July 25, 2009

Maiden Voyage

Posted in Journal at 7:35 am by Jenn

Well, today was a fiber filled day.  I started the day off combing the rest of my portion of the alpaca that Heather and I were lucky enough to be given by one of the members of the Baltimore Spinner’s Guild.  I have a pile set aside that I’m going to comb in to rolags for a friend but other than that, it’s mine all mine!

This after noon I picked up my wheel!  SQUEEEE!  My ASHFORD JOY.  I brought it home, took it out of the box and stared at it…”Oh my God, I own a spinning wheel” was my first thought and my second thought was “What am I going to spin first”.

The wheel came assembled with the exception of the flyer and the brake so I had to set that up….no problem except that one of my flyer hooks wasn’t threaded so I am a little unbalanced at the moment, but I sent Ashford an email when I registered the wheel so they should be taking care of that for me.

Setting up the brake was probably the most stressful.  I had to cut the wire and I just knew I was going to screw something up…that’s when the measure 45 times, cut once rule was initiated.  Just a little bit of OCD there.

Anyway, I decided to give Karida’s destash fiber (sorry I don’t know the name of the colorway) a whirl and I am very pleased with the results so far.  Here’s a picture of the yarn spun up on the maiden voyage.

I think I’m spinning this thin enough that I may be able to make this a 3 ply??? Hopefully.  AND hopefully the gently used Lazy Kate w/extra bobbins that I scored on Ravelry will be here when I’m ready!

This test run, determined that my wheel is female and therefore, I decided to name her Vivienne after my favorite Julia Roberts character….Vivienne in Pretty Woman.

My original thought was to name it after my grandmother and call her Belle, but then I thought about the amount of swearing I do when I spin and thought I’d better not.  I had other thoughts too, but some of those are real names that I’d consider naming a child if and when I ever have one so I didn’t want to use my names!  LOL.  I’m also not telling so you can’t use them either!  HA.  My “what if I have a baby names” are still top secret.

Here are a few pictures of my most recent yarns – spun on various wheels that I borrowed from Cloverhill Yarn Shop prior to ordering mine a few weeks ago.

The pink/brown  is my first attempt at 3 ply with an unknown fiber (pink) and  some of the brown merino from the Sheep and Wool Festival.  The other two skeins come from fiber purchased from Copperpot Woolies – Tuscan Sun is the colorway, it’s a merino/bamboo blend.  I was really pleased with the ply on the smaller skein.

These are my two favorite yarns to date

On the right is my best ply work so far.  It started as merino combed top from FatCatKnits in the Bruin colorway and ended up as a really pretty 2 ply yarn.  Kind of Renaissancey.  On the left is the 2 ply that I made from the Cormo that I bought at Sheep and Wool.  It is soft and squishy and was fun to spin and ply.  I wish I understood more about worsted vs. woolen before I spun this.  I chose worsted and I think it would have been better suited for woolen… either way, it’s going to make a great warm something.

Last but not least, here is a picture of my package #1 from my pal in the Secret Pal 14 swap.

At the top of the picture are 4 hand-dipped Yankee Candles.  I love candles!  On the left is a felting kit to make a Tulip, in the middle is a hand care kit from Mary Kay – much needed because my “picking” habit still exists and on the right is a book light which I don’t really need right now because Scott and I aren’t in the same location but come October 28th, this will come in VERY handy.  I’m a lucky girl!

Other than all that, I am taking a beaded scarf class tomorrow morning at Crazy For Ewe in LaPlata and I start work on Monday!  Someone’s got to pay for all this fiber!

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