I ended up with two copies of this book:

So I feel obliged to give away the second copy. All you need to do to enter is send email to:

contest AT persistentknitter DOT com

by Friday May 23rd, midnight Pacific time. I’ll draw the winner out using a random selection process.

About the book

This book covers a lot of information on preparing wool to spin using combs and all the prior and post processes involved (washing wool; combing, spinning. etc) It covers blending for color changes & how to spin worsted. It even has some pictures that are quite decent despite being only in black and white. I think this is an essential book for any spinner’s library.

For another contest; head over to http://martaschmarta.blogspot.com

Saturday I took a fabulous class on “advanced drop spindling” with Amelia from the Bellwether (http://askthebellwether.blogspot.com/) and learned a lot on how to speed up the process with drop spindling, get more confident with it; and of course what the right drop spindle is for the yarn you’re trying to make in addition to a 1000 other details I don’t remember right now. She’s a great teacher; I really recommend taking a class from her if you can.

I decided to wind off the yarn I had been spinning since 1) the spindle was really too heavy for what I wanted to spin, and 2) I wanted to try out one of my newer spindles.

I rigged up this lazy kate, and it worked like a charm. I used a hair clip swiped from my daughter’s pile to keep it from nose diving back into the crate as I was winding off.  (You can see that on the left side, it’s pink) I had tried to see if I could put the cop of yarn onto a straw; but the straw was bigger than the spindle’s shaft so it wouldn’t work. Hmph! I could have tried to find a smaller straw; but thought I’d try this instead.

A few changes I want to make:
1) Add tension somehow, I had to be very careful during the winding off to not get ahead of the yarn coming off the spindle

2) Put some foam or something in the squares where the spindle rested. I feel like after winding off this way a few times, I might put an indentation or marking in the wood on the spindle. I know there is some foam downstairs in the Husband’s realm; but it’s all in use. I don’t need much; maybe he won’t notice. If this works, it might fix #1 enough.

The fiber I’m spinning? Superwash merino. The yarn it’ll be? Fingering weight three ply sock yarn. Yeah. I’m a bit nuts.

The only knitting I’ve been doing lately is on these socks. I finished the first one tonite. (Except for weaving in the ends). The sock weighs 1.6 oz; and I enough handspun left to make three more socks; so I’ll get two pair total. I’ll want a different pattern for the 2nd pair – any suggestions?

This is what I’ve been knitting lately. Of course this is a sock made out of my fabulous and wonderful handspun. It’s so fun to knit with my handspun! I have been spinning a ton of yarn lately; I’m falling behind on washing the skeins.

Straight from my wheel! It’s a sheep to shoe kit from Blue Moon Fiber Arts, colorway Puck’s Mischief. This picture makes it look more pink than it is. I would say it’s primarily purple with a lot of other colors thrown in. I spun the singles on my Ashford Joy at the 15:1 ratio, filling two bobbins. I Navajo plied it on my Schacht Matchless at an unknown ratio (whatever was available; although I was using a high speed bobbin and whorl to go with it) using my Woolee Winder. One full bobbin of singles on the Joy (3.8 ounces) basically filled one woolee winder bobbin on the matchless.

That’s how much you can cram on an Ashford Joy bobbin. More would have fit; but that just seemed silly. I’m spinning it pretty fine. it’ll be a three ply yarn and somewhere between fingering weight and sport (hopefully more towards fingering weight; but it tends to bloom when washed because I’m drafting it woolen style with a long draw).

Oh, and no this isn’t the stuff that I dyed. This is roving from Blue Moon Fiber Arts, colorway “Puck’s Mischief”. I love it.

Started with white superwash BFL. A bit of dyeing outside in the snow.

Leaves us with this:

A close up:

Oooh. pretty. (lucky me!) And we’ll be spinning it on this:

I would not have such fabulous dyed stuff to spin if it weren’t for my wonderful spinning group who organized, hosted and then rinsed and delivered my dried roving to me. Wow. I have decided I’m not cut out to dye fiber or yarn at this point. I’m lucky that there is plenty of wonderful dyed stuff out there already for me to buy.

