{"id":4686,"date":"2018-07-18T18:39:27","date_gmt":"2018-07-19T01:39:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nurturedbylove.ca\/blog\/?p=4686"},"modified":"2023-01-26T21:30:35","modified_gmt":"2023-01-27T05:30:35","slug":"spinning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nurturedbylove.ca\/blog\/?p=4686","title":{"rendered":"Spinning"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I bought a little spinning wheel. It’s about the size of an SLR camera and weighs a fraction as much. It came from a Kickstarter campaign I backed. I paid about $50 and like my other favourite Kickstarter reward<\/a>, it delivered not just on time but early! It runs off DC power with a tiny little motor. Years ago I spent a couple of days experimenting with a borrowed treadle spinning wheel and some (in retrospect) appallingly poor-quality fleece. The result was some ‘rustic yarn,’ and the sense of gratification was short-lived. This time around I have used proper spinning-quality roving I purchased, and have made more of an effort to finesse my skills. I am doing much better, and am entirely smitten with the process. What’s most fascinating to me is the way the colours meld.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\n
\n

The photo above shows the first stages of the progression. I start with a big pillow of fleece dyed in swaths of different colours, some quite bright and prominent. As I spin one strand at a time onto the bobbin the colours take turns, sometimes blending a bit as they do. Then, when I ply the strands together into a ball of yarn, the dark and light colours entwine each other as often as not, and the brights become tempered.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n
<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n

And then, finally, when the yarn is knitted up into a small project, the knitting creates even more blending and muting. This Scrunchable Scarf ended up being an amazing dapple of forest colours: moss, leaves, humus, lichen, bark and twigs. I would never have guessed how muted it would turn out from looking at the bold brights in the original roving.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n
\n

When I chose fleece for my second project, I decided to try for something a bit lighter and brighter. I found some fun glittery stuff, but I could tell from my previous experience that the purples were likely to overwhelm the lighter oranges, pinks and silvers. So I paired it with half as much plain sunflower fleece. Here are the pre- and post-spinning results. It looks like an awful lot of yellow:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But here’s the result: still predominantly purple-pink, but with proper yellows peeking out from time to time. It is just about what I was expecting!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Here’s another thing: I YouTube-taught myself to solder, in order to install a reverse switch. The original way to reverse the direction (necessary for plying) was to put a figure-eight in the drive belt, but that was causing a fair bit of friction and was unnecessarily fiddly. So I Amazon’d me a DPTP switch and got all the wires going to the right places. And … it worked!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I burned the motor out after just a few weeks. It’s a known issue with this little wheel if the uptake tension isn’t kept very low, exacerbated by the figure-eight drive belt issue I mentioned. They’re<\/a> sending me a free replacement which is great, and I think I can avoid problems now that I have the reverse switch and know to minimize the tension. I hope it gets here soon; I’m missing the daily meditative colour-play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also, it’s obvious I need a full-size traditional wheel as well. Need. Yeah.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I bought a little spinning wheel. It’s about the size of an SLR camera and weighs a fraction as much. It came from a Kickstarter campaign I backed. I paid about $50 and like my other favourite Kickstarter reward, it delivered not just on time but early! It runs off DC power with a tiny […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4691,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fibre-arts"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nurturedbylove.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nurturedbylove.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nurturedbylove.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nurturedbylove.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nurturedbylove.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4686"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/nurturedbylove.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4836,"href":"https:\/\/nurturedbylove.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4686\/revisions\/4836"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nurturedbylove.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nurturedbylove.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nurturedbylove.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nurturedbylove.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}