Spinning Wheel Repair

It is great that Skipper is a Wood Turner.

I have been running some "Learn to Spin" workshops and this Ashford Spinning Wheel belongs to one of my clients, she bought it along to learn on but it required some repairs, so a little visit to  "WrightTurned" workshop was needed.

As you can see in the photo, where the treadle connects to the main leg of the wheel the wood had  become chewed up allowing the treadle pin to keep falling out, it was held in place with some cord.

First the hole was drilled out to make a clean purchase for a new piece of wood. The new wooden plug was hand turned on the lathe.

Shaped to give a perfect snug fit and hold firm. Then cut to size and rubbed down.

This is called a visible repair. It has strengthened the working part, is functional and looks in keeping with this lovely old wheel. 

The wheel was then given a service, buffed, oiled, fitted with a new double band and was all set to keep spinning for many years to come. As you can see it spins a treat!

Home and Nurture

Being home has had its blessings. I made a decision to use the weeks to nurture home life and do all those projects that have been on my list. Probably like most folk I set to, sorting and cleaning and Skipper got a few DIY and painting chores done. What has been much more fun however has been delving into my weaving, spinning and handknitting for our own home

Also the garden has my full attention, over these past weeks and months the greenhouse is full of seedlings, the raised beds planted up with salad and veg as well as my annual flowers for natural dyeing of my wools. Happy days spent in the garden with the spinning wheel working through my stash of fleeces. While Skipper has been busy in his workshop wood turning I have been in my workroom busy weaving. 

A project that has been waiting for some years! I bought the wool, stored it thinking to make a throw/ blanket on my Saori loom knowing that I would have to weave it in panels and sew together due to the loom's width. Now I have the David loom I was able to weave it in one piece.

Checks and Stripes, simple plain weave. A warm, snuggly blanket with red detailing.

A piece of cloth in a twill pattern, woven free style. I will make cushions and a runner from this piece.

Using the same warp as the previous free style weaving-having dressed the loom with over 8 metres so as I could do both projects from the same warp. I then "opened the sett" which entails re threading the reed for a wider cloth. Then I changed the treadle tie up from twill, back to plain weave and using a different colour palette wove this small throw.

And my loom has got a little top runner to protect and decorate. A Rosepath design on cotton and linen.

It has been such fun to make some items for our home. Giving our home a hug as it takes care of us.

While I will have to wait until I can re start my weaving workshops and there are no craft events or outlets open on the Island to sell our work for some time. I will continue to weave, spin and knit supplying our online shops with new stocks of goodness for you and your home to purchase.

Thank you to our customers for keeping us going.

Keep well and keep safe

Weaving Part 2 -Woven Weft With Hand Spun Natural Dyed Wool

 Back in October last year, I blogged about the Warp of my weaving process. This post is about the next part of weaving to make the cloth.

 The Weft -This is the crosswise thread on my loom that passes over and under the warp to make the cloth.

For this particular project, "a small wall hanging", I chose some of my handspun wools which I had naturally dyed in my garden over the summer (please view earlier posts for this process).
A small selection of  Shetland, Jacob and Suffolk fleece were handspun on my wheel then dyed with various natural colour sources such as  woad, logwood, brazilwood and eucalyptus.

 The balls of wool always look so inspiring and beautiful together when naturally dyed.
I do a rough plan for how I want to weave the colours through, so as I develop a gradient flow of  colour in my work.

 The material is then wound on to either stick shuttles or my boat shuttles ready to weave the weft.

I love the rhythm of weaving, the absorbing nature of working with my hands and feet.

Slowly seeing the cloth grow and the colours blend together.

The thrill and satisfaction of taking a fresh fleece and spinning, dyeing and weaving it into something that is naturally beautiful.  

Italy- Verona and Lake Garda

 Back from Italy, we spent a few days in Verona and then went up to Lake Garda. We had a lovely holiday. Verona is a beautiful place and with so many things to see.We visited all the tourist spots. Below a photo of the famous Juliette House. Our hotel was a minutes walk from the Arena- the Roman Amphitheatre, very central to all the sights so great for us as we could walk and explore.

Now you know me, I'm always on the look out for anything yarn related and a little search online before we went walking meant we could explore the quiet streets and tucked away places where the residents of Verona live and find this beautiful yarn shop!
I love the yarn bombed window with a rather lovely woolly tree and rainbow design. Inside such a warm welcome and some lovely quality yarns to choose from. I treated myself to a few balls of Italian wool.

https://www.facebook.com/jennyklaerfilatiericami.it/

After a good few days of walking and enjoying Verona with plenty of stops for coffee and gelato I might add!! We headed up to our next hotel on the banks of Lake Garda. Here we spent a wonderfully relaxing time swimming, sun bathing and exploring the little towns.

