Aaron knits…and spins, and weaves.

July 27, 2013

Good morning everyone! It’s hard to believe it’s Saturday already. Seems like the week flew right by. I’ve sure enjoyed the cooler temperatures, and resurrected my evening walking routine, but I’m still waiting until the sun goes down before I start. It’s cooler in the evening and there’s less traffic which is always helpful. Also, my route starts out heading west and it’s nice to not have the sun right in my eyes.

This past week I go to catch up with a couple of dear friends that I don’t get to see often enough. I got almost no spinning done, but I have been hammering away at a knitting project most of the week, and starting to plan another, both of which are in anticipation of the fall and winter class schedules at Trumpet Hill. I’ll talk about those once I get some more details.

This morning I’m going to spend a little bit of time working on the last of the red and black Rambouillet. I put the rest of it on hold a while back to work on a super secret project with a deadline and I’ve been slowly making my way through the rest of it since. I’m at the point now where I just want it all done. What I really want to work on this morning is a bag of this.

Continue reading “Saturday Morning Spinning – two bags full”

July 13, 2013

Good morning everyone, I hope you’re all enjoying this little reprieve from the heat. It looks like it won’t last long. That’s okay with me. It just means I get more use of my pool. Not much knitting gets done, at least not large projects. Socks are good for the hot weather.

Last Saturday’s experiment with art yarn was brief, but a valuable learning experience. The only thing I was able to create that did end up in the pile of art yarn shame was about a yard or so of a coiled yarn. It may look nice enough in the picture, but it looks are deceiving. I had trouble managing the “anchors” before and after the coils, so they slide around, and I had difficulty holding the proper tension on the lace weight singles and the thick/thin singles during the plying. So even though it isn’t exactly usable as yarn, it serves as a valuable learning tool going forward.

Once you’ve developed that muscle memory for spinning and plying more traditional yarns, learning to do new things with your hands to create many art yarns is really quite difficult and requires a great deal of practice. Since I’m kind of between spinning projects right now, I’ve got the time to practice so I’ll keep at it.
I hear there may be spinning again at The Crossings this morning. The weather is certainly agreeable for it. I’ll be at The Crossings later this morning, but not for spinning. We’ll be participating in the Second Annual Donna Miraglia Memorial Walk. Our local chapter of Italian Greyhound Rescue will be at the Pet Supplies Plus booth, so stop by and visit us. It will be a special day for us, as we will be officially adopting Monticello (Monty) the dog we’ve been fostering since the beginning of May.

That’s all I have for now. I’m off to continue my art yarn experiments. Have a great weekend everyone!

July 6, 2013

Good morning everyone, is it hot enough for you? I’m doing my best to not complain too much about this heat. It would have been nice to have had some much warmer weather than we did back in late May and early June when my pool was open and practically unused. We’re trying to make up for that now though.

Before I get started doing any spinning this morning, and before the day gets too hot, I’m heading out for a walk. I have not been getting anywhere near as much exercise as I would like and I’m starting to feel it. Since it’s already over 70 degrees at 6AM, I may not do the entire 4 miles that I usually do, and I certainly won’t do it at the pace I normally like to do, but I need some movement this morning before I sit down to spin. Continue reading “Saturday Morning Spinning – and a short book review”

June 29, 2013

Good morning, and happy Saturday! Have you had enough rain yet? I know I have. By this point in the summer I’m usually adding water to my pool and worrying about my lawn turning brown and crunchy. Instead, I have been draining water from the pool and adding extra chlorine, and mowing quite regularly. The extra outside work has been keeping me busy, and keeping me from getting much knitting and spinning done.

I started spinning the Rideau Arcott on my Bliss, but I didn’t get very far at all. This is just the first color in the roving. The roving is very well carded and quite springy. Once the colored roving is done, I will spin four ounces of the same fiber in black to ply it with. It should make for an investing effect and texture when it finally gets knitted up. Continue reading “Saturday morning spinning”

Good morning everyone, and happy Saturday! Isn’t it great to finally have this weather? It’s certainly much nicer than last Saturday. But last weekend did get better and Memorial Day was really quite spectacular. My pool was still too cold to use though. The water temperature was about 58/59 degrees and I was only brave enough to dip my feet in, but not for very long. After a week of perfect summer temperatures (and a solar cover) the water is now above 70 so last night I went for an official first swim of the season.

Last weekend I started spinning some beautiful fiery orange Finn top on my Bliss wheel. During the past week I only managed to get about one third of the fiber spun. Because the highest ratio (18.5:1) on the Bliss is a little harder to treadle, I’m sacrificing twist speed for treadling ease and using the 12:1 ratio. The singles are coming out pretty fine so I’m expecting at a 3 ply this will be fingering/sock weight yarn.

Continue reading “Saturday morning spinning in better light”

You’ve seen it in pictures from the Men’s Spring Knitting Retreat and I’ve promised to write more about it. It’s the new Bliss spinning wheel by ;Woolmakers.

Continue reading “Saturday morning spinning on a brand new wheel”

I wrote this post this morning. Honest. But cell service up here is abysmal, and the bandwidth of the wifi gets maxed out pretty quickly. It’s almost midnight, and I can get good enough internet access to upload a few pictures and finally publish my post. I’ve added in some updates too. Enjoy!

Good morning everyone, and happy Saturday! I’ve been having a great time here at the Men’s Spring Knitting Retreat even though I haven’t done much knitting. I’ve done quite a bit of spinning so far though. Yesterday afternoon I lead a workshop for beginning spinners. Four guys who have never spun yarn before learned the basics of spinning on a wheel and created their very first hand spun yarns. A few other guys who didn’t sign up for that workshop will get a one on one intro to spinning later today, and later on this morning I’m leading a workshop for intermediate spinners and introducing them to woolen drafting techniques. Continue reading “Saturday morning spinning at the retreat”