Ashford Jumbo Sliding Hook Flyer

I have bought a Jumbo Flyer with the Sliding hooks and I am pleased to say that with the good advice from 'The Alpaca Spinner' I can use it on both my Ashford Traveller and the Traditional.
At the moment it is on the Traditional but I have a new jumbo bearing for the Traveller and a reducer bush which means I can us the Traveller with either the regular or jumbo flyer and for any thickness of yarn as I also have an orifice reducer. The same versatility also applies to the Traditional. I think this is really 'cool'.

I should add that I like the Sliding Hook Flyer but I am not sure that it is that much better than the regular hooks. I chose to buy it because it makes the Traditional more flexible - the flyers that came with it only had two ratios whereas the new flyer has four ranging from 4.1 to 12.5:1.

Weaving - Scarf

Well I have finished my first weaving project on the Leena Loom. I am really pleased with it although there is some unevenness in places. I found weaving on a four shaft loom is faster and more comfortable (this does not apply to warping) than weaving on a rigid heddle but I am sure I will still get lots of use out of the rigid heddle.

My daughter in law bought me the wool I used for the weft for Mothers' Day and I think it has made a really interesting scarf. I used 4 ply bamboo for the warp.

I know the photograph is a bit odd with a scarf draped over a chair but the scarf is very long and I wanted to show it off : )

Ramie - Spinning and Dyeing Nettle

The photograph opposite is Ramie which spun up very well apart from flying all over me and the room I was spinning it in. Also on the downside it is rather stringy. I just hope it knits up to look reasonable as I want to knit a scarf for my daughter as she is allergic to wool.

I did a search for Ramie on the Internet and found it belongs to the nettle family and grows in the tropical and subtropical regions of the world and interestingly is grown for both fibre and fodder.

I dyed the Ramie with Procion MX dyes which is different than dyeing wool in two respects firstly the yarn was soaked before dyeing with soda ash and salt added to the water and secondly after adding the dye in the same way as I would do for wool I just covered it with kitchen foil and left it until the next day before rinsing. I think perhaps the rinsing could be a third difference as it took ages to rinse whereas I have found that when dyeing wool there is no or hardly any bleeding. As you can see the colours are really vibrant.

Spinning and Dyeing

I thought it was time I caught up with showing some of my spinning and dyeing exploits..... On a previous blog I put up a photo of some dyeing I had done which I wasn't very pleased with - but it has spun up OK nowhere near as garish as I thought it would be although it is somewhat brighter than it looks in the photograph.

I have started to knit some fingerless gloves- yes I know - wrong time of year, but I am sure they will come in very useful come autumn. The wool is BFL which I dyed with Landscape Dyes and then spun on the Traditional. I am finding the single treadle hard to get used to though and it turned out a bit thick and thin but nonetheless it is knitting up quite well.

Spring

It has been glorious spring weather this past week. I took these photographs a couple of days ago. The apple blossom and the bluebells were taken when we were out for a drive and the clematis is in our garden.

The bluebells were growing along a country road side - the apple tree in a hedge near by.

The clematis has been outstanding this year and along with the blossom on our old apple tree and the flowering cherry the garden has looked lovely.

New Addition - Ashford Traditional Spinning Wheel

Since my last blog I have aquired a second spinning wheel. It is on long term loan and is an older Ashford traditional. I have had it for about three weeks now and it has polished up beautifully.

Introducing 'Leena'

Well I am now the proud owner of a four shaft table weaving loom. It is a Toika 'Leena' and although it is an older model it's in pretty good shape and has pride of place in the 'new' shed. It arrived on a Saturday nearly three weeks ago and although it was in pieces it quickly went together.. but...the heddles were in a real
mess and not having any experience
with string heddles it took me ages to get them sorted.

Likewise it took me ages to sort out the warping process. The book 'Learning to Weave' by Deborah Chandler was invaluable.









After a lot of trials and errors I finally got to the stage where I could start weaving....



I used acrylic 4 ply left over from my
machine knitting days and set about trying out my new 'toy'. I followed some of the advice in the Deborah Chandler book and followed some of the twill patterns from the 'Ashford Book of Weaving' and also 'did my own thing'. Hopefully next time I blog about my new loom I will have actually made something..... It's OK doing a practice piece but much more interesting actually making something....