Friday, February 15, 2013

Still no name!

OK folks, this is getting serious.  I got my wonderful Kiwi 2 for Christmas.  I assembled it and started spinning.  I felt a connection to the wheel, but no name came to me.  I figured that once I stained and oiled it, the name would come...

So, I took it apart and got to work.  I used Minwax for the wheel, flyer and whorl.  I started with a wood conditioner (promised by the lady at Rona to make the stain go on more evenly) and then used the Minwax stain in Jacobean.  I asked about the water based ones and got a very non-committal response about how nice they would look...  So, I went with the toxic, make piles of rags spontaneously combust, stuff.  I then used Danish Oil in Natural for the rest of the wood. 


I LOVE  the way it turned out.  It needs another coat of oil (you can see a dull patch on the wheel, and there are other dull patches on wood).  So I guess the 2 coats I did according to the instructions wasn't quite enough.  That's OK though, because my next project has me using a bunch more Danish oil -so I'll get them then.



And, of course, I needed to celebrate by spinning something.  I was also hoping that a name would come to me while using my new beautiful wheel...  This is still from my friend's MIL's sheep.  I'm finally getting the hang of hand carding.  And for this yarn, instead of using the fiber as a rolag (so rolling it the short way off the cards), I turned the fiber and rolled it the long way and then pulled that out into a sliver.  It meant that my fibers were mostly all pointing in the same direction and I was able to spin a nice, thin, even single.  I then N-Plied it to make, what I'm guessing, is a fingering to sport 3-ply.  I ended up with just over 200 yards (from counting the loops of the niddy-noddy) which weighs 122 grams.  So - I'm still spinning very "heavy"...  My yarn is very dense and I don't quite know how to change that. 




So - now that you've ready through that.  Any suggestions for a name?  Gimli is about the only one that's coming to mind, but it seems so silly...  Help me!

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