spinning

You might remember that all of a sudden on my birthday a while ago I thought about buying a new spinning wheel. My “old” wheel at that point was almost exactly a year old. I was quite content with it, an Ashford Kiwi but that didn’t keep me from looking at other wheels. I fell for a Schacht Ladybug because it’s so cute, I admired the Majacraft wheels from afar, especially the Suzie Pro, and the Little Gem, but I kept coming back to the Ashford Joy.

That wheel would have been my first choice even a year ago if I had been certain to love spinning. But then I decided to be sensible, and since the Kiwi is only two thirds the price of a Joy, and since the only difference is that the Joy is foldable I thought, “I won’t take my wheel anywhere anyway.” and bought the Kiwi.

Of course, next thing I know I start going to spinner’s meetings. Not that often but often enough to contemplate making myself a bag for my wheel. And then, with some unexpected cash on my hand, and my husband’s instructions to use it for spinning equipment I just went and bought a Joy. And I love it dearly. It’s cute, it’s small, it’s sturdy, it can do all the things my Kiwi could do without even needing a high speed whorl. It folds easily, and I have a nice bag for storage and for carrying it around.

It arrived and I didn’t even have to assemble it much. screw in a couple of hooks, tie some fishing line to some springs, and off I went. And once again something happened that happens all the time: there were things I just couldn’t get right about spinning, and then I found out it wasn’t me – it was the wheel.

You’d think that two wheels that similar in ratios, made by the same manufacturer, using the same bobbins and construction would be like twins but they aren’t. The pull of the Joy is much smoother than that of the Kiwi. With the Kiwi I never had to use the brake but with the Joy I do need it. One very unexpected blessing is that the Joy makes almost no noise. You hear the flyer stirring the air, and that’s pretty much it. Whereas the Kiwi was always a bit louder, and mine in particular had this tendency to start creaking out of the blue. Very annoying. The Joy’s treadles, on the other hand, did take a bit of adjustment. They are smaller so I have to position my feet carefully, I have to sit farther away from the wheel, and need a bit more force to keep it going. I don’t mind though because all of a sudden my goal of spinning lace-weight yarn doesn’t seem as far away as before.

That’s what I have been aiming for right from the start. So far it hasn’t happened. I’m getting better though, I just have finished spinning a 2-ply yarn that’s almost fingering weight. And I have some hand-dyed roving that I’m currently spinning that might become Aeolian.

The last time I went to the spinner’s meeting in Tutzing someone said, “What are you spinning there? Sewing thread?” If only. I had had hopes of getting that to become a lace shawl but then it turned out to be too thick again. The yarn is nice though, and I already knit it all up into a nice shawl.

Something I also really like about the Joy is that it’s so small, it sits there innocently in its bag without screaming spinning wheel at everybody. When my students enter my room, the room I teach in, the wheel is the first thing they see. Only very few people have asked me about the wheel because you know how almost nobody really looks at things or people. But still. The Joy in its bag almost looks like an unusual musical instrument, so that’s a plus. Also I often take the wheel to the kitchen in the evenings so my son can hear me while he goes to sleep. The spinning wheel makes a nice regular sound that tells him I’m nearby. And while I did that with the Kiwi too it’s so much nicer to have the wheel, and the fiber, and everything I need in one bag that I can carry over my shoulder.

So all of a sudden I had two spinning wheels. This seems to be a very common occurrence, there are a lot of spinners out there with a lot of wheels. And that does make more sense than you would think at first because spinning wheels are tools, and some are good for a particular job, and others are good for other jobs. Like, if you want to spin very fine very even yarn you’ll look for something different than if you want to spin art yarn for example. And the most versatile wheels usually are not that easy to carry around so you might want a big wheel at home, and a light, small folding wheel for traveling.

But I looked at my two spinning wheels with a feeling of unease. They have the very same ratios. Since I got my Joy I haven’t used the Kiwi at all. I thought about this, and some people told me to use the Kiwi for plying and the Joy for spinning but then I still didn’t have all the money for the Joy, I only got the money for half a wheel for my birthday. I thought some more. The only option the Kiwi has and the Joy doesn’t is that you can get a real big flyer for it which is better for plying and for making art yarn, which means crazy yarn that’s often bulky and has things like beads, and feathers, and flowers in it.

