Something new!!

Some serious excitement has been going on around here! I recently got a spinning wheel!!!!  It’s an Ashford Traveller, double drive, double treadle. Easy to assemble, easy to use, and I am having so much fun with it! I ordered it through Paradise Fibers, and they sent me free fiber for purchasing my wheel through them, so I have been spinning up a storm!

When I started unpacking it, I had a lot of help and supervision: Waffles had to inspect every single piece. She was a very thorough  quality control inspector , but she did try to steal a few of the best and most “stick like” ones for herself 😛

While she wasn’t allowed to keep any of the “sticks”, she did get a snack for all her hard work (and so she would give me some space to put it together!). The kitties showed little interest in the wheel for the most part, but the fiber was very interesting to them.

“Human, why does this fluffy have a plastic force field?”

So, on to the actual wheel, and handspun yarn!

The wheel is actually smaller than I thought it would be, although I don’t know why since I had watched videos on youtube of people setting up their traveller and using it. Also, it is a wheel that is meant to be more portable than a regular wheel, so that is a factor in size as well. But using the wheel is easy and it is a good size to squeeze in between the coffee tables so I can listen to the tv as I spin. Can’t knit and watch tv, and I definitely can’t spin and watch tv Other great stuff to listen to is podcasts, audio books, or interviews on youtube, anything I don’t have to watch. Listening to music messes up my spinning; slow songs make me treadle too slowly, fast songs have me zooming along faster than I can draft out the fiber. So no music for me at this time while spinning!

I’ve spun up about 4 skeins so far, each one getting a bit better than the last.

Left to right, first to most recent. The two off white skeins are Ashland Bay Cheviot, and the burgundy and tan are %100 merino from Tempe Yarn and Fiber, all 2 plied. Definitely need more practice, trying to get a smooth yarn that isn’t so thick and thin, but I’m happy with the progress I’m making! I’ve got some Ashland Bay Corriedale cross on the wheel at the moment, and it’s looking more consistent than the others have. I can’t wait to ply it and see how different it is from the first ones 🙂

I sat down to do some spinning this morning, and Gizmo came over to investigate what was going on.

What’s this?

What’s that?

What r u doin?

Check out Wool n’ Spinning’s Fiber Fridays for more spinning related posts!

Thank you so much for stopping by!!