#spinning wheels

[this-world-of-beautiful-monsters]

christopher bursk, ovid at fifteen /interview with the vampire

(inspired by this)

[tempestuousreed]

a beautiful angel has entered my life…

it’s a used ashford traditional that belonged to the seller’s late mother—great condition, and also has all these personal touches.

apparently she added the handle to the threader herself with polymer clay.

We (the wheel and I) are still getting to know each other, but I find I’m able to spin much finer, and chain plying is SO much easier on a wheel.

you can’t tell super well from this picture, but these are some of the attempts from throughout the day (earlier on the right) and it’s really cool to see how I’ve improved in such a short amount of time. Obviously it helps that I already have spinning experience.

anyways, I had a bad day today for a lot of different reasons, but this beautiful wheel was a wonderful balm with which to spin my woes away.

[trashpandacraft]

having sat down and spent a bit of time spinning on all the wheels, i have thoughts on them!

our first contestant: a sheridan scandanavian. kinda.

sheridan was an australian manufacturer in the 70s and early 80s, and this particular model is often mistaken for an ashford traditional. one tell that it isn't is the spokes on the wheel—a traddy has eight, and a scandanavian has six.

another tell is its tension knob, which i actually love—this is a lot easier to get a grip on than the ones that are just balls.

...there's also a nameplate identifying the maker and the model. but that's kinda where things get weird, because this? this is not what a scandanavian is meant to look like.

eagle-eyed readers may have already noticed that it's a double drive wheel, which is weird, because the scandanavian was only ever made as scotch tension. sheridan made a similar wheel, the macarthur, that was a double drive. my understanding is that these wheels were sold as kits, so as best i can guess, someone must have had a scandanavian and a macarthur, and at some point, for some reason, they dropped the macarthur's workings onto the sheridan's stand.

whatever she is, though, she spins nicely—works exactly like you'd expect, even after what was clearly a number of years of neglect. i'd like to get some more oil into the leather bearings, but she's in good shape. this one's a surprisingly slow wheel, even on the highest ratio, but will be great for plying and—more importantly—for @binchickencrafts to learn to spin on.

next up is the tarra...something. maybe the evelyn, but maybe the agnes?

she's beautiful, right? another tilt tension, too, which i like. lovely matching orifice hook with a little storage hole, and integrated bobbin storage, which i absolutely love.

so why's she weird? well. the evelyn was the evolution of the agnes, basically. agnes had a block for a mother of all, evelyn was shaped. agnes had a four-part drive wheel, evelyn had six. agnes had eight spokes on the drive wheel, evelyn had six.

this wheel, though. she has a shaped mother of all, an eight-part drive wheel, and eight spokes.

she also has a really neat flyer.

the flyer is part of what attracted me, to be honest, and no regrets. it needs shined up some more—i was eager enough to try her out that i cleaned off the worst of the rust with some vinegar, but it needs some more attention. those hooks, though, are fantastic. i think that they're a curse for a lot of people, because if one's lost, replacements are almost impossible to come by, but if you have them, they're so good. the screw loosens the hook and lets you slide it as needed, and you can get very close to either end of the bobbin—you can use the stationary hook to wind on right at the front, and the movable hook covers the rest of the bobbin easily. all my treadle wheels have been fixed hooks, so this was a new adventure.

this is the wheel in the worst shape, i think. she needs oiled up, but also needs to have the rear maiden reseated—it's loosened and has a fair amount of horizontal play, which doesn't give the best experience. i feel like when that's fixed, which won't take more than a couple hours and some wood glue, she's going to be a sweet spot of a wheel. even with the movement in that back maiden, i can get from worsted down to cobweb on her, so i'm really looking forward to seeing what she's like when she's been patched up.

finally: the pipy saxony.

please clap.

i can't overstate how small this wheel is. she weighs less than five kilos. that's like. a cat. that's a cat of weight. that's how much this wheel weighs. i knew when i bought her that she was a small wheel, but i hadn't realised how small, so i was a little concerned that she wasn't going to be very effective.

turns out joke's on me, because this teeny tiny wheel is an absolute powerhouse—as long as you want to spin finely. which is perfect for me, because i almost never use or spin yarn that's thicker than a light worsted, and even that's kinda pushing it. i'm the kind of person who knits jumpers out of sock yarn and owns multiple pairs of 1.5mm (size 000) circular needles.

this wheel wants to spin fast and wants to spin thin, and I *love* her. the wheel is weighted so it always stops ready to turn clockwise, and it's a string footman, and something about the combination of the two makes this an absolutely amazing experience. i spun for several hours, and my breaking point wasn't knee or ankle pain, but hip pain from sitting in that position too long.