I don’t see myself making art yarn in the near future. I’m still on the quest for “thin and even”. So I thought about selling the Kiwi. In my mind keeping it for plying would have been like buying a 200 € plying machine. And I can ply yarn as well with the new wheel. And so far in spinning at least I’m all “one project at a time”-girl. So I took a picture of the Kiwi, and told people on the spinner’s forum and on ravelry that I had a Kiwi to sell. I truthfully told that the treadles are stained with dark oil from the inside, and just 15 minutes after putting the offer in I had a buyer. And the next day I could have had four more.

It took a bit to figure out how to get the wheel to her since she lives in Northern Germany but in the end I took screwdriver to wheel, partly disassembled it, used every shred of wrapping material I had in the house, put the wheel into a box and sent it to her. It has arrived safely, and she is very happy about it. When she wrote me she already had spun two bobbin full of singles, and said she loved it.

And I’m happy too. An unused wheel would have weighed on me. Seeing it sitting there made me sad. And it’s not as if I have that much space here, it’s much better this way.

I’m enjoying my Joy (it’s named after a woman named Joy by the way). Of course that doesn’t mean I haven’t been looking at other wheels, there’s still the Ladybug, and the Suzie, or the Matchless maybe, possibilities are endless. But so far this wheel is enough.

The last week somehow slipped through my fingers like nothing. First my son had the ear infection, I went to a meeting of kindergarten mothers, my son was well enough to go to kindergarten again, I went to a spinner’s meeting, turned my head, my son woke me up in the night wailing, “Mama, I have to puuke!”, and then was now.

The good news: my son obviously got sick only because he ate way too much yesterday. They had their Easter party in kindergarten. Of course. Right in the middle of Lent. (You can’t see me so you have to imagine me shaking my head.)

Anyway, the meeting. I had been a bit discontent with my spinning. I thought I was doing something wrong, the yarn doesn’t turn out as I want it, my wheel is making noises, I wasn’t getting anywhere, still trying to fill the same bobbin as in August, and so on. So when I heard that there would be a spinning wheel workshop at the first German raveler meeting in September, of course, my first thought was, “That’s great! I’ll take my spinning wheel.” Grand idea. My second thought, of course, was, “Are you crazy? Do you really want to schlep your wheel with you, on a four hour train journey to a meeting where you’ll teach two knitting workshops?” Um, no?

But meeting other spinners, preferably more experienced ones seemed like a good idea. Since I’m living near M.u.n.i.c.h I can find pretty any kind of group or meeting within a reasonable distance. So I turned to the internet which told me that there are two options nearby, one group is meeting regularly and is hard to reach, and one is meeting roughly every six weeks or so in Tutzing. And they had a meeting last Sunday. So I talked the whole thing through with my husband (“Do you really have to dash off all the time like a madwoman? Well, if you really must but I still want to be able to work on my music that day.”), then with my mother-in-law (“Could you please care for my son that Sunday because I’m going to a spinner’s meeting and my husband wants to work on his music?”), and everything went well and I decided to go.

Next came my usual bout of worrying and planning and writing lists: where’s the meeting, how do I get there, do I take the train or the car, when I take the train do I take my spinning wheel or only the spindles, what to take, what to wear, where to go, what to pack. In the end, unsurprisingly, I took the train because I’d rather spend 45 minutes knitting and listening to podcasts on a train than 40 minutes listening to the stupid radio while driving and getting angry about all the other stupid drivers out there.

Of course it was raining. And though my spinning wheel is quite small it is way too big for any of my bags or backpacks. I contemplated making a spinning wheel bag but thought that five days full of work with a sick child at home might mean that maybe the bag would not have been ready on time.

I spent the whole morning packing, putting fiber, and more fiber and all my spindles, and my three spinning books, and the last two issues of spin-off magazine, and cookies, and tea, and my ipod, and my “take with me”-knitting, and a screwdriver, and an allen wrench, and spinning wheel oil, and two different whorls and drive bands, and everything but the kitchen sink into a backpack, got totally confused because it was the first day of daylight savings time, and went off.

Everything went surprisingly well, the wheel is light and small and easy to carry (though I’d still like to have a bag for it). At the station I was met by two other spinners, and one of them even knew the way.

At first I felt a bit weird because I didn’t know anybody, and everybody else was excited to meet each other again but that’s always the same when you’re the new one in an established group. There were about eight people, most brought their spinning wheels, one even brought a drum carder. I got to see some wheels in person that I had only seen in pictures before, like the Tom Triskel, a Lendrum, and an Ashford Joy. I totally fell in love with the joy, it’s a folding wheel, it’s very cute, and it uses the same bobbins like my wheel. I’d love to have a travel wheel. And, of course, I totally need one, I already left the house with my wheel once. But then I’m forever judging spinning wheels by their appearance which is why I feel an urgent need to own a Schacht Ladybug.

