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…?

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.

Flickr Tags: ashford elizabeth,spinning wheels,elizabeth one

unpacking liz

Flickr Tags: spinning wheels

second bobbin

 

Flickr Tags: spinning

happy october!

ta-da!

this is what mystery makes:

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!

Flickr Tags: spinning

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!

Flickr Tags: spinning

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.

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.

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.

Flickr Tags: spinning wheel restoration