I've been Spinning, Really!!

I actually had a wonderfully productive weekend of spinning in fact! Friday night, I plyed off the single that was on the antique Saxony. I decided to try a technique several people have recommended - winding the single off into a center pull ball and plying from there. Now, had I held the ball in my hand, perhaps this would have been effective. Since I put it down in a box to free feed, I ended up with a bit of a tangled mess! I only lost a couple of yards, but it was enough to convince me to either stick with Andean Plying, or to be sure to hold the center pull ball in my hands directly. This makes skein #3 from the same bag of alpaca. I think there's enough for one more, but it's not all prime blanket, so I may decide to card it before spinning.


After the alpaca, I did spend some time on the white alpaca that I'm spinning on the Lendrum. I also took a break from that to spin this. It too is alpaca - dark brown Suri, spun thick and chunky with all of the VM still in it! It became the dreds for our Captain Jack pumpkin carving in our pumpkin carving contest. And....we won Best Overall Pumpkin!! I don't have a picture, but hopefully I'll be able to share one sometime soon.

After making the dreds, I came home to do some spinning on the Great Wheel! I had this lovely single, a mint and grey romney roving from Convergence that I'd spun into singles quite a while ago. So, it's now officially complete, and the GW is naked and ready for it's next big challenge!

And speaking of next big challenges. On Sunday I was able to take some time to work on the Minor's head I purchased a couple of months ago. Here's some of the mess from when I took it apart.

You can get an idea of just how much dirt and grime there was. Here's the barrel...half cleaned up.

And, all cleaned up and partially put together, it now looks like this: There are two new replacement parts here - the Capstans - those are the pieces at the top of the posts that the head sits in. I plan to seal the entire thing with Danish Oil to protect the wood.

The only outstanding problem at this point is that the hole in the bottom of the barrel is 1/8" too small for the post on my wheel. Which means I will not be able to resolve this issue immediately, but will need to take some time and do it gently. In the meantime, I'm still hoping to find a way to get the GW into my Saturn... so I can take it out to the Pioneer Days event in Brooksville next weekend. If you're in the area, we'll be there from 10-4!

I won't be working on that tonight or tomorrow though... New fish opportunity tomorrow...we'll see how it goes!