The reason why I’m thinking about other spinning wheels is that I was discontent with my nice Kiwi. It seemed hard to treadle, I felt like it was yanking the yarn out of my hands, and – most important – it makes noises. Creaking noises. Wooden noises. A regular rhythmic “nyagh, nyagh, nyagh”-noise. I tend to be quite sensitive to noise. I can’t enjoy spinning when my wheel is loud like that.

That was one reason I went to the meeting. I hoped that somebody could help me with that. And one nice fellow spinner really tried, she even put something on my wheel, only it didn’t help. The interesting thing was, though, that after spinning for two hours or so the creaking stopped. All of a sudden my wheel was silent. Relief! Especially since my wheel was the only one making noises in the whole round of spinners there. Of course it didn’t last, an hour later it started again but at least I know that it doesn’t go on like this forever.

The best part about the meeting for me where the times when we all sat there in a circle, spinning in silence. And I loved the way my bobbin was filling up. At home I never spin for more than twenty minutes at a time. I found that about four hours of concentrated spinning gave me a bobbin almost full. This isn’t only because I’m new to spinning and a bit slow, it’s mostly because I’m spinning quite a fine yarn. I want to do a three-ply for a sweater.

I left a bit early to catch my train back, and managed to be back home in time for dinner. A very pleasant afternoon, more pleasant in retrospect than I realized while I was there. And it’s really nice to meet other spinners, to know that I’m not the only one.

I don’t know when I will go to another meeting, it certainly depends on the date, and on the rest of my life, but it’s good to know that there is such a place to go to.

I found that I’m not very eager to learn something new in spinning right now, or to try other wheels or carding, or techniques. I’m content sitting there and spinning the next 400 grams of merino for my sweater project:

And the next 250 of Wensleydale for a lace stole (on my spindle, I know it’s insane):

The only thing I’d like would be some hand-dyed merino/silk-blend but I’ll wait a bit for that, I don’t want to feel buried under fiber.

So, tomorrow I will be go to a meeting of a different kind, it’s time for mindfulness day again. And then there will be Easter break. With a bit more blogging, I hope.

As I told you I ordered it the day that I sold my congas. And then I waited. And waited. And waited. And after a week I considered asking the shop where I had ordered it (online, there is no such thing as a spinning wheel shop near me), and then I waited some more. Ten days after my order I sent an e-mail, and got a very nice reply saying there had been problems, and that it would be shipping the next day. The next day it was here. Weird.

Sometime I suspect that online stores who happen to forget your order never say so but they’ll tell you something along the lines of “We thought we had one in stock but then we hadn’t.” or “It took our supplier a week to deliver.” Which can happen. I’d just like to know instead of hanging around the house each morning for eight days in a row hoping not to be out when the postman rings.

But I won’t complain, here it is:

I had the opportunity to take the whole morning assembling it because my student didn’t show up.

Then I de-assembled part of it again because I had managed to screw some things together the wrong way, then I tried to treadle it, was happy, and then there was this noise. I dis-assembled another part, oiled everything twice, re-assembled and started to – try to spin.

It’s as if I have to learn it all over again. Even though I’ve set it to the slowest setting it’s much too fast for my fumbling attempts at drafting. But I can see that it will be fun once I get fast enough. I like spinning with a drop spindle but always feel that I spend more time winding the yarn onto the spindle than actually spinning. Well, that won’t be the problem with the wheel.

Here’s a picture of my new “spinning corner”, the place where my congas used to stand:

Here’s the wheel, an Ashford Kiwi (she’s more beautiful in real life):

And here’s my bad handspun:

This post took me three days to write. That’s not because I spun so much, it’s because I’m easing back into teaching and normal life mode. The good thing is that today’s 15-minute-attempt at spinning on the wheel went much better than the two days before because I actually had taken the time to look into my spinning book under “when you have the feeling that the yarn is pulled away from you”. Aha, I eased the brake tension, and it went much better. Also, fluffing the roving before spinning it is highly recommended. Also, when I treadle more slowly the yarn gets less kinky. Revelation after revelation.

It’s too bad that I don’t like art yarn at all. Now I have about 250 grams of it at home.