Kim and I were at our favorite antique place a few weeks ago and I found this ebony and ivory spinning wheel which I couldn't resist bidding on. It is much more ornate than my other wheel and I think it's meant for spinning flax because of the large distaff sticking out the top. I tried it out this weekend and it does spin although it feels a bit more fiddly than my other wheel. It has two bobbins (apparently spinning flax with two hands was a popular idea once) but I'm having trouble getting the one on the left to spin counter clockwise without the drive band coming off. Also several bits were broken off and I had to glue them back on so hopefully it will hold up. The hooks to guide the yarn onto the bobbin are mostly broken off so I couldn't spin much because I couldn't fill the bobbin properly. I'm planning to try to buy some tiny hooks to screw in myself but I'm not sure if I'll be able to fix it or not.

I got the materials for this jumper as pre-died combed tops. I thought it would be boring just spinning natural colored yarn all the time but as it turns out I would much rather either dye the stuff myself or stick with a more natural color. The final yarn (which I plied) has a bit of plastic-ness about it just because the color is too fake and too evenly spread. Other than that it is soft and quite comfortable and this pattern worked out great because it was knit from the top down so I worked on the sleeves and the body at the same time to make sure I wouldn't run out of yarn with one cuff to go. I'm currently spinning using the woolen method but I would like to try spinning tops again especially if I get to hand paint them first.

Here is the scarf I made from the first batch of yarn I spun. I probably could have used bigger needles but it is going to be really warm and cozy when winter comes

Ok here's the basic idea: in order to turn the raw material into yarn the wheel needs to perform two functions: twist the yarn and wind it onto the bobbin. We want to take a bunch of hairs and make them stick together in a long string and we do this by twisting them together so that it is difficult for them to slide apart. We also want to wind the yarn onto the bobbin as we twist it so that we can produce lots of it.

My wheel is called a double drive wheel which means that the drive band goes around the whorl and then pulley on the end of the bobbin. See the photo below.

I pump the footman which turns the big wheel which makes the drive band go around. The drive band turns the pulley on the outside (called the whorl) which turns the axle which is connected to the flyer. The drive band also turns the pulley on the inside which is attached to the bobbin which spins on the axle (which is being turned by the whorl). The yarn is tied to the bobbin which means that as the bobbin turns the yarn is twisted. The flyer is also turning around the bobbin which winds the yarn onto the bobbin as it is being twisted. Note the difference in the sizes of the two pulleys - the larger one (the whorl) makes the flyer spin slower so that there is time for the yarn to be twisted before it is wound onto the spool.

I'm still working out how to get some action shots but hopefully this gives you a basic idea. I forgot to mention that there is a hole in the end of the axle called the orifice. The yarn feeds through the orifice, then through a hole in the flyer and onto the bobbin. I've drawn an arrow where the yarn comes out. This facilitates the twisting/winding I talked about earlier.

Well I finally finished my first batch of yarn. It's about 200 grams of Blue Faced Leicester that is un-dyed and has been turned into combed tops. It is really soft and moderately 'sticky' and pretty easy to spin. It took me a while to get the feel of working with it since I was trying to spin using a woolen method and combed tops work much better for producing a worsted yarn. But now that I'm getting the hang of it I'm starting to really like spinning So anyway I spun it up with my spinning wheel and plied it and soaked it and hung it up to dry.

It was hard to get the amount of twist right, most of this yarn is either over or under spun and it is a bit uneven which I'm sure will look really great if I can only find a good pattern.

I did try using my drop spindle first but it didn't really work out. I think I'll save that for when I want to make a fatter yarn or for my trips later this summer when I won't be able to take my spinning wheel with me.

This is my second attempt at spinning. It's pre-dyed merino wool (pre died as in before my purchasing it, not pre being removed from the sheep). I'm spinning it using a worsted method which means that its producing a smooth, not too fuzzy or fluffy yarn. I'm planning to ply it and although its going much better than my first try I'm sure I'm sill over spinning some parts. The tops are quite soft although not quite as soft as the BFL I tried before. The dye is really even (think commercially dyed), I'm planning to stick with natural roving in the future as I really want to try hand painting the roving and then spinning it. Although I'll need to get some dye before I can try that.

Check out my spinning wheel and drop spindle. I'm use both of them as you can see although so far neither is really exciting me all that much. The drop spindle seems slow at best and the spinning wheel is pretty tricky. I think it's only going to work with pretty finely spun yarn and I'm getting better but its still hard to keep from letting too much roving into the triangle area thing where it gets sucked up before I can stop it.