My mail order bride

Clemence, the new wheel, is very much a mail order bride.  I picked her because she was beautiful.  While I already had a very utilitarian Canadian production wheel with poor finish and amazing spinning ability, I desired one of those grand ladies clad in cast iron and graceful wood turnings.  Clemence had those, and she came from a spinner who vouched for her functionality, and so I had her sent over.  We never spoke directly, but instead went through that fine matchmaker.  She came to me all innocent, and I took her in, praised her loveliness, and we began to work together as partners.  There the troubles began.  She never suspected how many other wheels already had a place in my heart, and I'm afraid she may have been a bit jealous and insecure.  I had no idea how finicky she would be, fussing with her driveband, chattering constantly, tossing the yarn right off her hooks, and keeping things at such high tension before she would let anything wind around her bobbin.

As it turns out, she was easily wooed with a couple of fine gifts.  First, I bought her a beautiful claro walnut threading hook turned by the master wheelsmith, Carson Cooper.  Then, in return for two days of weaving instruction, I was given a ball of hemp cordage, with which I made her a carefully fitted driveband.  Now she accepts my requests and I hers, and we spin as a team with few hiccups and a gentle understanding between us. With a bit of polyfelt on her flyer shaft where the bobbin rests, she has even quieted her chattering to a gentle murmur.  We speak softly to each other now.

The hemp cordage, by the way, is incredible as a driveband.  It takes hours upon hours to make, but is well worth the effort.  It has more texture than typical driveband material, and a very slight amount of elasticity, as well as immense strength, so it grips the grooves but still allows some necessary slippage.  There was an immediate and profound difference in the responsiveness of the wheel after installing the new band.  I sewed the ends together, as the material is too thick to knot without jamming up the works.

Handspun Border Leicester shawl

This is the product of three wheels, a month of spinning, and a week on the loom.  It's my first twill, my first large weaving, my first weaving of all handspun - so many firsts, with mistakes to prove it.  And I love it utterly.

The new gal

I got a second CPW!  I am told that the style is consistent with the maker Vezina.  She was shipped to me via Greyhound bus from Ohio.  I have named her Clemence.

From Sheep to Yarn

First Sheep to Yarn class this Sunday at People's Co-op!

Flute Celeste

Over the past few days, I've been washing a gorgeous Shetland fleece from a little sheep named Flute Celeste.  I bought it from Stonehaven Farm in Halfway, Oregon, and I can't say enough nice things about the farmer and the fleece.  The wool is top quality, a perfectly soft and springy honey-brown.  It's a fairly low-grease fleece and washes up easily, and there's no cotting and hardly any VM.  The farmer has been great to work with, sending me samples and working with me to find the colors I want.  I combed (with little waste left on the combs) and spun up a sample and came up with the most springy, well-rounded yarn.  I'm thinking of making a cuddly warm hap shawl and perhaps a pair of knee socks.  I'm ordering at least one more fleece from them soon.

Extra lease sticks from the loom support plant trays full
of drying fleece over the bathtub.  Six trays could easily
 dry at once this way - as long as no one needs to take
a shower!

I now have 6 fleeces awaiting processing, so I clearly need to pick up the pace!  I just discovered a great fleece washing device - plastic mesh nursery trays.   Now I'm washing in the kitchen sink, which is sparing my achy back and also keeping the locks in better shape than scouring in the top loading washing machine.  I've switched over to Kookaburra Scour from dish detergent, with a little synthrapol if the fleece is extra greasy.  It has been working great for me, but then I don't take in super greasy merino fleeces, so I don't know how it works on the more challenging wools.

I've also been working on my combing skills in anticipation of this weekend's first Sheep to Yarn class at People's Co-op.  For the first time, I used a spray bottle with water and a few drops of conditioner to keep the frizz down, and it works wonders on a couple of difficult, yet gorgeous, Shetland fleeces I've been hesitating to process.  One of them has around an 8" staple length, and a bit longer in parts, and almost no crimp.  It's too fine and long to card, and I've been nervous to even use the flicker on it.  The problem is that there are a lot of trashy bits at the butt end of each staple, which makes me think that the sheep was about to molt, and that there's invisible scurf hiding in all that white wool and making things stick together.  Once I comb it out, though, it's the closest thing to silk you'll find coming off a sheep, so the results are worth the extra effort to process it.

We're making progress on fixing up the room that will eventually be my studio.  I'm hoping to have classes in there starting in mid-June.  I pulled out my wool stash and thoroughly labeled the mystery buckets, then put the lot of it into storage in the garage, save a few things that I need to sort or that I'm currently processing and spinning.  I also dyed some curtains today, although getting the right depth of color was difficult.  I think that I will make some bands on the inkle loom to accent the curtains.  I need more rugs, so my first thought, of course, is that I should finally build my Navajo loom and start making them myself.  I wish I had more time!  But I am so grateful for the time I have.

Good friends

Norwegian Princess spinning wheel, Arthur Allen folding loom, and the stool from the Country Craftsman wheel, along with the crazy beautiful rug that I scored yesterday

First bobbin filled!

The Norwegian Princess and my little kitty princess, Celia