how the heck does a wheel that—again!—weighs like ten pounds manage to weight anything?

it's easy to miss, but in that first picture, there's integrated bobbin storage again, with room for one on each side of the wheel.

the tension system isn't like anything i've used, and can be adjusted both vertically and horizontally. the tension peg does what you'd expect and moves the slider block (and the mother of all on it) closer or further from the wheel, but you can also move the mother of all towards you or away from you to better align it with the wheel.

she's just really nicely designed. look at this incredibly tidy bobbin release!

for the specific things that i spin most frequently, i'm pretty sure that the pipy is going to be my go-to treadle wheel, though i expect the others will see plenty of use, as well. and my eel wheel certainly isn't getting retired—my somewhat broken body is never going to let me use a treadle as often as i'd like, and there's a lot to be said for the ability to spin while watching television in bed. but i'm really excited to have these, and to use them when i can, even if it's not as often as i'd like.

i know that a lot of people are really dubious about buying used (especially vintage used) wheels, but i feel like they're often underrated. there's a lot of cool wheels out there that are as good or better than what you can buy in a store, and it's worth investigating it, if you're able to. (it's also worth noting that buying all three of these cost us less than half of what buying a single new ashford traditional would cost.)

finally, you want to see my favourite thing about the pipy? i saw someone complaining about this the other day, that their wheel's prior owner had 'gouged' it. but look.

that little gouge means someone else loved this wheel so much that their yarn wore a channel into the wood. and as soon as i stop holding my yarn back, it slots straight into place.

right where it's meant to be.

this wheel is older than i am—they're dated, on the bottom, and she was made in july 1972. she's only had one owner, a woman who used to teach spinning, but is elderly now and can't spin anymore. her daughter delivered it to me, and told me that this was her mother's last wheel—she'd gotten rid of the others, slowly, but held on to this until she was physically unable to treadle. fifty years! that woman spun on this wheel for fifty years.

i'm old enough that i don't imagine i'm going to get fifty years with it, but maybe i'll get lucky. either way, hopefully in another fifty years, someone new will be taking their turn, weirdly touched by the idea that this wheel has been so loved.

[strongbookthoughts]

Notes on The Whole Craft of Spinning by Carol Kroll

Guess what hobby I wandered back into! And I'm pretty sure I checked out this book on my first go with the hobby because some of it was really familiar.

So this book was published in 1981. That's important to know, because color publishing was not common. Even black and white photos are less common. That means that the images are hand-drawn diagrams of simple, clear line art.

So, if you're interested at starting spinning fiber and don't know anything this is a great book to give you the vocabulary to start looking up more detailed guides. It starts with what to look for in starting fibers, and tells you how to prepare them starting with washing a whole fleece (if that's what you got your hands on).

The section on using a drop spindle include a recipe for air dry clay so that you can make your own with household supplies. The diagram for how to spin includes 5 whole diagrams!

The section on using a wheel has more diagrams related to getting your yarn on and started.

There's also a bunch of modern stuff going on in the craft that this book totally ignores in favor of giving the total basics. It's not wrong, but there's a lot more to the hobby if you really want to start digging.

So basically, if your local library has this book, and you want to get in the hobby? Give it a good look through, and use your new vocabulary to look up tutorials with more images or video.

And if you pick up any other book on spinning there is a high chance that this one will be in the reference list.

[barrenspinster]

I am once again seeking advice from the fiber arts side of tumblr. Does anyone know where to get bobbins for a country craftsman wheel? It is my only wheel and it also only has the one bobbin included. Mine was made by the son and has an even number of spokes if that matters. I am looking into fabricating my own but that will be a large project that involves getting the lathe out probably. Thank you!

[kply-industries]

[shinesonhistory]

The Economics of Sleeping Beauty

In the opening scene of Sleeping Beauty when Maleficent cast the curse, everyone in the castle should have laughed at the idea that a princess would be anywhere near a spinning wheel.

I read that during the Middle Ages, spinning wheels were not household items, they were specifically used by those in the wool trade. I imagine the cloth guild at the time was responsible for that.

So that scene in Sleeping Beauty where the spinning wheels are burned, that was a major blow to the kingdom's economy. Unmarried women who are spinsters probably lost their jobs. Shepherds would not be able to sell as much wool as they did before.

Because of misogyny, the people would place the blame on Aurora instead of the king, so she would not have been a "beloved princess."