Wednesday 25 April 2012

Weak in the knees

With all that lovely fibre sitting here with me, I find myself in need of some tools.

I've never done anything where the tools of the trade cost so much as spinning.  Carders?  Electric?  Way way out of my league. So I have a pair of hand cards  Its going to take a while to really learn to use them to best advantage, but I have them waiting for when I am ready.  

I have looked at combs, which I think I might use more than cards, but the price of those makes me weak at the knees.  It doesn't take the wind right out of my sails but it sure does make you stop and think.  I have to talk to Mr. Needles about these, because if I tell him what they cost, he might very well manufacture me a comb and hackle.  We definitely have all the supplies.  

For this lovely Columbia fleece of mine, I suspect I am in need of a flicker carder.  This is a wee small hand card and works perfectly to manage certain kinds of fibre and small quantities.  

I ordered myself one of those yesterday from Shuttleworks.  It may very well be my perfect spinning prep tool.  Its going to be a lot easier to manage than the other types of fribre prep and I can see me doing small batches to spin in an evening far easier than I can see me doing large masses of fibre prep at a time as I would be tempted to do with other tools.

Because I was on the phone to Shuttleworks, I also ordered a high speed flyer for my spinning wheel.  The highspeed flyer is something I can see me getting a lot of use out of.  Spinning very fine seems to be my forte in spinning and I would like to see if I can go just a little finer.  

It takes forever to spin that fine, if you only spend a half an hour a week spinning. I usually spin slightly less than that, but I have faith that I will spin more.  

I have a lot of faith, but I know how it is.  And that knowing how it is is the only reason I did not also buy a Victoria spinning wheels so that I would have a nice wheel to take along easily on my travels.  Because I certainly need one of those.

Need it.  Badly.  A lot. Really bad.  Somehow the cost of the extra wheel doesn't make me weak in the knees the same way the price of a good carder does.  Somehow a spinning wheel seems like a bargain...

1 comment:

Sandra said...

So far I have resisted the siren call of spinning. Good thing, since the knitting, sewing, weaving, and now quilting is already taking over all my free time...