The Creative Castle: You spin me right round baby..........

This is the result of 2yrs. worth of research. As a small girl we would go visit a friend of my parent's whose whole family collected antiques. My favourite thing to do was to sit at her spinning wheel & get it to spin. Aunt Peggy would then hand me the carders & let me brush out the lamb's fleece. She didn't spin herself, but did have a small amount of fibre on hand for displaying along with the wheel.

I then would dream of what it would be like to learn to spin. A few years ago, I found out that one of our Quilt Guild members was a spinner; this motivated me to start pondering the topic once again.

At first I was shocked to find out the cost of the wheels & therefore knew that I had better be sure of what I wanted before I made a purchase. Every once in a while I would search the internet for wheels, spinning info. etc. The urge to get one got so strong last Christmas that I finally broke down, throwing caution to the wind & making my purchase on a newly acquired credit card (no lectures please).

I had decided on the Kromski Sonata for a number of reasons, the final being a review that I read on CraftyGrrrl.ca. She had just boughten one herself & talked about a deal that Coppermoose had going where you got the $120- bag for free when you ordered the wheel. It was still on when I checked the site so I ordered it.

It only took 2 wks. to arrive & when it did, I dragged my Flu-like body down to the Post Office to pick it up. In Pj's, winter coat, no make-up & armed with a box of kleenex & Ny-Quil, Mary (the post master) was there to greet me & she totally understood. She's a sewer & mail-order junkie & said she would have done the exact same thing. Pictured below is the pkg. just taken out of the box.

The wheel is attractive, smooth & I love it. There's probably some better ones out there, but for the price & compactness (not to mention the bag), I am very happy.

The picture below is of my first handspun. I got the roving from Lane's End. Lynn (lanesend "AT" cycor "DOT" ca) didn't have a lot of dyed ones to choose from because she hadn't done her dying for the new season yet, but I did manage to get this green one & the pink/purple/blue one below. They're both 30 Mohair/70 Cotswold blends; very nice to work with.

The next picture is a handspun containing Angelina Fibres. I am a distributor for them here & just had to try blending some into a roving. Not wanting to mess with the dying pattern, I broke off the bits in colour sequence, carded in the Angelina & then put back in the sequence to be spun. A lot of work, but the results were lovely. I think the sparkle is probably difficult to see from the picture, but trust me it's wonderful.