April 25, 2009July 4, 2009 - saffronknits 3 Comments

weekends are for spinning!

First of all, I wanna show you how the ‘happy accident’ is spinning up.

I’m really happy with it. I LOVE rambouillet. It is SOOO soft and spins similarly to merino, which I also love.

Also, I thought you might like to see this:

No! It is NOT mine! It is on loan. It is a Majacraft Rose, the wheel I’ve been ogling for several months.

I tried several wheels. I tried the Susie, but didn’t like it as much. The Majacraft Pioneer spins very smoothly, but didn’t have the ‘heft’ that I felt with the rose. I also tried the Schacht Ladybug and that one spins very nicely as well – it felt very comparable to the Majacraft Pioneer.

When I got her home (yes, even though the wheel is not mine, it still feels like a ‘she’), I had to get used to the idea that I actually had a wheel in my home. I’d walk by it an look at it, just a wee bit intimidated.

Finally, I stopped and examined her closer… and the big question became … how do I get the bobbin off?

So I did something I do well – Research! I got the manual off of the Majacraft website and printed off some pages and finally found the information I was looking for.

The first thing I spun was some light brown Romney that I had dyed. It was the same fiber that I used in my spinning wheel lesson.

Not. fun. The colors were nice, but the actual spinning this fiber made spinning not fun. When I finally realized the fiber was the issue, I moved over to some blue merino top that I bought over a year ago from Strings & Yarn in the ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ colorway.

BOY! What a difference! Soft and pretty fiber sliding through my fingers make for quite an enjoyable spinning experience.

One of issues I have is getting the wheel started in the correct direction. I had a lot of curly-cues on my first bobbin. Not so many on the 2nd. (I’m planning on spinning up a 3-ply – which will be my first three ply EVER!)

My other issue is that I treadle like a maniac. I can’t seem to slow my feet down. I can make a conscious effort to do so, but as soon as my mind wanders, my feet pick up speed. I moved to the lowest ratio on the whorl, and that helps, but my feet still move too fast. Hopefully in time, I will calm down in that regard. After I finish this three-ply, I’ll take some time to focus just on treadling to try and get more control over it.

Here is the first bobbin:

All I can now say is that the more I spin on her the more I love her.

Layaway is a good thing.

April 17, 2009December 26, 2009 - saffronknits 3 Comments

cotton pickin’ yarn

I recently bought some yarn that can’t seem decide what it wants to be. It from Classic Elite Yarn’s Verde collection… called “Sprout” – Bulky organic cotton.

When I was a beginning knitter, I used to get nervous about knitting cotton because I kept hearing that it wasn’t as forgiving as wool as far having memory and such so I was slow to start using it and slow to come to appreciate it. I still don’t use it a lot, but I’m learning to enjoy working with it.

Case in point: This is some very lovely yarn, has lots of texture and character and I like how it knits up. Nonetheless… I’ve had to rip out twice. First it wanted to be washclothS … then placemats … who knows what’ll be next. Sounds like me trying to decide on a major in college.

I hope it gets over it’s identity crisis soon.

April 10, 2009December 12, 2009 - saffronknits 1 Comment

more dyeing

Here’s some more of my attempts at crockpot dyeing:

April 7, 2009July 4, 2009 - saffronknits 3 Comments

happy accident

My first attempt at crockpot dyeing didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to. I tried three colors – yellow, purple and red and my hope was that you could see each color… but due to my using my crockpot for the first time (and accidentally having the setting on low), the colors blended. With just yellow and purple, I could have ended up with muddiness, but the red kept that from happening and I ended up with a kinda of rust color with variations.