So Holly and I were invited to a spin in at our spinning teacher Juliet’s house, where we would meet up with several other spinners, all there for the same purposes. We were supposed to bring along some food items, and I had great plans, which were foiled by my bf getting some urgent calls into work as we stepped foot inside my door after coming down from his place.
It takes 45 mins approx to get from his place to mine, so it meant a quick grab of spinning wheel and some fibre, and a stop in at a local shop for supplies.
Holly brought some great grub though, including a yummy cinnamony oaty apple dessert.
So, Juliet had asked us to have some single ply ready, in order to learn how to navajo ply.
I used some koolaid dyed galway cross, love these colours.
My spinning wheel is doing a great job of posing outside on my bf’s balcony eh? vain thing.
Juliet showed us how to navajo ply almost as soon as we sat down and got ourselves comfy.
Mary in the meantime, showed us how to use long draw to spin.
I had tried this with Juliet when learning to spin, but I’m rather lacking in the hand-carder front, and these are needed in order to make the rolages which are used for the long draw, so I havent been able to practice this method since.
These spinning wheels are gorgeous, aren’t they? Mary and Peter had been using them until the long draw teaching session.
There was a carding and rolage making factory going on here!
While a bit of handspindling was also going on
Holly tries out the navajo plying on my single ply, as there was a difference in thickness betweek both our spinning, mine was finer. I wasn’t too sure that I liked the navajo ply to begin with, it was like learning to spin again, bulky and uneven, but I think that I was treadelling way too fast and this impacted on it big time. When I slowed down, I stopped treadelling and then remembered to treadle and went fast again. I got home that night and tried it again, and produced a nicer result and tried it again the next night, just using up ends on the bobbins. I’m a lot more confident with it now and it does give a nice finish.
I’ll have to take a photo of the finished product and post it here again. Its like my first attempt at spinning, a bit all over the place. The pointy outy bits in the photo above are mine, not Holly’s! She was very good at it.
Before you ask, yes I have worn it, when and where I can, and yes people have stared at me.
OOOOh what spinning fun you had! I want to learn to navajo ply…just haven’t done it yet! Easy?
Comment by Robin — December 13, 2006 @ 6:01 pm
Sounds like you had great fun in Juliet’s. Hope ye enjoy the meet up tonight, pity about the iceskating but I’m sure ye’ll be able to enjoy yourselves anyhow.
Comment by Sharon — December 13, 2006 @ 8:07 pm