Crochet Crazy

Posted By Liz on June 14, 2015

So. Now ive gotten over the shock.

I took up spinning just over a year ago. It doesnt seem that short, but it is indeed just a year. My crafty friends will know that any new craft no matter how pleased you are with the result.. The rest of the world may not be ready for your offerings.
I got my first wheel april last year. 
Now, i have a bag, a bag i term my museum of spinnings made. In it are many skeins/hanks of yarn, most of which are perfectly good usable yarns, but usually only a single thing of something, often not even a big one at that.
Earlier this year my friends you will recall i decided to try and dye some yarn. I bought a cheap wool fibre, and spin up a couple of hanks, dyed them, spun another, dyed that.. Then proceeded to spin up some more.  
Then a rather good lady who does mucho good work for dogs in need put up an auction for things to raise money to help her do her good work.
I had been toying with knitting up the non purple ones into a jumper or cardigan, but i saw the auction and posed the would anyone be interested.. The answer from one lady was yes!
So, i spun up the rest of my kilo of fluff. I made all in all 15 hanks of yarn, 12 are un dyed. 
Im so pleased to say, that my hanks in batches of 3 were put up for auction and .. They sold! Even the purple ones.
So, why am i so surprised? Well, this is the first big amount of spinning ive done, im pleased with the fact they are as consistent was i feel you can expect without 35 years of experience or machinery doing it for you can do, sure, they arent perfect but, someone bought all my yarn!
There are many people who have helped me and put up with me on my yarn ramblings .. 

This photo was taken before i finished spinning the last of the undyed hanks, but, here you go.. 

I hope the doggies get what they need and im so glad to have been able to use something i enjoy to help them 

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Posted By Liz on May 31, 2015

so, this week i had another week off.. Why? Cos its a british public holiday so its a cheap week for vacation times. 
I made six skeins to dye, extra bonus dog nose

  
To go with the 3 i dyed the other week

 
 I will dye these too.  Part of me is not sure i should dye them purple, but black a colour id br more likely to wear, order more of the fibre and spin up enough to knit something for me to wear… Im not out of fibre yet, but, this is actually lovely and soft and cheap!

Then i also made another of the multi colour thin yarn

  

So, now i have 4, with 4 more still to make.

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Posted By Liz on May 17, 2015

So I’ve started on the second brade of 4. Made half into this third skein. Darn fine harm if I say so myself 

The single  

 

The yarn

Here you see with the previous two. The new one is the top one. This one is lighter in colour as I took way more care to try separate the colours. 

  

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Posted By Liz on May 8, 2015

Even if I say so myself, i feel this is good yarn.

Heres a pic of one of bobbins as a single

  
Approximately fingering weight, weighing in at 60 and 55g
Now how good is this? Sorry one is way less in focus.. Bad camera.

  

It started out life like this  

 

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Posted By Liz on May 8, 2015

Much as I love spinning and yarns of pretty colours, I distinctly lack confidence in dying pretty yarns and more so, being sure I would get what i wanted.

This isnt exactly what I wanted.  I wanted a colour, any colour, with subtle darker and lighter waves to it, now, the crap knows how many things I have read and watched on how to dye, firstly the whole “kettle dye” which is kind of what Im after seems incredibly hit and miss. I do not want to nuke things in the microwave, I do not have helper, heck, I cant even get my ipad to type the letters I want, because the keys arent standard size.  I most certainly dont have an entire garage or room I can devote to  the idea of dyeing yarns.  I did buy two large pots, for cleaning and other fleece type related activities.

Now, because of the colour it is, this photo actually doesnt do it justice at all. In any photo i have taken ove it it either looks redder or bluer than it is, or more uneven .. For the most part its cadburys purple..

I dont like purple… So the question is, what do i do with around 160g of purple?
  

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Posted By Liz on April 26, 2015

i seem to have made a habit of spinning a single and leaving it on the bobbin. As many of my bobbins are mostly full of I forget what. 

Anyway. Three I did recently were

 

This was “carded wool” from eBay. I got maroon and black. Clearly this is the maroon one 

Next up

 

 

This is Shetland and the blue is an unknown fibre spun on my new limited edition Elizabeth as fine as I dated. Resulting 3 ply is about sock weight which given the fineness of the single seems thicker than expected. 

