Monday, January 17, 2011

Spinning on a home-made wheel

First, you get the book. The Complete Spinning Book by Candace Crockett has easy instructions for making your own spinning wheel.
Then you get a cat. Are there spinners without cats? Then you get someone who likes to take on wood-working projects. In this case my husband, who happily leapt into this project. Then you wait. And life goes by, your daughter goes off to college. And then one day you have a spinning wheel! Then you need to find a spinner to try it out for you.
My friends Karen Jelenfy (of Village Books fame, who is a spinner and dyer of Maine yarn) and Debbie Bergman at Purple Fleece kindly gave the wheel its inaugural spin. Karen tried out the wheel at my house then we took it across the street to Debbie for fine tuning. The flyer had stopped turning, Debbie oiled all the joints which solved several problems.






Then, you need to learn to spin yourself.
Which I managed to sort of do!!! A miracle!!!

And now I have a spinning wheel, and can (sort of) spin.


And this is right across the street.

I will be a vendor at the Maine Spinner Registry's Newport Spin-In on Saturday, February 19th, and will bring this home-made wheel out for a test drive.
-Kathy

7 comments:

Karen said...

And a lovely wheel she is! It was a privilege to be part of this, Kathy!

Knitting Out Loud said...

Thanks, Karen. It was fun having you here! Scott fixed the O-ring issue this morning.

See you in Newport!

Anonymous said...

O-ring issue solved? Fabulous. Can't wait to see your wheel in action in a few weeks....

Knitting Out Loud said...

He put a metal ring on, which worked this morning, but is not working this evening (go figure). Will try more oil.

Young at Heart said...

ooh how utterly fascinating!!

raining sheep said...

Oh, it's a work of art!! You are so lucky to have such a most handy husband. Now I am looking forward to seeing some lovely skeins of something photographed on your pages.

t does wool said...

enjoy the new addiction.