I have just updated my blog software to the latest version and I’m in the process of learning how to make a new set of templates.
Links to things like archives, comments, categories etc will appear and disappear as I change things around. I apologise for any problems this may cause.
If you would like to contact me for any reason, you can do so here.
And I’m sure it will to you too 🙂
The other large purchase that I made with the money from selling my knitting machine is a Strauch jumbo ball winder.
I had been really frustrated with my tiny 50gm ball winder ever since I started spinning on a Majacraft Suzie Pro. Even the regular bobbins can hold up to 200gms of fingering weight singles and since I bought a plying flyer and jumbo bobbins I’ve been forced to knit from enormous 400gm hand-wound balls of yarn. My hands would become very sore while winding them and then they’d roll around the floor the whole time I was knitting and get chased by the cat.
These are the jumbo centre pull balls that I wound on it yesterday. Even the smallest ones don’t fit on a regular ball winder. The little commercial ball of wool on the right is a 50gm ball, which is the most that will fit on a normal size one.
The two largest ones are over 400 grams :). I have a lot more to wind yet!
I did have a few questions after I bought the winder and both Mandie and Otto were very helpful and quick to reply.
Otto Strauch also made this video to show how to use it to wind slippery yarns.
Tomorrow I’ll tell you about my new kanzashi templates from Clover that my Sortahubby gave me for my birthday. Hopefully I’ll be able to play with them tonight and give you a full review.
When I turned 33 (8 years ago, cough), I decided that everything I own that wasn’t being used or enjoyed should go and find itself a purpose in someone else’s life. And what a great idea that has turned out to be!
Last year I started making decisions about the “big stuff”. The things that cost me a lot of money or a lot of time to procure. The biggest of these things was my enormous computerised knitting machine.
I had originally bartered $1,800 worth of website work for this machine and a lot of extras but despite my love for it and the things I made on it, I just did not have the room to use it any more. So I took a deep breath and sold it on Ebay for $1,500.
And I bought things with the money. $900 was on things I planned and the rest went on our new “surprise” mortgage on what we lovingly refer to as our little crap shack. Our last home purchase was for walls and most of a roof so a crap shack is a step up. But I digress.
I bought stuff. Cool stuff. Informational stuff. Some of it is even “learn things you never thought you’d get to” stuff.
My biggest purchase was a Journey attache case charkha made by Jonathan Bosworth. Most people call them Bosworth charkhas because without Jonathan they just wouldn’t be the same. Here are some pictures of my new love 🙂
In the bag.
The bags on the website are all made of patterned fabrics so I asked if they had any plain ones that weren’t listed. They had just one left and it was exactly the colour I was after. Of course I wanted a plain bag so I could decorate it with a loomed flower brooch.
Closed they look like a beautiful wooden attache case. Kind of obvious considering the name, ahem.
ToddlerGuy went down for a nap very easily today so I thought I’d have another go at learning to spin on it. I got it! I spun actual real cotton yarn! I have wanted to learn to spin cotton for about ten years and now I can. Not well, but it didn’t fall apart. Much 🙂
My very first little skein of cotton on the built-in skein winder. When I bought my charkha I also bought the “Spinning Cotton on the Charkha” DVD by Eileen Hallman. I found Eileen’s instruction very easy to follow and the proof that she teaches well is sitting in front of me in a little skein 🙂
This picture shows the lazy kate. The two boxes on the left are for holding the spindles. The top one also has a fixed arm inside for when you’re using the skein winder so the yarn goes from the spindle on the lazy kate, up around the hook on the arm in the top box, then to the skein winder. The skein winder also measures your yarn as one turn equals a yard.
Not only is the workmanship really high quality, there are many small features that go into making these charkhas really lovely to use. When you’re not using the skein winder you can spin on the charkha while the arms of the skein winder are stored in the box so you don’t have to find somewhere to put them. The bearings are sealed and don’t need oiling. The skein winder can also be assembled without unscrewing anything. I also can’t say enough good things about the Bosworths as people. They’re lovely to deal with, very helpful -with overseas purchases and special requests, and kept us up to date every step along the way while those of us who had placed orders waited for our wheels to be made.
I don’t have enough skill using the wheel to make it worth videoing me using it, but I found this video on youtube. This spinner is using a Bosworth book charkha, which is the smaller version of mine.
And I have to show you this video too. This lady isn’t using a Bosworth charkha but check out the smile at 46 seconds. That’s how it feels when you figure out that you really can spin your own cotton after wanting to for so long 🙂
I’m not quite sure where to start with this post so I’ll just jump straight into the spinning that I mentioned yesterday.
150gms of Ewe Give Me the Knits organic merino in “High Country Autumn”. This is the club fibre from April 2011.
I spun straight from the tops and chain plied. dk weight. Instead of predrafting, I drafted straight across the top from side to side in order to keep the speckles in the colours. I really love how this turned out.
This next spin is from BeeMiceElf. I bought it from someone who was destashing it on Ravelry.
This is a two ply, fingering weight Polwarth. I haven’t spun a lot of polwarth and I really enjoyed it. 220gms. I split one braid into about 12 or so strips and the other into just four so one ply has longer colour repeats than the other.
Speaking of Ravlery, I managed to get back onto the website after playing around with my firewalls. It turned out that the modem firewall was blocking not only Ravelry, but also google images, Etsy and blogspot images. At one stage Sortahubby’s virus protection was also marking Ravelry as a threat site. Maybe it has something against knitting 😛
This next yarn is an alpaca and merino mix from Margaret Peel’s fibre supplies. I carded it to blend the colours a bit more. There’s about 400gms of dk weight two ply. This picture shows about half of it. It’s light, airy and smoooooth.
It’s way after 11pm so I’ll finish off with two pictures of the pieces I made from the yarns I mentioned yesterday. I’ll save my spinning wheel news for tomorrow.
This is my Kindle case in progress. At the moment it’s just a garter stitch rectangle with rounded corners on one end. I’m going to fold it into a purse shape and close it with a pretty button. It will have to be lined too, to protect the screen from some of the more “textural” elements in the yarn 😉
I don’t even have a Kindle yet so I can take my time finishing it.
Finally, this is what I have done with my dolly in the garden yarn. It’s a crocheted graffiti tag for the Ewe Give Me the Knits shop. It will eventually be wrapped around a pole inside the shop.
Tomorrow I promise I’ll show you the prototype of a new project that will be appearing on the website eventually and a sneak peek of one that will be appearing much sooner. Plus I’ll reveal my new spinning wheel which I’m very excited about learning to use. It’s totally out of my comfort zone, which is a fun place to go every now and then 🙂
