Category Archives: Linocut

I got my new wheel on Wednesday. I was so excited to get it out of the box and assembled and set up I completely forgot I had a committee meeting that nightand didn’t even remember ’til I got to work the next morning and looked at my wall planner.

This is the first year I have used a wall planner and I’m finding it a great tool for keeping myself in check. Now I’m managing my own little group of engineers, I definitely need it to keep me diciplined. I’ve tried to impose similar timetables on my quilting and creativity, but I actually find it stifles rather than stimulates my creativity.

Ok, back to the wheel, here she is 🙂

It looked like it had been sitting in someone’s garage for a while, it came with some wool already spun on the bobbins. It was revolting, all matted, dirty, greasy etc. The first thing I did was cut that crap off.

The shaft on the flyer was a bit rusty too and the bobbins wouldn’t spin freely so Riscy attacked it with some fine sandpaper and now it is super smooth 🙂

It didn’t come with a drive string, so I made one with cooking string which I coated in candle wax. I hadn’t read about that anywhere, but the string on the wheel I have been borrowing seems to be coated in something like that.

I’ve also rigged up a scotch tension device since my wheel didn’t come with one. I went to the fishing shop, batted my eyelashes and they gave me length of thick fishing line, I got someone at work to show me how to tie a fishermans knot. And Voila!! I’m up and running.

For $120 posted I think I got a bargain 🙂
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The weekend went well. Much wine and cheese was eaten. I have probably gained 5kg must go back on diet posthaste.

Now onto the exciting news. I have won an Ebay auction for an Ashford Spinning Wheel. Check it out here

It was a thrilling experience. I’ve never tried Ebay before. So I was very nervous and my heart was pumping. I had read, some time ago, about using bidding software so I tried out AuctionInsights.com which worked and was free. YAY!

The only problem now is that I emailed the seller last night and just now and he has yet to reply. I have to assume that since he has a good trackrecord I should just hang cool for a while instead of checking my email every five minutes.

This is the merino wool I spun last night. I’m calling Rhubarb Patch. It looks brown from a distance.

I’m getting the hang of spinning merino with only the occasional breakage now, it feels divine!. Most of the fleece came from my felting stash which was primarily sourced from TreeTops Colours in Western Australia.

And, lastly. Check out this knitted food. Continue reading →

I’ve got to finish the bag I started on Sunday so I can stop feeling guilty for spinning wool instead LOL. Check out today’s accomplishment

This book is full of little gems and the photographs are hillarious. But suprisingly, apart some bad poses, hair and makeup I’m generally impressed with the patterns… this book was published when I was 3 years old!! LOL

On the quilting front, I’ve been inspired by a talking book I’ve been listening to called ‘Life of Pi‘ by Yann Martel. It’s a wonderful thing to be able to listen to a good story while also sewing or spinning.

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I spashed out and brought some fancy storage boxes from Freedom Funiture for my spinning supplies, wool etc. I have also found that they are good ‘tables for my flick carder, waste wool etc while spinning.

I spun another spool of the purply pink dyed wool last night. I’m going to ply tonight (my favourite part!).

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I’ve been busy spinning and dyeing this week. I’ve managed to ply every bit of yarn I’ve spun so far and I’m now faced with the daunting task of KNITTING something.

I’ve stocked up on books and obtained some patterns, but I’ve decided to tackle another scarf first, just to get used to knitting with my hand spun wool.

I have been avoiding my sewing room, it’s messy and I need to spend an hour tidying before I can sew. I can’t put it off any further as I need to make a knitting bag for Monday night as promised.
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I don’t have a clue what I’m doing, but I won’t let it stop me from trying anyway:

A few (Umm) learnings…
1) Aren’t you meant to pull the fleece into seperate clumps BEFORE washing? it’s still all connected
2) Do you have to get ALL the poo out before dyeing? It’ll come out when I card it right?
3) Why throw purple into a perfectly good orange bath (when you know deep down it will make brown!!! That’s the one on the stove at the moment

I have no idea of the theory of dyeing wools, I just followed the directions on the dye jars (except for the stiring… wont that cause felt?)

I can’t wait to get spinning this, I hope I won’t have too much trouble carding it ekkkk!

