Let's Try This Again

Well, I started spinning the Rebecca fleece on my regular wheel, but it has now officially been transfered to the Walking Wheel, giving me a total of three projects in line for the Walking Wheel, and nothing planned for poor little Saxony. Why the sudden stripping of its privileges? No, the wheel’s not getting cleaned up yet. It is not letting me spin as thin as I want to. What with it being a double drive wheel I can’t adjust the bobbin tension by itself. It’s sucking the carded fiber onto the wheel before it gets nearly enough twist, resulting in snaps, weak yarn, and loss of patience. I know I can spin thinner on the Walking Wheel, so to the Walking Wheel go the spoils. Here is the Rebecca fleece on the spindle.

And here are the completed spindle-fulls thus far.

I’m still trying to learn how to do a good, even single from the hand-carded wool. I’m geting these little puffs that I don’t get with commercially prepared roving. Hopefully I can figure out what I’m doing wrong and correct it. It’s been getting easier as I go.

And I’m learning a lot about vegetable matter in the process. As a tip, take as much out as you can when you’re loading the carder because it doesn’t all fall out in the carding process, as I was once hopeful enough to believe. Nor does all the rest of it fall out when you’re preparing it. I’m having to lay a towel on the floor under where the wool goes to catch all the stuff that drops from the skies. And there’s still some in the spun stuff. I can see it grinning at me.

For the record, this basket of wool is going to be spun into yarn, then dyed into some as yet undecided color, then crocheted into a mock-turtle neck pullover with a quarter length zipper, using a pattern which I shall make up on the fly.