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More Theft in the Fiber Arts world
I received the following email from Sheila Bosworth of Journeywheel/Bosworth spindles:

At the CT Sheep & Wool Festival in the last weekend of April, several people happily reported to us that a vendor was selling our spindles. Hmmm, none of our dealers were at that event.

In fact, they are not our spindles but are copies of Jonathan's design.

The same vendor was at NH Sheep & Wool this weekend, and we went to check on this: the Bossies-NOT were identical in design, height, whorl diameter, and shaft length (including the amount left above the whorl). The tags on the Bossies-NOT were even the same color! The only difference: the notch was at 90° to the hook instead of at 180° as on a real Bosworth spindle.

Jonathan brought one of his spindles over to the vendor's booth for a side by side comparison and brought home the point to the vendor who claimed not to know the name of the person who made these (???) for her shop. She removed them from her booth in NH.

If you bought a spindle from a vendor at the CT or NH Sheep & Wool Festivals thinking it was ours, please check the tag for our name and the underside of the whorl for "J Bosworth" stamped there. Our spindles are available from us or from our designated dealers; the list of our dealers can be found at our website: http://www.journeywheel.com, click on 'Dealers'.

Now I've known Sheila and Jonathan for a good few years now, so I'm a bit pissed about this. They've put their hearts and souls into making beautiful spindles, wheels and charkas, and providing good customer service.

They go to a number of shows in the NE, and do sell via their website as well as through a number of dealers. So if you're in the market for a Bosworth spindle -- make sure you get the real thing.

Update on Carolina Homespun theft.
The Manchester, NH police recovered the cashbox last night. Minus the cash but with the checks and credit card slips intact.

Morgaine was pretty busy when I stopped by today, so hopefully it won't be a total loss. And it looks as if her customers' information is pretty safe still.

"A Twisted Skein" by Piers Anthony
Has anyone read it? It's a fantasy novel from his "Incarnations of Immortality" series, and it's about Clotho, the aspect of Fate who spins the thread of life. On the one hand, it's sort of nice to hear spinning references in non-fiber contexts, but on the other hand he keeps talking about a distaff as something used to hold spun yarn, and it's bugging me. I've always understood a distaff to be something that held unspun fiber while it was being spun. Is there another use of the word, or is it just another example of insufficient research?

a mystery!
my mother went to an impromptu spinning tools sale this past week and she saw something that neither of us can identify. the woman who owned this stuff was 97 and dead, and her daughter was selling some things and had this piece of equipment for sale. no one could figure out what it was!

i have no photo, but i do have a description. it was kind of an elongated drum laying on its side (maybe 3 1/2 feet from end to end), with both ends of the drum being solid wood. running horizontally along the sides of the drum were wooden slats, which had a slight point at the mid-point of each slat; or, to explain this better, they were more triangular, with the point towards the outside of the drum. these slats were spaced 5 inches or so apart. on one end there was a crank, and the drum was held up on either side by supports at either end of the drum. the lady was a spinner and a weaver, so it could be something for either of those, or something totally unrelated.

here's a poorly drawn picture of what it might look like!

EDIT: thanks guys! you know so much!

Current Mood: curious
Current Music: rick astley

NH Sheep & Wool Theft Alert!
From an email I just received:

The cash box was stolen from Carolina Homespun's booth at the end of
the day on Saturday, May 10 at the New Hampshire Sheep & Wool
Festival. Included in the cash box were cash, credit card receipts,
personal checks for purchases and addresses from customers who were
to have merchandise sent to them.

Carolina Homespun has reported the theft to the police and its credit
card servicing company to ensure the safety of credit card purchases
from theft of the account numbers. However, Morgaine is concerned
that her customers who paid by check be aware that their personal
information may be vulnerable.

More important than the financial loss that she has experienced,
Morgaine's main concern is for the safety and security of customers'
personal information.