On the quilting front: I ironed the fabric for the binding of the pear quilt… That’s progress right?

AND I was asked to donate one of my bags for an auction at work to raise money for cancer research. Which I gladly agreed to do since a collegue died of cancer about this time last year. I hope it gets a decent price.
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I present here my first ever bona fide hand spun yarn.

I’m pretty impressed with myself and I’m engergised to do a heap more spinning now that I have seen the finished product. Bev thinks I will end up with enough yarn to make a beanie. The question is… are my knitting skills up to the challenge?! It has been 8 years since I knitted with a pattern.

I’m headed back to East Gippsland tommorrow so I plan on dropping back into Jumbuck Wools… I might even get some dyes (or is this the slippery slope??).

As thanks to Bev who has devoted two nights to my spinning education I have offered to make her a knitting bag. She sounded pleased with the idea.

If you read the original version of this blog you will remember that I planned to start a little production of bags made with my hand dyed fabrics and there was a shop interested in selling knitting bags… well I’ve done nothing towards this goal. So this week I will make my FIRST real knitting bag with pockets, perhaps this will be the start of something.

I will photograph the bag and send it to the shop lady and see if she is still interested.

How’s that for a plan!

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I’m tired tonight, going to bed early… but not before I post some pics of the progress I’m making with my spinning.

This is my first spool. I had a minor mishap caused by me overloading the spool at one end and the yarn getting caught in the shaft thingy… NOT pretty! I decided to start a new spool after that.

This is tonight’s progress… I have no idea how much ‘knitting’ this will get me. I am also wondering if I’m ‘over spinning’… if anyone can give me some advice about that, I’d appreciate it 🙂

I picked up my UFO from the longarm quilter yesterday. It turned out so much better than I imagined it would. I’ll get the binding on it sometime over the next week so I can show it off here. It’ll be interesting to see how it washed up, as I didn’t prewash the fabrics before piecing :-O

Melanie has made a delicious quilt and I’m itching to try something like it myself, but I’m gonna try it with a knitting bag (this weekend), and perhaps use triangles (we’ll see).

Well, I’m just about to grab a trashy romance (a guilty pleasure) and head off to bed. Ta Ta

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I almost didn’t blog tonight because as a quilter I’m doing a hell of a lot of spinning and there are only so many photos of a slowly growing spool of yarn that I can post here LOL

It’s mesmerising and I’m definitely making progress. below you can see three examples of the yarn I’ve spun so far.

The white one, I did last night after my first lesson with Bev it’s the precarded Corridale fleece from the Jumbuk in Bairnsdale. The pink is called Ashford Corridale from a little shop called Benambra Blue in Omeo, I spun it during my lunch break today. The grey one I spun tonight, it’s from some lovely fleece Bev gave me to practice on, I don’t know what breed of sheep it’s from but it is lovely and greasy and slides out nicely.

I’m wearing the yarns as bracelets at the moment so I can gaze at them when I’m not spinning LOL And I like to see my progress already from a lumpy yarn to a more even product.

I’m calling this the honeymoon phase, it is a general pattern with me (and others I suspect). I do the ‘new’ thing to the exclusion of other stuff (like sleeping) for the first while until I feel that I have somewhat mastered the basics, then I try to get the balance back… I have to work at getting balance, a continuing life goal for me LOL

With that said, I am determined to SEW tommorow. No sketching, no frigging around thinking about stuff, I’m just gonna get that sewing machine pumping! I WILL show something other than yarn tommorow.

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Yay! I just came back from my spinning lesson with Bev. She showed me how to deal with fleece straight off the sheeps back, I learnt to comb the locks and then I got to spin 🙂

As I expected, I’m not producing a very consistent yarn at this stage, but I’m generally happy about my progress.

There are three wools on the spool, all very nice if you ask me. The red one is a long stranded wool called lester (or something… I’ll have to look it up in my book, Bev told me twice, but I promptly forgot).

Bev dyes her wools too and she had some lovely examples of naturally dyed yarns, my favourite was a beautiful red dyed with eucalyptus leaves.

Next week I learn to ply. So I had better keep busy spinning so I can produce a decent amount of plied yarn.

I wonder if I should try to join The Spinning Wheel webring… perhaps, I’ll wait to see if I will continue with it first.

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