One day we took the ferry across to Limone. It was market day and we had been told it would get very busy, so we took the early ferry, brilliant as being "early birds" it was only us and another couple on the crossing! We sat at the bow, it was a breezy morning and quite choppy so really good fun with splendid views across the lake.

Limone is such a pretty harbour with lots of lemon groves. The market was vibrant. There was a sweet little museum which was full of amazing old photographs well worth a visit.

And in the museum I spied this very ancient spinning wheel displayed with some weaving shuttles. There was no information about it and the museum attendant didn't really know about it and I sadly speak very little Italian.

A view of Malcesine Castle on our ferry crossing back.

A Visit to Cold Harbour Mill

Empty Wooden Spools

 When we pop over to the Mainland, we like to find places to visit that inspire our own creativity.
So while we were spending a few days in Somerset and Devon we visited another Working Mill-
Cold Harbour Mill.

https://www.coldharbourmill.org.uk/

You can find out more about this super little mill on their website, link above.

Fleece

 It was really interesting to see the old carding rooms and some beautiful pieces of kit for the preparation of the wool for spinning and weaving.

Wool Tops

 However the Mill no longer processes fleeces, but rather buys dyed wool in as Tops and then uses a variety of different machines to blend and spin their own yarn to sell and to weave with.

Spinning

 Spinners and Weavers offer a nice demonstration and talk to show the visitor how the wool is taken through each stage from spinning, skeins, cones, warping and weaving.

Warping

Weaving

In the Weaving Mill there are three floors to discover and plenty to see including ancient looms and wheels.

On site there is the water wheel, gardens, walks, café and shop and the steam furnaces that used to power the machines, On some special dates each year they hold "Steam Up Days" when these furnaces are powered up.

A few Stash Treats from the shop at the end of our visit, I will really enjoy weaving something special on my own loom with these yarn! 

 

A visit to Cotswold Woollen Weavers

 We recently had a little holiday in the Cotswolds. We found this old weaving mill with museum, shop and café. It really is a delightful place to visit. The following photos were taken on my mobile phone camera, so do pop over to their website to see and find out more,

http://www.cotswoldwoollenweavers.co.uk/

 Being able to view some old looms close up was great. I particularly get excited when I see wonderful old wooden looms. This is a beauty, it is so lovely to get up close, wander around having the museum all to ourselves.

Here you can see the Woven Cloth on the Loom, a packed room of woolly weaving goodies!

Bobbin, Spools, Shuttles Galore! Fleeces, Wools, Cones, Baskets,
Spinning Wheels and all Woolly Weaving Paraphernalia! 

Close up view of the Warp Threads, Heddles, Reeds on the Loom.

Even the building itself is beautiful. We enjoyed lunch in the café before we had to head out on our journey home to catch our ferry to the Isle Of Wight
We like holidaying out of season and on weekdays it's an ideal time to relax and potter around.

Saint Distaff Day- Back to Spinning

Hand Spun Wool on Bobbin and Niddy Noddy

 Welcome and Happy 2018. I hope you like the new look to my blog, it's still a work in progress, I want to keep it clean, fresh and easy to view and navigate around.

Saint Distaff Day,   

http://www.tellinghistory.co.uk/resources/distaff.htm

Interesting article if you want to know the origins.

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Well I felt my faithful Ashford Spinning Wheel deserved a really good make over and a bit of pampering to start the new year of spinning -so a visit to Wright Turned workshop (aka Skipper). 

  Where it was cleaned, polished, oiled and buffed to perfection, much more thoroughly than my usual regular maintenance, I was so pleased and excited to get back to my spinning and set to work immediately.

2 Bobbins of single thread on Niddy Noddy

 A smoothly running Spinning Wheel is a joy to use. First task was to ply up all those bobbins and spare singles to free up the bobbins for more spinning.

Plying

 Plying the threads together to produce 2 ply yarn and filling a new bobbin on the wheel.
 You can see the wool thread held by my 3rd and 4th finger and the plied twisted yarn feeding up away from my thumb and index finger.

Bobbin full of 2Ply Wool Yarn

 I had some textured hand dyed woad oddments on a couple of bobbins so plied those too.

 When I have oddments it is great to spin them all up together and make a really unique yarn, just perfect for adding to my Saori weaving. Lumps, bumps, textures, colours, different, thicknesses, rough, smooth, silky you name it!  Just using up all the bobbins as I go mixing and ...

 seeing what happens....

Thrilled with the results!

I still have to sett the yarns by washing them, but I have some more lovely Stash to start 2018 knitting and weaving projects.