If you made a purchase at Carolina Homespun on Saturday at New
Hampshire Sheep & Wool, please watch your accounts for any fraudulent
activity. If customers have any questions or need any additional
information, you can email Morgaine at morgaine@carolinahomespun.com.
Also, if Morgaine was supposed to mail you merchandise, please call
her at 800-450-7786 to provide her with your shipping information
again.

well, in a fit of dying I died a pound of cotton roving with rit die. It is now drying in my bathroom, and I have the hankering to spin it. I know I should spin it with a pretty tight twist, but is there any other pointers you might have? google has not been helping at all!
I have an ashford traditional duel drive, if it matters

and so this is not text only... some pictures.
( another way to use locks )

spindles
i picked up a few peruvian spindles at MDSW, but the people who sold them to me didn't know much about using them. some online research led me to this video (contains sound/music), and in case you haven't seen it, it's pretty gorgeous. shows spinning closeup and also in slow motion.
photo of peruvian spindles by linda scharf/stoneleafmoon.com

photo of peruvian spindles by linda scharf/stoneleafmoon.com

Craigslist strikes again!
She emailed me back!! Before long I will be the owner of a 5 peddle floor loom and another spinning wheel. Not sure if I should be excited about the wheel yet. The loom might be crap too but for the price, I can fix up crap and still be in the win.

I don't want the loom. The last thing I need is to have weaving get in the way of knitting and spinning. But husband has expressed an interest.

Having a second wheel was something I was looking for. I am going to have a lot of spinning ahead of me if I want to profit from this so the more hands at it the better. I hope it's decent.

A new type of fiber
Just for fun!
http://www.cualquiera.com.ar/notas/arte.html

Dyeing
Hey, all! Where are people hanging out to talk about dyeing these days?

Thanks!

Current Mood: curious

Latest spinning and dyeing experiments
Some more spinning/natural dyeing experiments by me - includes silk, soysilk, and a big random bag of wool I got as a gift last year and have been working through bit-by-bit for dyeing experimentation.

( pics under cut )

I just finished my fourth spinning project. It is four ounces of BFL from Damselfly Yarns on Etsy that I actually bought at a spin-in in March. It is the Sunrise colorway. It is 2-ply laceweight approximately 420 yards (22 WPI) although notice that I flubbed a couple areas up. I will probably cut some of those areas out if they are really noticeable in my knitting.

( Pictures! )

I actually spun this with a project in mind. I plan on knitting this into the Flower Basket Shawl by Evelyn Clark for one of my county fair entries. I was hoping I would get at least 350 yards out of it but I happily spun more. I was pleasantly surprised by this since I have an older Ashford Traditional that only has two ratios. I was treadling at my normal speed for spinning but I was treadling faster than my usual speed to ply it.

Hi all! I’m learning to spin on a vintage double-drive, Castle style wheel that I purchased locally. She said it was made in the 1970s by a man in New Mexico. I can find no makers mark on the wheel anywhere and I assume there’s no way to find out who made it or if there are parts available.

My problem is, I have one bobbin. I wind off on to TP tubes to ply back on. My bobbin only has one size option for the drive band, which gives me a ratio of about 1:6.

I have found, through Google, and company that does duplicating services for restoring furniture parts on chairs and such. They also do random miscellaneous parts and I would have to send them my bobbin to reproduce.

I’m thinking I could have them make me two bobbins as exact copies at the ratio I’ve been using. And maybe one with the whorl being smaller and one with the whorl being larger to get additional ratios on my wheel.

The problem is, how do I know how much bigger or smaller to go for appropriate ratios? Also, how many would I really need? Do I need 3 bobbins in each size (bobbin 1, bobbin 2, and ply?) or can I generally spin at a different ratio than I ply? (and therefore need 2 bobbins in each size?).

I’m still new to all this, but I’d love to be able to give my wheel more options if it’s possible, so I’m glad to hear any tips you might have.

x-posted to Spinner Central on Ravelry

Ashford Traditional: Lace Flyer or Double Drive High Speed
I have an older Ashford Traditional with a two ratio scotch tension flyer. I just finished some lace weight 2-ply yarn by the skin of my teeth yesterday using the smaller whorl but it required very fast treadling.

