In honor of fast approaching spring (positive thinking) I have changed colors.
Sorry to have been MIA except for a few delurkings. One excuse I have is that I have been restarting an old hobby or craft of mine.
About 32 years ago (appox 1978) I bought an Ashford Traditional (Saxony) spinning wheel. I took lessons for about 1 year with a lady who raised sheep and lived on a farm about 35 miles from my house. I really enjoyed it, but life intervened as it so often does.
I never sold my wheel though. I kept it through my divorce, moving seven times and ending up on Whidbey Island 22 years later. My Ashford wheel made it through all that (and so did I along with living with a cousin, living alone, meeting my true love and getting remarried). Ashford makes good wheels. :-)
After a couple years, I found a spinning group on Whidbey and joined them during a period of unemployment. When I got a new job, I had to stop the spinning group because it was held mid-day. I took up weaving for a short time which I also really enjoyed. I went with a girlfriend to a west coast gathering of lovers of fibers and without previous planning I traded my Ashford wheel (I had it with me because everyone brought their wheels with them) for a brand new Lendrum Spinning Wheel. I said goodbye to old dependable but cranky and said hello to my new walnut pal. It just loved to spin and wasn't cranky at all. But another new job intervened again,
and I had to set my wheel aside.
After 4 more moves (the last of which was back to Ohio) and 9 more years I am now spinning again. Yes, it was a lot of time spent changing addresses and packing and unpacking (I have thrown away all my moving storage boxes now). Happily, I am tenacious about keeping in touch with old friends from everywhere and thanks to several of them, I picked up where I left off with my spinning.
So here's some photos to document this tale. Sadly I don't have any of my original wheel.
Here is my Lendrum wheel plus some of my show photography on the wall.
Now, I have spun a bobbinful (new word) of dark brown wool and a bobbinful of turquoise blue. They are on my Lazy Kate which is a device to hold the bobbins while plying the two colors.
We call my "singles" (unplied yard) Novelty Yard because of the bumps and thin spots. :-)
Now you can see the wheel with the Lazy Kate positioned, ready to start plying.
Another view of the same...
The two bobbins of singles have been plied and removed from the third bobbin onto a Niddy Noddy which holds the plied yard and also makes it easy to count length. I got 92 yards of plied yarn.
The yard has been removed from the Niddy Noddy and is hanging. The straighter the "hang" the better the spinning... supposedly.
A close up view of the hanging yarn. I call it Denim.
And finally the skein displayed in a traditional fashion for viewing.
So there you have it and I'm sticking to my story. :-)
P.S. Thanks to Brittanygirl, here is a link to a photo of my first wheel. It's the second one down on the left.
