Boo!

Wow, it’s been almost 2 years!  Let’s play some catch up

I sold the loom in the last post. I bought and sold a Leclerc Minerva. I bought and kept a 22″ Harrisville 8s floor loom, and a Louet Magic Dobby. The Louet.. there’s a story with that one.

The guy was supposedly friends with the children of the deceased owner. They were going to throw it in the trash but he convinced them to let him try to sell it. The stand and cloth beam were missing. It came with dobby bars but the mechanical head and all pegs for the bars are gone. He had it in the back of his truck (for a week) and it had bird shit on it. The computer box passed the self test but that was no guarantee it would actually work. There are all kinds of cosmetic issues and some spots that definitely needed some sanding to smooth out.  I made an offer based on the knowledge that I may have to send the dobby box for repairs.  He accepted the offer then tried to guilt me by pretending to make remarks under his breath that “I guess they’ll just have to come with money for insurance somewhere else”.  Really? Because 20 minutes ago you told me they were going to throw it away and I’m pretty sure the trash man doesn’t pay.

We lost our remaining kitty, almost a year after losing the other one.  We got a kitten and named her Kalea (kah -LEE-ah). This one is Trouble with a capital T.  This one likes yarn.  She likes to bat the fishing weights I’m using for the mock weaving temple. When we got her, she was 8 weeks old. She would sleep by my head and try to lick my eyeballs.  Now she waits for us to go to bed and that’s when the fun begins.  She’s full of sassy energy and gives us plenty of laughs.  Even when she’s helping me wind a warp.

Bella (the dog) tore her ACL and had to have surgery. I didn’t think she would ever walk normal again. Of course, she did recover and now you’d never know that she had surgery. 

My daughter got married in September. The wedding was beautiful. There was some wedding dress drama before the wedding but it got solved. She came to visit in July and we found a new dress while she was here.  Her husband is a great guy and we’re glad to have him as part of our family.

I agreed to be the workshops/programs person for the guild for another year.  This is my 3rd year, and I will pass the torch to someone else next year.  We had our annual sale/fiber festival this past weekend.  It was time to let go of some knitting stash that I’ve been holding onto for 5-8 years, along with some shuttles I wasn’t using, etc. Everything I put on the Weftovers table sold. Yay! I celebrated by buying silk from Redfish Dyeworks (which I’d just bought a week before at another guild sale). I also bid on a spinning wheel on the silent auction and won that. (Is it really a “silent” auction when you can see what the last person on the list bid? I mean, I know there’s no auctioneer doing his fancy selling but silent seems to indicate, at least to me, that the bid isn’t known.) So now I own a Louet S10 with Woolee Winder, that I don’t need because I DON’T SPIN!  There was a package of fiber on the weftovers table for 50 cents. I bought it. It’s corn fiber. It’s pretty. I have no clue what I’m doing with it but I spun some of it up anyway. I need to find it’s happy place. I either have too much twist or not enough. If those areas would all smoosh together and even out magically, it would be great.  AND! I won a $50 gift card to Webs at the raffle table.

Back to the Magic Dobby loom, I bought a cloth beam. I thought “how hard can it be to build that stand?”. Well let me tell you, it’s pretty freaking hard when you aren’t a woodworker.  FYI, do not buy a dowel jig at Harbor Freight. It’s a piece of junk and you will end up with holes that are NOT centered and wood that is now ruined. I sanded out the rough spots on the loom. After quite a bit of work, the solenoids are now behaving (for the most part).  Pretty disappointed with Louet customer service, though. I’m pretty sure you don’t want to spend the next hour reading about THAT alone. I have a warp on the loom now and found that the lower part of the shed is pretty loose=y goose=y.  This is a problem since those loose threads like to stick to the top shed’s threads and I end up with errors. After much cursing and wanting to set the loom on fire, I remembered that, just because I can’t adjust the shafts so they sit lower, I can raise the height of the warp on the back beam.  Large dowel rod on top of the back beam to the rescue.

We are getting along much better now. Not one to leave well enough alone though, I decided I wanted to try live weight tensioning so I don’t have to get up every time I want to advance the warp.  I haven’t gotten it to work. Yet. Damn I can be stubborn.

So I think that’s enough catching up for one post.  It’s past my bedtime.

 

 

Spinning, one more time

I got very frustrated with spinning, mostly because it was defeating me.  After speaking with a friend, I made a few tweaks and tried one more time.  Success!

Far from perfect but not too damn bad.  I had about decided that I didn’t want a wheel, that I didn’t want to learn about plying, that I was better off not adding more crap to take up space around the house.  I think I’ll keep at it a little while longer before I make any definite decisions, but signs are pointing to more crap to take up space around the house.  Starting with fiber because I used it all up. Time to surf etsy or some such and order some.

In the meantime, I have cleaning to do a warp to wind.

Spinning

This past weekend, I went to the Conference of Northern California Handweavers. I had a class on Friday, one on Saturday, and one on Sunday.  That was also 3 days of being able to spend half the day in the vendor hall.  While I did spend some time shopping, I spent quite a bit of time in the Spinning Corral.  The first day, one of the volunteers showed me how to spin on a spindle.  They had a bag of fibers and for a $5 donation, I got a spindle made from a CD and choice of two balls of fiber to play with.  I took it back to the room and again, I didn’t do well.

The next day, I passed by the booth selling Woolee Winders and electric spinners.  Thinking maybe I’d do better there, the guy tried to teach me using the electric spinner.  Boy, spinning must just not be my thing.  Not willing to give up, I went back to the Corral for one more try.  This time went much better.  The lady sat me at a Lendrum double treadle and told me to just sit there and work the treadles.  The goal was to get my feet going at a steady rhythm without thinking about what my feet were doing.  I treadled for what seemed like forever.  Then we introduced the fiber into it.  I spun yarn!  Granted, it was not pretty and it wasn’t even, but I did it!  Mini hanks!

The bad thing is that I now want a spinning wheel.  Like I need more tools sitting around the house, not to mention more yarn. I was ready to run to the nearest vendor that sold the Lendrum and bring that baby home.  Surprisingly, common sense took over.  Being as they had all those wheels in the Corral, I should try each one.  There were close to 10 different wheels in there and I treadled each without trying make yarn.  I didn’t like the Ladybug, though I was hoping I would simply because it has color.  The Clemes seemed to be very hard to treadle for me. Actually, I didn’t really like any of the single treadle wheels they had.  My two favorites were the Ashford Joy and the Lendrum DT.  Choosing between the two, in my very limited experience, I think I like the Lendrum the best.

I’ve tried the spindle again.  While I am doing better on it, I think I like the wheel better.  It’s likely I need something better than the CD spindle, or the one I tried to make myself.  Regardless, I’ve got my eye out for a used wheel 🙂