Showcase Slouch Sox

Showcase Slouch Sox

A sock designed to show off your best handspun or luxury yarn, whilst providing a long-lasting garment. Written for 2 weights of sock, and in 3 sizes, Small(Medium, Large).

£3.00

the wheel turns

My spinning wheel is an Ashford Traditional, an extended sub-loan from a home-ed contact, the second Traditional I have had the pleasure of borrowing.

Some "modifications" of the system have been made(nothing permanent, don't worry wheel owner!). I prefer to have a cotton thread on the scotch tension, rather than the plastic one. It wears out, but bees wax helps. The drive band is also now just cotton "thrums". These 2 system mods are really down to laziness, as I can't be bothered to find real replacements, I guess. Or on a more positive note, maybe it is "lateral thinking when faced with a problem". I am sure that is what my parents would have written on the LEA report, had this been 10 years ago!

Below are pictures of the parts The Man has produced for me.

I checked out some of the flyers available for Ashfords, and was, er, unimpressed at the price asked for them. A bit of math to work out the ratios I was after and only a small amount of begging, and He made me the above flyer. The drive cog is interchangable, and the arms of the flyer at a better angle than the one the Ashford comes with, so now there will be no "rubbing" before my yarn falls off the ends of the bobbin, from lack of space!

The last pic is the lazy kate that belongs with the Ashford, plus my hefty stash of new bobbins He created for me.

The ashford is a really easy wheel to learn on. I did get to try a couple of others before I was lent one, and it was the Ashford that really made it all "click". Now though I prefer an upright, as it helps me position myself more centrally to my work. When you spin for hours at a time you can get very lop-sided!

I am hoping that one day I will get a wheel made to all my specifications and style choices, but until the kitchen, conservatory, porch, attic conversion and brick shed are complete, I think I won't push it.

next craft room post will feature the sewing machine!

this weeks tool of the week...

Goes to the drum carder! I honestly don't use it as much as I would like, but here are some shots of me and the Girl creating wonders with it.
First pic shows the batts I carded earlier and then dyed. got ready to spin them and noticed I had dyed the stripes the wrong way.... so we tore them up(in order) and threw them back through, in a colour sandwich.
When we where done doing my batts, the Girl got to do her own, with the floof off the feed drum, and some extras from my stash. She has the hand of using the noisy beast now, but has aquired some battle scars along the way. We go with a "two hands on the handle" rule, and she still enjoys it.

The two pics above are the spun up singles, and finished yarn. I plyed my "recycled sari" with babylonglegs silk/merino top, one in petrolhead colourway, the other a custom dye.

The top was very smooth to spin, very fine. It tends towards what meghan, at stitch it!! would call "nose hair". You can compare this to the drum carded stuff, which has the same ratios of wool to silk, and they use the same wool(sorry, forgot to check what that is though...). The top is a worsted preparation, and the drum carder does semi-worsted. I think the additional neps and noils are due to my technique, but I think I fell in love with them, they remind me of recycled sari yarn, the silk holding the dye so vividly. Just think of what it would be like with a smidge of angelina...

I inherited the drum carder from the Mans dad, who was a spinner too. It was playing on his wheel for a week that helped me "get" how to spin. He mainly used it for preparing raw and scoured fleece, and managed to get some relatively smooth yarns out of it. maybe someday I will get there too. think I will be being more ruthless with the mini-batt and the obvious neps at that stage, instead of worrying about "wasting" the fleece.
To stay on theme, next week will probably be the Wheel....

Dying in your sleep is not safe....get out of bed first!

so, I started this blog at a time when I was literally, dying in my sleep. I was seeing colours in everything. I think I had just dyed up a load of BFL Top for the Small Girls jumper, and I called the yarn Snowsuit. It was winter, and the view at the bottom of my garden at about 3:30, kinda just before sunset, was soooo rich, that I wanted to dye it, to keep forever. So I did. stove top on BFL top, with a solid green and semi-solid brown/orange and a blue/white. Now I have finished spinning it up, and Small Boy has decreed it good enough for his next hand knit sweater, though I'm not sure there is enough.

I'll do another top-down raglan design, but perhaps open all the way up the front, so if I run out of this handspun, it will look fine "topped up" with something different. Also i found with the last one it was great for random yarn, as I could write the pattern to the gauge of the yarn. this time though I will not cut corners by knitting straight off the bobbin. oh, no. the last one bloomed an ass-load. I have learned from my mistake>:P
Any hoo, good job I did dye it up, as the council are trying to build bungalows back there now, and that lovely backdrop of sycamore trees will be chopped down to make way for more ill-planned housing, sigh. the yarn is very satisfying though.