Adventures, knitting and spinning.

It’s been forever since I’ve blogged.  Think I should fire myself?

Seriously though, I don’t know where the time goes.  It’s July 24th today and I feel like July 1st was just last week?  Did someone hit the fast-forward button when I wasn’t looking?

I’ve worked a lot in the last couple of weeks.  BUT, I’ve managed to do a few things that I’m pretty excited about:

I went zip-lining with Jacob and my father (63).  We had such a blast.

This was a giant deal for me because I don’t like heights.  Youpi for me!

I managed to figure out that the piece I bought for my wheel, which I thought was a “woolee winder“, is actually just a travelling flyer and bobbin.  Those two things are apparently very different.  I don’t think I wasted money.  I’m sure this new flyer will work much better than the ones I have – plus it actually has different ratios.  (I think I just  sort of figured those out: big is faster, small is slower.  I could be wrong though.)  PLUS, the bobbins I got are enormous.  I find that I run out of room on my little bobbins quite often.

I spun some Coopworth.  I think it turned out awesome.  I put a lot of spin in the single so that I could get a tighter ply.

How cool is that??  I made that!!

I went to my (awesome) friend Bonnie’s last week to use her English Combs (which I’m going to save my birthday money for).  I also used her drum carder (an electric one – mine is hand-cranked and I haven’t tried it yet).  I made some combed roving and some carded bats.

These are the combs:

They are so threatening that they won’t let you see the actual teeth in the picture.

This is Bonnie’s carder:

This is my carder:

Anyway, the combed roving turned out way better… I find.

This is the carted bat and the spun result:

I know it’s hard to tell the difference but, I can tell.  The carded bat has more neps.  I don’t know that the combed stuff had any neps in it.  I probably wasted more wool with the combs but the result is more pleasant.

I also managed to do this while I was trying to ply:

TIP:  Don’t try to make a center pull ball with a rolled up piece of paper.  It eventually starts to collapse so that the outside stuff scrunches up the inside stuff and you get the above mess.

On a knittier-note, I’ve been working on socks for a friend’s wife.  I’ve been commissioned.  Genny has giant feet so I was somewhat worried about running out of wool.  I weighed the first sock and the rest of the wool and, according to my calculations, I will have plenty.

And, all the while trying to work on my Pucker.   I had it done to 13 inches, almost ready to start that funky chest thing when I decided I didn’t like the way it was turning out.  So, I ripped it back and now I have this:

I have some grass to go cut.

Until next time.

That is about 3 inches.  Yikes.  Considering the fact that it’s the end of July, will I be finished in time to wear it this summer?