which will give me a chance to find all those bobbins and drive bands and other pieces. Since I got the Rose, my poor Lendrum, or is that now Sachi’s Lendrum, in any case has been sitting in a corner sulking, he hasn’t had any fiber on him since well since I got the Rose, and Sachi’s been looking for a good 2nd wheel so her Kromski could get a break and not break on her, so the Lendrum is off to a good home.

I’m off to spin, more later when I get back from the Whidbey island spin in.

As I mentioned, we were in Oregon, and decided to detour to Woodland Woolworks and it followed me home.  Libby didn’t believe me when I told her I bought the wheel, but since I was taking a long time checking out, she went to the car, still thinking I wasn’t going to buy a wheel.  So she was quite surprised when I walked out to the car with a newly acquired piece of “luggage”. 

I got home and told DH that I had bought a new suitcase, of course he asked what was in it.  I looked him square in the eye and told him that it was another spinning wheel.  Without missing a beat, he asked me if this meant he could “get a new marker”.  DH is very much into his paintball, and apparenlty he wanted to get a new paint ball marker (aka paint ball gun) and took this opportunity to get permission to buy it.  The only thing I could say was “of course dear” especially since this is my 2nd wheel in a matter of what 6 months or so.  He’s going to be getting his new marker one of these days, I got a new wheel, and managed not to get into any trouble.  My DH is so good that way, he doesn’t question what I bring home, well usually, and instead of asking how much I spent, he just rolls his eyes and says “if it makes you happy, it’s worth it”.  I think I’ll keep him .

This last weekend Blue Moon Fiber Arts had a destashing sale at Scappoose Creek Inn and well Libby and I decided to take a road trip. So we packed MHP into the car and hit the road bright and early Saturday morning, ok, so it was 8ish by the time we left her place, and headed down the I5 towards Oregon.  Shidiot gave us directions that took us off the beaten path, and we found ourselves driving down the Lewis and Clark Trail, a beautiful drive if you’re ever in the area and have some time to kill, definately take it, but it takes you into the back country.

We got to the barn where the sale was being hosted around 11 and the place had pretty much been cleaned out, but never fear, I did manage to buy some fiber, not much, but yarn none-the-less.  We wandered out to the pasture to try and feed the llama’s they had there but the llama’s were having nothing to do with us.  Yes I have pics, again they are on the camera and can’t find their way off yet, I’ll work on it tonight.

Since we were in the neighborhood, we decided to head on down to Woodland Woolworks, well it was an hour drive further south from where we were at, but it was beautiful and IMHO well worth the trip.  The show room was, well wow, a bit overwhelming.  You walk in the front door and off to the right there is a “Garage Sale” Room, where they have mostly yarn that is on sale.  To the left and up the stairs, you walk into a room full of spinning wheels, off of that is a room with weaving looms and cones of yarn.  Straight in from the front door, it’s a bit deceiving because that is the “office” and also the place where they take your money.  Off of that is a room full of yarn and fiber.  The yarn is set out in such a way to look like a normal yarn store.  This is where the difference is, with the yarn, it’s pretty much one or 2 of everything they have in the colors they have, the rest, well you bring it to the fron desk and they will get the quantities you want from the warehouse.  For those in Seattle, the yarn section there is about the size of the yarn area of Weaving Works, in So. Cal it’s about the size of Unravelled Yarns.  Then add the fiber section, about the size the back end of Weaving Works, where all the fiber and cones are, and about the size of the classroom and sitting area of Unraveled.  It’s big.

The room with the spinning wheels was my down fall.  All those lovely wheels and even sample fibers to spin.  Well I’ve been thinking about picking up a Louet Victoria for a while now, I was going to wait until next year, please note the WAS.  I made the mistake of sitting down and spinning on one, and well now I’m the proud owner of an oak Louet Victoria, DH has pics of that on his camera, I just need to get him to post it so I can cross post it here.  Yes it followed me home.  The cost, well I had to pretty much sacrifice my desire to go to Madrona this year, but I didn’t even do that much, I did register for one class at Madrona this year, and will not be staying down there, but instead commuting just for the 1 day, we’ll see about wether or not I visit the market there or not.

So my to do list is to find the cord for my camera, so I can move the pictures from the camera to here, mind you Libby had control of the camera so I’m not exactly sure what all is on there, but there were some beautiful sites, so I’m sure there are some beautiful pictures .

I’ve really been more into my spinning lately, just took a 3 week spinning class on fiber prep, and am playing with samples of raw wool from that.  I’ve spun at least 3 skeins in the last month, if not more, I’ll have to do a photo shoot with those.  Lately, it’s been work and pretty much avoiding the internet when I get home.  Not much knitting going on around here, well other than holiday knitting, but I won’t post those pics until after the recepients receive those. I do have an FO or 2 that have yet to be posted here as well, but like I said, I’ve been avoiding the internet at home.

