Archive for the ‘spinning’ Category
I got a new spinning wheel yesterday, a Majacraft Little Gem from a local friend who is unloading her spinning stuff. It’s seen hard use and has some cosmetic damage but is otherwise sound. I set it up and noticed it didn’t treadle as smoothly as it ought to.
It could use some clean-up, being covered in lint, but after a general de-lousing it still needed some help. The treadle mechanism had fiber wrapped around the shaft and in general it was a bit gunky.
Important Note: Professional Driver, Closed Course. Please to do not take this as license to disassemble your spinning wheel willy-nilly. Getting those little parts back together in the correct way is not as easy as it looks.
So here is the patient on the workbench:
Step One: find the metric hex key set. It is conveniently attached to my bicycle tool. You can field strip almost anything with this and open your beer when you are done.
I took off the crank arms, removed the screws holding the center pulley and cleaned the shaft as much as possible. The shaft itself didn’t want to come out so I didn’t push it. With some help from my handy-dandy bench vise (and a conveniently located husband who has better hand strength) I was able to disassemble and clean both cranks.
I could then use the WD-40 to clean the quite filthy parts.
Put everything back together, give it a final once over with the canned air, and it runs much better.
I’m working on another Maker Faire project. The deadline is at the end of the month so I’ve got some time to pull things together. I have fiber and one volunteer, I need a larger loom to borrow and a couple more people. Depending on what happens in the next couple weeks, I’ll adjust the scope of the project. I am talking to some people about getting educational materials to hand out.
The idea is to show the process of creating fabric from raw fiber, with carding, spinning and weaving. I have additional fiber and fabric samples as well as a simple loom and spindles people can try. I don’t intend to make it a spinning lesson, the size and noise level of the event make focused teaching difficult, but an active demo with several different stations showing the process.
Check out the project page if you are interested. If you are a Bay Area spinner and want to participate, let me know. Maker Faire is a hard event to drop in for a few hours, so I’m looking for people who can commit for at least one full day. I’d like to have at least 4 people each day, 5 would be nice so there is more time to see the rest of the event.
There may or may not be free parking but the nearby parking is not free. If you can go both days, I can collect your spinning wheel in advance and bring it to the fairgrounds. Maker exhibits get free badges, if I don’t get enough it would be nice to have people who can help cover the expense. (But we’ll see.)
This scarf started sometime in 2006 when, sick of spinning nothing but samples for the COE, I started several bobbins of singles from some black merino lamb fleece I had. I still have most of those singles, but I was talked into sending some to the county fair. My previous attempt to do something with it didn’t turn out so well. I’ve been wanting something just big enough to tuck into my coat, so I started a small scarf and have been working on it mainly in meetings. As a result there are plenty of errors, which I’m ignoring.
The yarn is natural color, from a lamb fleece I got a good discount on because it was full of VM. Since I comb a lot of fleece, this didn’t bother me much. This is almost as dark as you get with natural color wool, I could have cut off the tips and it would be a little more but I didn’t want to lose the fiber length.
The pattern is my usual simplified feather and fan with a 12 stitch repeat. One thing I like about this pattern is it’s easy to remember and the small row repeat means I can knit until I run out of yarn. It’s a little over a meter in length and about 16 cm wide, small by scarf standards but just what I was after.
Oh boy was that fun. Despite having to run back home to get forgotten spinning wheel pieces. A lot of people wandered in and out to see what the folks with the funny non-computer equipment were doing, some showed up with sewing machines, there were wedding invitations assembled and children throwing toys all over the floor. I spent most of the day carding and generally a good time was had by all. I took no pictures.
I finished the blending this morning, just to get it over with. I had a pile of junk fiber, both light and dark. I blended the mostly white stuff together, which included the last of the Grandma Wool, a collection of combing leftovers, a few things that Seemed to Be a Good Idea at the Time and some fleece that didn’t scour nicely. To improve the mix, I added odds and ends of fleece of decent quality but not enough or of a type I’d use alone for another purpose.
Here’s the finished pile:
There are neps and VM a plenty and I’m just not going to worry about it. I wanted to spread around the still somewhat greasy fiber to avoid having to scour batts and then try to re-card a semi-felted mess. Since some was already carded, I was blending mainly by the “One from Column A” method and ended up with a little of the greasy stuff left over. It’s not enough to go through blending the whole lot yet again just to mix it in.
