Drop spindles and I have a love/hate relationship. I love the way they look, I love their history and traditions, I love that there are so many options like size, weight, top whorl, bottom whorl, wood, stone, etc. I hate that I have to co-ordinate my spinning while battling gravity. Most of the time gravity wins and my carefully spun singles go rolling and unraveling as my yarn breaks and the spindle drops to the ground. So I got this: The Spindolyn. It takes the drop out of drop spindles. It is a support spindle and you draft the fiber away from the hook. Way cool and pretty reasonable. I've been spinning sheltie hair with it and it's great for fine fibers. It will never challenge my love affair with my spinning wheel but it's a neat option for portability. The only hitch is that my weak shoulder can't keep up the drafting for very long.
I want to spin a combination of wool and sheltie hair. I think that adding wool to the dog fur will improve its wearability and make it easier to knit by providing some elasticity to the yarn. I hand carded a bit of the combination but my weak shoulder complained viciously about the hand carding process. I couldn't get too into it mentally either because it felt like I was doing more grooming on hair that had already been groomed off the dogs. Like I don't have enough grooming on my plate already. So I researched drum carders for several weeks as I waited for September so that there would be a paycheque before the credit card bill arrived. Teachers don't get paid over the summer.
Behold this! I ordered it yesterday. I can hardly wait for it to arrive!
No comments:
Post a Comment