Wow, now that it’s all out in the open, I think I got a little carried away, but I had fun and will continue to have fun with the haul.   This post is picture heavy, so I used thumbnails, click to embiggen.

Some spinning was done, just a wee bit on the drop spindle, since I decided not to bring my wheel. 

This is my first actual spindle spun yarn.  The darker stuff with the red in it, I picked up a while back, when I was out with the girls, it’s a Merino/Tussah silk blend. The pink and blue is Shetland, just a sample that came from the Persistent Knitter, she was culling out colors from some roving for her 2nd single, to mute the pinks in the other single when she plied so she gave me and a few others in our spinning group a sample of the yarn.

 The Damage

From Chamelion Colorworks, the first 2 are Optim, next to that is BFL, and last but most certainly not least is this wonderful slice of nirvana, it’s an ounce of Guanaco. Yes I know it sounds like something the bat left behind, but it’s not, it’s from the Camelid family, it’s the baby sister of the llama and alpaca, and the big siter to the Vicuna, it’s wonderfully soft!

This vendor is going to have to deal, because I can’t quite remember who it is, and I don’t have any business cards with me right now.  The first is a lovely bag, and the 2nd is what came in that lovely bag, 1 glorious ounce of Qiviut, it’s the downy undercoat of a musk ox. Next to that is 1 oz of Bufallo mixed with 25% Cashmere and 25% Silk.

So I got the bowl from the above vendor, I’ve been looking for a small wood bowl for Tahkli spinning.  Again with the faulty memory, I can’t seem to recall this vendor either, but the darker spindle is a drop spindle, it’s got a whorl is square with rounded corners, it spins like a dream, thanks Sachi for test driving it for me. Oh, go check her out, she got more pictures than I did, and she was my partner in crime.  Although, she was a bit more restrained than I was.

So I have to give up on vendors at this point, since apparently I can’t remember very many if any of them.  Each braid is 1 lb, I will eventually ply both together, for a sweater.

Ahhh, a vendor I can remember Blue Moon Fiber Arts.  The 1st is a Sheep to Shoe kit, I have no idea the color way.  The 2nd is Puck’s Mischief in a Bamboo/wool blend.

And here we have Pygora goat, 1 oz purple and 1 oz pink, to be plied together eventually.  Yes Sachi, the pink was picked up Sunday morning on my way out of town, as are the next 2 items.

The Octopus (as nick named by my DH), is a merino/silk blend, and I was caught hugging it late Saturday afternoon, even worse I was caught shoving it into Sachi’s hands to hug as well.

I’ll be the first to admit, I’m not particularly fond of bottom whorl spindles, just not happy with the balance, but this little gem was simply to good to pass up, and it really does spin nicely.  It comes with 2 whorls, a big one and a smaller one, you can spin with one or both.  It also came with a cord, one of the whorls was hanging on that cord, so it can be used as a necklace, best of all, the spike can be used as a hair stick.  What a great idea, I simply had to have it after taking a 2nd and 3rd look at it, so it got picked up on the way out Sunday.

Also picked up but not pictured, a Woolee Winder for my Lendrum.  I know, I know, I said I didn’t need one, but sometimes a girls gotta do what a girls gotta do.  I got home, and found the Woolee Winder for my Matchless and my Rockin’ Sock Club installation.  Oh yeah, I bought a Rockin’ Sock Club bag as well, but silly me, totally forgot to take a pic of it, maybe next time.  One last item was purchased on my way out Sunday, a DVD on Rigid Heddle weaving, although with all this fiber, who knows when I’ll get around to doing some more weaving.

I really couldn’t help it, I didn’t mean to buy it. Heck, I didn’t even mean to walk into my LYS. I was out mailing packages, who knew the Post Office was just around the corner from my LYS. I sure didn’t until I got there. So I mailed off my packages, got in the car, and the next thing I new the car had driven to the LYS. Who am I to argue with my car, if I’m nice to it, it’ll keep being nice to me and take me to places with pretty fiber and stuff. On a good note I didn’t buy any yarn. But this Namaste did follow me home. Inside it’s split into 2 sections, one is zippered, and lots of smaller pockets. It’s a happy project tote, oh and it really thinks it’s adorable (don’t let it know, but I think it’s adorable too, lucky for me it can’t read)

DH’s sweater was all over it. See it’s getting somewhere, it’s a bit resentful of me having taken a break from it to finish off the socks for the SAM KAL 3 and jealous of all the attention given to the scarf for the Knit Off, but it’s whipping itself into shape.

Speaking of the Knit Off, it’s official, I’m in Round 2. Instead of the 99 people being broken out in to 16 groups this round is head to head, one to one, mano a mano. The competition is getting stiffer, there are only 16 knitters this round, and you have to beat the 1 you are paired off with.