Joy and Roberta have gone to visit Jane
Last month we returned to Victoria to “try on” some country towns. We also took back some stuff we don’t need before the move. We came to Hobart in one carload, but it was pretty cramped and we have accumulated a few things. So we figured we may as well take advantage of the fact we were driving right by the storage facility.
So Joy and Roberta, the spinners, joined Jane, the loom, in storage.
I’ve had Joy for three years or so. I’ve long thought we would break up and I would get a sexier wheel but I never worked out who that would be. I actually like her more as time passes, so I suspect I’ll end up keeping her. She’s a little workhorse.
Recently I got Roberta and she’s definitely a keeper. Lots of people don’t like how hard she pulls, as bobbin-led wheels do, but I just don’t let her win that contest. She’s super, super fast and that’s mostly what I want for spinning. I don’t dislike spinning, but mostly I want the yarn now so I can get on with the weaving and knitting.
I’m a lot more interested in spinning now that I learned how to knit for real. I don’t need/want any more scarves and I mostly weave with cotton and linen anyway. I’d like to spin cotton to see what it is like but I don’t see it becoming a thing. I crochet with acrylic for the outrageous colours. But knitting, now that’s for homespun wool!
New, very-very-very-small, toys arrived today for spinning and knitting. Who buys things right before moving? They are pictured here with some hand-dyed, hand-spun, hand-knit clown barf.
The clown barf is all wonky from me trying at times to fatten up and/or spin thick and thin and generally give Roberta a good workout to see what she could do. I knit it on the trip, to have something to knit—I wasn’t going to start the jumper without full time Internet support—and to see how the singles off Roberta worked up. It isn’t anything, at least not in this incarnation. I can frog it if I decide I need a thing in these colours.
Here’s a hand-dyed, hand-spun, hand-woven scarf that is not quite so clown barfy.
These colours (better IRL) are much more to my taste and I’m looking forward to learning to get them with natural dyes.