I am thinking about purchasing either the lace flyer kit or the double drive flyer and the double drive high speed kit together. I already have double drive bobbins that came with the wheel even though the flyer is scotch tensioned. So, looking at the websites, I would be spending at least $175 for the lace flyer kit or $41 for the standard double drive kit plus $68 for the high speed double drive kit so $109 total.

As always, I want to save money BUT I also want to choose the best option. I have read a couple websites/forums but I haven't read anything that says one type of drive is better than the other. So what should I get? What is the difference? Is there a big learning curve to switch from one type to another?

Edit: I found this entry from over a year ago. Still, anymore advice?

A Call to Action!

Or advice at least. My mother bought me some absolutely lovely Yak roving from a LYS for my birthday two weeks ago, and I am liking the fiber so far. However, there are two issues at hand; number one, the fibers on this particular roving weren't the absolutely best seperated; there seems to still be a fairly high proportion of longer guard hairs in the fiber. Not enough to make it less than lovely, but enough to make spinning a more difficult proposition. The second issue ties into that, because I did a sample spin of some fiber I'd carded up into rolags, and I was not thrilled with the results. For whatever reason, my technique or the longer fibers, I had a much more difficult time spinning it long draw; I ended up having to do a semi-worsted type spin, and the resulting single was... not exactly even, and far from the fluffy light presentation I wanted.

So, I got the idea to blend the yak with another fiber and spin it up to a worsted lace-weight type deal, something really soft with lots of drape. So of course, I went for the silk. Except that I've never carded silk before, and I have no idea how to best go about it. I have handcards with just the normal cloth, not the fine set that one would use for cotton and suchforth. I have carded fine fibers with those cards, no problem, so my question is, do you guys have any tried-and-true advice about carding silk, especially for blending purposes? Alternatively and in addition, if any of you have a treasure-trove website with that sort of information, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks!

as per request.. Ancient whorls. My private collection
My camera is a cheapo $60 didg and it sucks for close ups. Sorry. The details on these are amazing

( Read more... )

Conditioning?
Okay, so as some of you may remember, I made a post not too terribly long ago with the question of what specifically is "wool top" and what makes it different from, say, roving. Thanks all, btw, for the answers, they were very helpful. So, it finally came in the mail yesterday! It's a very pretty shade of grey (and she even threw in some mystery black fiber that I have yet to figure out wtf it is), but it is certainly scratchier than I thought it would be. Not that I'm terribly disappointed or anything, I did, after all, only pay $5 for 4 oz., but I wouldn't mind trying to make it a bit softer.

I'd heard that using conditioner works well, but I am worried about the felting. Are there any other recommendations people have? I recall an old post answering a question similar to mine, but can't remember what it said. If someone could either post the link, or give any sort of helpful advice, I'd be most appreciative. I'm looking to not have to buy something I might not already have, though if it's the be-all and end-all of wool softener, I might just.

Thanks in advance!

Great Lakes Fiber Show
While on the subject of upcoming fiber festivals...

Great Lakes Fiber Show
Wayne County Fairgrounds, Wooster, Ohio
May 24-25, 2008

http://www.lovellservices.com/GLFS/index.htm

It's fun and free to get in. I'm planning to be there on Saturday! Anyone else attending?

Shepherd's Harvest Festival -- MN
http://www.shepherdsharvestfestival.org/
May 10 & 11 2008
Washington County Fairgrounds, Lake Elmo, MN

I'll be attending on Saturday, I believe -- anyone in the area? Want to try to meet in person? It might be tricky, but I figured I'd put the idea out there. Sorry if someone already posted about this and I missed it.
--
I finally sold some yarn (4 skeins!) via my Etsy site -- now I am allowing myself to buy more roving at the Shepherd's fest! Woo!
--
It took me a while to notice that spinningfiber was gone -- so I finally made it over here. Yay! Thanks for welcoming us!

My first carded batt
I carded this batt on my spinning instructor's drum-carder. It's perendale and silk.

( baby's first batt - pics this way )