Sunday, April 8, 2007

Duelling Banjo's ?

Happy Easter everyone :) and I hope its as sunny with you all as it is here. Hubby is working though so I have been keeping myself amused !! I have been dyeing some handspun sock yarn in stripes, which if you want to see you can check out on my blog.

I needed to get some bobbins clear before Thursday as I have a SWD Guild meeting and its spinning in all its forms so I plied the bobbins of the wool ,mohair and silk I had blended and spun . I have still some more of that to spin but I am having problems trying to spin evenly to a worsted /aran weight at the moment so have to say I was not enjoying doing it.
I don't usually use roving's as I find they are dry and lifeless ,but they are instant gratification I guess and I said I would try and show how I spin a roving to get certain colours to stand out better, rather than blend all together. Now this roving is merino & silk and it has darker blue hues and sea blue , turquoise shades as well as the white silk. So I have split it in sections of the dark blue hues on one side and then the lighter shades on the other . I'm not sure that this photo shows how different the shades are but you will see that on the wheels that there is a difference.
Oh and by the way that is the drop spindle that I favour the most ,odd shape I know but it does the job.
One thing I did overlook in my haste to get this done was that I usually spilt the whole roving that I am using and then weigh the two batches to get an even weight so that I am pretty sure that all the roving will be used.



This is the lighter sea blue shades and using most of the silk as well . I spun this on Tony's wheel which is a great little wheel.



Then the darker one I spun on my Ashford.



Now can you see the difference? So I will then ply these together so the shades will look more definite, of course I could also have just spun the two shades alternating and then Navajo plied them and that would have given me a striped effect. I spun these using the woolen method so that I could keep the individual hues of blues .
So here I was using both wheels side by side and the song 'Duelling Banjo's' came to my head and we have these battery powered rodents that play this tune which are great fun and amuse all children and adults who visit us. Tony has bought a few of these sort of toys and mainly given them to me whenever I have been in hospital to cheer me up , which they invariably do . If I knew how to upload videos I would have had them play for you .



Any way folks hope your weekend is going well; I am going back to finish that roving so that I can free another bobbin up

4 comments:

Sara said...

Nice spinning, but I could hardly notice because I was so distracted by the Candace Bahouth bunny pillow. Did you do the needlework yourself? Delightful, and so seasonal :).

Fiberjoy said...

And the bunny pillow matches your sofa!

Your spindle reminds me of the one that The Spindling Scot's grandfather made her, which her dog chewed. It had four arms/wheels. (See her Jan 3 blogpost)

I love the dark blue singles.

cyndy said...

Great instruction! ...and beautiful wool, it's "bluetiful"!

Love the photo of the two wheels set up...

Artis-Anne said...

Yes I did do the cushion ; I used to do a lot of them at one time and do still have one rather large unfinished one which was intended to be a floor cushion , must get it done sometime !!
I checked out Spindling Scot's post and you are right it is so similar. I do think mine has a nice balance to it but as I don't know that much about spindles I hadn't realized that there could be so many in all shapes & sizes . I find it so fascinating . I have tried spinning on about 8 differnt makes of spinning wheels , either through the guild or friends and they too have their own individual qualities
What a wonderful art form spinning is, from the tools to the fibers