Tuesday, January 21, 2014

On the wheel...........

Today was our spinning get together - I needed something new to start on.......with hundreds of pounds of wool for sale in my etsy shop I'm easily tempted by certain colorways but I decided to go check out my personal stash. I found almost 2 pounds of mystery batts from Fantasy Fibers so I decided to start on it. A mystery batt is what's leftover when Janell cards commercially for clients, it's bits and pieces that she then mixes into giant layered batts. It's very fun to open one of these up and see what colors are hidden inside. She sells out of these quickly at both Black Sheep Gathering and Oregon Flock & Fiber Festival.
Last night I pulled some of the batts into strips to ready them for spinning

And here's the start of that spinning on my Hansen spinner - Bailey and Buster are looking pretty bored in the background as I set up my spinner here at home to continue spinning in the evenings.

Our area is still stuck in a freezing fog mode, yes it's better than what's happening in the midwest and east coast but that doesn't help us dealing with this going on 2 months. We escaped to the coast for the past 4 days, just over the mountain range from us it was sunny, blue sky and 60.  As we neared home yesterday evening we hit the fog coming over the last pass near our house - wish we could have pulled over on the highway for a picture of what that fog hanging over the valley looked like. I don't think it got above freezing today. We had a record drought last year and it's continuing with no rain in site - winter is our rainy season and it's dry, not enough snow in the mountains for the ski resorts to open let alone give us water in the summer. Sure wish some of that snow back east was falling in our mountains........if something doesn't change 2014 will be an even scarier fire season than 2013.

2 comments:

  1. Is your wheel electric? I'm interested in learning to wheel spin but can't use my legs so the manual wheel is out. I know the electric ones are costly but I'd have no choice. I'm trying to decide if it's worth the money.

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    Replies
    1. Yes, it is an electric wheel - the Hansen mini-spinner, http://www.hansencrafts.com
      I love it, it spins so fast (I still spin on my other wheels though as I love them too). It is expensive but if you feel like you'll spin enough it's well worth the cost. There is a foot pedal for start stop but you can do that with your hand since you can't use your legs, I always set it beside me rather than on the floor and just hit it with my hand for the start/stop - you control the speed by a little dial on the spinner, not by your foot.

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