Lastly 

Been meaning to do more with this.   Back in May last year I spun in the grease some ryeland kept by a guy I work with. Resulting in crimpy yarn which was a great texture but I meant to try washing it first. So this week I did. 

It dried so on Saturday I spun it and plied it 

 

 

I have on the bobbin right now some wild craft dyes cheviot which is stupid fine. Heaven knows what I will do with it!

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Posted By Liz on April 3, 2015

Ok, ive been reading many places and everyone who knew i had an asnford limited edition elizabeth still in its box has been saying oh its glorious, it will be everything you want.

So, i woke this morning, although a public holiday, day 1 of my days off work out of 10 and thought. Ok, i can do this.

Well, about two hours later, i needed to phone a friend. The split pin you put in to work with the tension knob wasnt right, the knob wouldnt turn and i was blowed if i could find my plyers to remove it

So, waiting for my ex husband to show to aid in its extraction, i continued the placing together, recognising that the mother of all is quite removable, i thought id do this step, so it was ready to fix on once the tension knob was sorted..

It was then to my horror i realised im a fecking moron.

Unlike the traditionals, this has a round mother of all, not flat, so clearly goes one way… Yeah the other bloody way. I had put both the legs, and ergo the treddle and wheel on… The wrong way round.

Now, the legs are held on with three screws that shouldnt be hard to fix… Got them off, tried to remove the wheel support uprights. Only held on with a bolt a piece.. Removed that… Did the wheel lift? Did it my arse..

So, now i had the stuck split pin which meant the tension knob wouldnt move, and then noticed a line that had escaped me about a metal thing going in a hole which also probably made the the thing work if the knob would turn, and still struggling and not getting that split pin out, and, now, not being able to get the wheel to lift off….

I was distinctly un calm by this point, my signed special wheel was not going to work if these things couldnt be fixed.

If you heard me swear at this point. Im sorry. I was not quiet or lady like it in any remote sense or looseness of the terms. 

Thankfully ex hubby arrived. We spent an hour or so wiggling the uprights and pin until both finally came free and we could sort the thing out. 

By about 2pm, the wheel was for the most part finished. 

So, tied the double drive drive band on. Put the biggest whorl on, a bobbin, tied it as tight as we could, it flopped like a fish, many efforts to tighten it later, it was just about tight enough.. Just. 

So, the wheel came with some fibre. Three colours, took the first out, on the big whorl, it wasnt exactly pulling the single on much, in fact, barely.. I felt a huge twang of disappointment. It seems so many rave about double drive, about how its best with fine spinning.. Yeah well this wasnt even working with normal slow spinning. Ok, lets try the smallest whorl… Nothing mentions the like 10 mins it takes to crank that tension knob to move the mother of all from one extreme to the other, nor does it say unless you have 1 atom thin fingers, the orifice hook will be in the way. Anyway, finally, start spinning, now the things actively pulling yarn off the bobbin and giving me it back. 

I cant help but feel this is because the hooks on the flyer are on the left.. Its probably rot. But thats just how it felt.

Upset and highly frustrated, i went out for a few hours.

On my return i think screw it all, i will go single drive with scotch tension, thats never let me down. And other than its still hard to get enough tension in the drive band with the recommended knot, which i ditched and went for good old reif knot, finally, now we’re talking. 

  

And as a challenge, i got the smallest whorl and tried to spin, my finest thread yet.

  

Or scale, thats a uk penny, which is marginally over 1cm in diameter.

Ok, so what in heck do you do with something that fine?

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Posted By Liz on March 14, 2015

so. I finished the first pair of socks not for me. I hope the fit well and are liked. ?

???

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Posted By Liz on March 10, 2015

so. Someone kindly said how nice and warm my socks looked so, I ordered some yarn and started this evening. Here we see foot and heel turned. Only a bit of leg and cuff to go on first sock

??

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Posted By Liz on March 10, 2015

So. Having finished the socks Saturday night. I started these Sunday am and did the cuff pretty much on the last one after work today. 

??

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