Spinning Wheel for Sale

I'm moving so this beautiful wheel must go, I just won't have room for it. I had been asking $275 for it but will entertain any reasonable offer.

Beautiful Saxony Flax Wheel with Distaff. I was told when I bought this that it is a Country Craftsman wheel. I have not found any identification on it and am not sure if they were signed or not so I can't verify this.

I've only been using this wheel as décor but it spins beautifully.

The original Country Craftsman wheels were made by Jerome Rooney starting in 1969. He patterned the wheel after a 1700 Saxony flax wheel. The earliest of his wheels were made with 13 spokes, this one has 12 spokes and is thought to be from the early 70's. Joseph Franzek started working with Rooney in 1972. When Rooney retired in 1982 Franzek took over the business. He built and sol the wheels until 2003 when he retired.

The wheel comes with 3 original bobbins. The threading hook and lazy kate are not original, the lazy kate is a newer Kromski stained to match the wheel.

Must be picked up in Grants Pass/Merlin area. I will not ship so please don't ask. Please don't contact me if you're going to try and scam me - it won't work, I will not answer the email. Cash only, local in person pick-up.

I had been asking $275 - if you're interested make me a reasonable offer, this wheel needs a new home asap so I don't have to move it. I can be contacted at cindiesam at yahoo dot com

Hanging in there...........

I finally decided to knit the 'Be Simple Variations' asymmetrical shawlette using the 12 Days of Christmas handspun. It will be interesting to see how it turns out as it goes from color to color. It will also be interesting to see how big it ends up. I knit this shawlette using fingering weight yarn but this is more worsted size knit on bigger needles. I'm hoping it turns out big enough or I'll be ripping it out and trying something else. I am knitting on this when I'm not totally exhausted in the evening.

I'm hanging in there with the house buying project although I'm overwhelmed at times......many times. If all goes well we will be signing papers on the new house this week. I finally finished going through the entire house as I refuse to box up and move things I haven't used since we moved to this house 15 years ago. I've started packing so the house shows better............as in packing the weaving and sewing/crafts rooms as the rest of the house shows just fine. We have some work to do on the deck which Sam has started. Not sure when we'll get this house listed but am hoping it's in the not too distant future as we don't want to have an extra house for very long.

I've heard interesting comments from those around me about our move. Friends are feeling bad for us because we're downsizing - huh??? The new house is only a tiny big smaller so I wouldn't call that downsizing, we are downsizing from acreage to a neighborhood and no one should feel bad for us over that - it's what we want to do, it's a choice, we don't have to move, we can stay right where we are but we are ready to take care of less and have more time for the things that are important to us like weaving, spinning, quilting, sewing, beading, knitting, golfing, fishing, walking on the beach, etc, etc, etc.....   So dear friends, if you read this, please stop making those comments as it's starting to get on my nerves. Other than having to go through all the pains of buying and selling, which seem to be much worse this time than ever before, we're very happy...........we're both thinking about now that we don't ever want to move again but who knows what the future holds......

Finally.........shawls blocked

I took time early one morning last week to block a couple shawls so I could pack them away. It's not my favorite thing to do but I thoroughly enjoyed taking a break from house buying duties and getting the current house ready to put on the market. I love the way both of these turned out.

This is the Pretty Basic shawl pattern (Janina Kallio) knit from some beautiful hand-dyed fingering weight yarn a friend gifted me - I can wear this with so many colors - I love it. What I love about this shawl pattern is that I can knit it as long as my yarn will go, this one was knit several inches longer than the pattern calls for.

This is the Be Simple Variations asymmetrical shawl/scarf pattern (Carolyn Glauz-Todrank). I knit it in hand-dyed gradation fingering weight yarn, I think from Brambleberry Yarns but don't hold me to that, I can't find the label. I wasn't sure if I was going to like these colors but I love them.

Now back to cleaning windows and packing up coned yarns and knitting yarns in my studio so those rooms look bigger for showing of the house - one can barely walk in those  two rooms because of shelves and shelves of fiber. If I were looking at a house I could look past that, or get totally engrossed in seeing what was on the shelves, but most buyers would rather see an uncluttered room.

Hoping before the end of June I'll be weaving away again in my new space.........

Beach time out.........

Last weekend we had a beach getaway planned with friends who would be camping over there. We knew we really needed the getaway so in spite of so much to do here at home we headed west to the coast. We were celebrating Kathy's birthday over the weekend and one of the important parts of it was watching the labyrinth being drawn and walking it - it was World Labyrinth Day. Denny Dyke regularly draws them on the beach in Bandon along with his crew of rakers - Circles in the Sand

We're standing up above on the cliff watching the drawing - here it is in one direction......

.....here looking the other direction. It's huge, as usual.

One of the drawings within the labyrinth we pass by as we're walking.....

....a great sentiment - "We all belong to each other".......

.....folks walking the labyrinth, even horseback riders came to see although it would probably be frowned upon if horses walked it.....although I'm sure they could as the tide started coming in and others were done walking. There was one dog walking it but he got frightened so he had to be picked up and carried off.......and he wasn't a tiny dog to pick up.......not sure what spooked him.......

......ying yang we passed by......

Life is a labyrinth

and we are all wandering

searching for ourselves

Coming down the home stretch......

At the end a place to write our names. There's ours in the heart.......

.....and Bill wrote this for Kathy

After our walk we went down the beach a little ways to have an incredible picnic lunch I put together - it was a lovely day on the coast. Off in the distance you can see people still walking the labyrinth. It was a perfect weekend - life is good......

Overwhelmed..........

I'm overwhelmed at the moment, so much so I couldn't even find a suitable photo to go with this post. You see, we've been thinking about moving for the past year but hadn't really committed until recently. It's time for us to get off acreage and move into a neighborhood. We're at the point where we don't want to worry about dead trees, fallen trees, ice & snow on our steep 1/3 mile driveway, etc. Oh, and there's the fire danger I will not miss, we have no escape route here if a forest fire starts close by and we're on a hill surrounded on both sides by ravines. There's no where in our region that's totally safe from fires but it will be better at the new house. It's going to be sad to leave this home we've had for the past 15 years but we're ready for a new adventure. We will miss our extra large covered deck and the privacy acreage provides........and we will miss our neighbors but we're not going but 13 miles closer to town so we can still see them.


We have found a house and are moving forward with buying it. We have not listed our current house yet as we want to make sure the purchase on the new one goes through.............and we have to spruce it up.............as in clean it out. Our current house has tremendous storage, so much so that we just kept filling it up without moving anything old out. This is where the overwhelming part comes in - we're cleaning out closets and storage rooms and right now that job looks like it will never end. I have found that I need to go on several diets - a knitting yarn diet, a fabric diet, a bead diet, a roving diet, a craft supply diet, a shoe diet, a purse diet, kitchen stuff diet and I'm sure there are many other diets, including the normal diet to lose weight.  And there's the weaving yarns but there are 3 things exempt from that diet - tencel, silk and cottolin as I go through those at a fairly quick pace...........although there's no weaving going on at the moment.


I still have stock of roving to sell in one of my etsy shops - it's all 20% off thru May 26th and I'll most probably extend the sale beyond then. I really don't want to move it and I'd like to use those bins in packing up the house. I have been trying to move the remainder of the roving as I'm not going to be selling it any longer once my stock is gone. So if you need Ashland Bay roving check out my shop HERE. 


Now off to figure out which closet to tackle next..........