Sunday, December 11, 2011

first muffler

the grey one, all blocked out to about 60 X 6.25”

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bobbin 2

finis.

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here they are together for comparison:

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its says they’re bfl, but i swear they acted more like merino.  now i think i’ll let the twist set overnight and then ply them when i get home tomorrow, or tuesday.  i’m supposed to go to a union thing tomorrow evening…:(  and i forgot to get the car serviced, so i have to do that some afternoon, somewhere…

Saturday, December 10, 2011

first bobbin done

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my handy little wpi tool says these singles are 20wpi.  (the picture is magnified, f course.)

one down

one muffler down, one to go.

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just off the needles, 54” X 6” before blocking, first handspun project besides test socks for me; these are for the guys in brigadoon, where i learned to spin..  don’t really wanna block before i get the other one done, for which i must spin laceweight of this:

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and so that will be my weekend.  next one? in brigadoon!!!!!!!

Saturday, November 26, 2011

erm, plus JO!

not in the plan, but….

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happy thanksgiving surprise, jo lives here now. jo is a cpw of obvious lineage (jeremie (?) ouelet, quebec, last quarter on the 19th C.) who just popped up on craigslist in brooksville, alerted the troops and, almost before i really knew it, was here. easily the least expensive in the collection (by half!) she only needed some minor tweaking and a spa day and she's spinning very smoothly... not unlike liz, actually.

so now i have five (5) wheels. why? what will i do with them all? none have been here long enough for me to want to sell any of them yet. but  i’m still on my honeymoon with liz, so jo is just going to have to stand in line.

or in a back corner in the living room, actually. videos:

heeere’s jo!
 
jo all clean

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Friday, November 11, 2011

the fambly

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veteran’s day holiday, just spinning with liz and ash.

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Saturday, November 5, 2011

around 3/4 spun…

around 245 yards bfl, so far.

245 yards bfl, so far

in case anybody thinks a truly fine wheel doesn’t make it easy for a new spinner?  wow.

it finished up around 380 yards at 20 wpi. yay!

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first!

first liz 1st!

 

Saturday, October 22, 2011

i am not worthy

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beauteous liz

when i splurged on my spinning chair last month, paying just about full spinning chair price, it never occurred to me that it was simply an early arrival cooling its heels while awaiting its perfect match, but…?

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meet liz.  she’s a very early ashford elizabeth, which was introduced in 1982 or so; this one was purchased in 1985 and sold, to me, on ebay just this week by her original owner, a lovely lady in boca.  at first i feared i might have overpaid, but then she arrived.  wow.  and she came with four spinning books from the 70s-80s, a set of hand carders and, of course, her matching horizontal lazy kate and four bobbins. she is enthroned in the living room, across from ash who, like me, is a bit in awe.

and so!  four.  i seem to be leaning more toward vintage than antique these days.

Saturday, October 1, 2011

happy october!

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ta-da!

this is what mystery makes:

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as yet untold yards of about 40 wpi corriedale singles, weighing around an ounce. this plying ball is one bobbin-ful, and is larger than a golf ball, but not nearly so large as a tennis ball, tightly wound and full of life!  somewhere around here in one of these books there’s a table showing what the different plies will come out to judged by the wpi of the singles, but i can’t find it just now.  suffice to say this will be lotsa yards of 2-ply fine yarn.  maybe i'll try 3plying some, i don’t know—i don’t really use all that much laceweight!.

also, it’s taken me all this time to notice that her hooks are on the left, instead of the right, flyer arm.  i don’t know what that means, exactly, but she sure is easy to work with, now that i know how!

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Monday, August 29, 2011

finally!

yesterday i finally spun on mystery!  i wanted to blog about it, but this is monday and i’m ded, so for now here are three pictures of the results.  she sure spins fine yarn, and the tiny bobbin holds only 87 yards of 2ply!

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Saturday, August 27, 2011

reemergence

now that school has started again (and now that i’m once again in a school that makes me like my job such that i think i actually may survive!) it’s time to start up everything else again, too, i suppose.  i haven’t really spun very much at all since i got back from brigadoon a month ago, not to mention working on any of my restoration projects.  i’ve been so disheartened at the loss of bonnie’s hardware, but today jerseylightning has been doing a great job of encouraging me to keep up hope, and i discovered that i had only cleaned—and so only lost--one of the wheel pins, for reasons i can’t imagine,.but that leaves one that i can use as a pattern for a blacksmith to replace them, along with the little ram’s horn nuts to hold them in.  when i go back to brigadoon in less than four months, now (!), i’ll see if maybe ron howard might be able to help me;  he made the orifice hook on the right;maybe he will make me some hardware to go with the pin in the middle.

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so today i filled up one bobbin of easily spun bfl, and put another application of stripper on bonnie.  this is what she’s looking like now with the moa and maidens done, and a quadrant of the wheel begun on both sides.

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mystery awaits.  i thought after i finish the second bobbin of bfl, i’ll try plying them on mystery.  i have yet to use her, myself.