I have been busy ignoring my fiscal tax preparation responsibilities. This is one of the activities I went to; spinning! It was a slow trickle of attendees, but once we got going; we had quite a few people there. That’s my wheel you can see with nobody sitting at it. (Although not anymore, because Marie, in the purple, bought it the very next day).

I now own this:

Which I’m actually quite excited to get my kids onto and spinning! The single treadle might be a bit more challenging for them; but I really didn’t want this in a double treadle so I could sit at any angle to it.  It’s simpler than the matchless, and much less fussy (I hope).  I think they will do OK with it. So far they are content to sit and treadle for 5 mins (they fight over whose turn it is). Spinners in the making!

You can see I’ve already almost filled a bobbin with it. I got a pound of coopworth Ashford roving as a ‘gift’ with the wheel. The color is pretty; but there’s a lot of VM and neps and junk in it. I’m spinning it long draw, very quickly, just to get the feel for how the wheel behaves.

So today I said goodbye to my new spinning wheel.  My wheel no longer, it now belongs to Marie.  Rose was beautiful, but I just wasn’t getting along with her as well as I wanted to.  I’m a bit sad, because in addition to being beautiful she had some really neat features, and maybe I should have made a larger effort to get along; but Marie really wanted a Rose, and I was happy to have tuned up her wheel for her; esp as she paid me full price for it (and bought the woolee winder and bobbins as well).

I think we (spinners in general) are lucky to have the ability to choose between so many fabulous wheels; and I’m lucky I have the money to purchase what I like.  A friend of mine is on  more of a budget than I am, but she was still able to find herself a great wheel.   I already have an amazing wheel (even if it clanks occasionally and makes me grumpy), and was trying the Rose out as a somewhat more portable option with lots of capabilities.

So it didn’t quite work out. I think I feel about wheels like I do about cars.  There are different types of cars/wheels and they are each good for a specific kind of job.  I also feel that I like to spend at least a month of solid time with a car/wheel before deciding if I really like it.   A 5 minute test drive in either case isn’t really going to cut it for me.

My next wheel is going to be an Ashford Joy.  Very portable, and I actually got to do the 5 minute test drive already.  I also happen to know there’s a member of my spinning guild who would be happy to take it off my hands if I change my mind after my month long test drive; so it’s a low risk investment for me at this point.  Plus it’s just fun to get stuff in the mail (it’d be nice if I could get one locally – but again, “oh well”).

Knit Visualizer update: Quickly, before I get into the sock yarn, I’ll give you an update on Knit Visualizer 2.0. I’ve run into a problem with the new version of Mac OS X, aka Leopard. It doesn’t play nice with the fonts I use to build the Knit Visualizer symbols. ARGH! After some testing and trying, I went last night and bought a mac mini that has Leopard on it so I can figure out what the @#%#@@()$& is going on. I am hoping to fix it up this weekend, get it working, and get it released!

Now, on to the sock yarn!

Remember we had this?

The Sheep to Shoe kit from Blue Moon Fiber Arts in the Carbon colorway.

Then it became this:

The bobbin on the left is different than the other two because I spun that one on my new Rose spinning wheel; and didn’t have a woolee winder yet. I was originally planning on doing a traditional three ply, which is why it’s split into three. I did a test of a few yards and it was way too busy for me. You can see how much space is left on the Rose bobbin compared to the Schacht bobbins. I decided on navajo ply to keep a three ply and to keep the colors together.

Bobbin one quickly became this:

And now looks like this after washing and drying:

Closeup:

It’s still a bit thicker than I was trying for, but that’s Ok.  It plumped up a lot when it was washed. It’s probably a sport weight maybe a really thick fingering weight. I’m going to do toe up socks with it, probably in plain stockinette. I hope the yellow isn’t too overpowering once it’s knit up. It’s my least favorite of the whole colorway.