Tag Archives: spinning wheels

Let the spinning begin!!

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  Because…. I now have a spinning wheel!
It’s great. My first ever wheel is an Ashford Kiwi, a very nice beginners wheel. I love how fast it is! This afternoon I spun an entire bobbin full of yarn. That same amount of yarn would have taken me days to do on the drop spindle. We bought this wheel at half price at a tiny yarn shop the next town over, an excellent deal. While we were there we picked up a beautiful braid of Blue Faced Liecester fiber, which the lady at the shop recommended for a beginning spinner.

spinning wheel, ashfordIt’s a double treadle wheel, which I like because it feels more balanced than a single treadle. It’s also in the upright “castle” style I like.

yarn I love this fiber, it’s a joy to spin.

I’m excited to try different styles of spinning and plying with this wheel, and later on if I want to spin bulky art yarn, Ashford makes a jumbo bobbin and flyer attachment.
I’m off to go spin yarn for hours and hours!! 🙂

God bless, Rebekah.

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My Own Angora Yarn

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I’m doing a spinning contest, so I needed to take the yarn off my spindle so I could start spinning the new yarn, a cotton/angora blend.
There’s not very much yarn on the spindle to it’s a mini-skein.

spindle

I made myself a quick skeiner stick to wind the yarn on.

niddy noddy
winding on nn
wound yarn

Now to make the angora yarn bloom, you are supposed to “full” the yarn (soak the yarn in several changes of very hot and cold water while mashing and agitating the yarn.)
I used a potato masher.

mashing yarn

The next step is to whack the damp yarn on a hard surface to make the angora bloom. I did not take pictures of this step.

finished yarn 1I didn’t really need to do this whole process for such a small skein, but I wanted to try it. It’s my first yarn from my own angora, after all!