12 days of Christmas, Day 12, How to Spin on a Bliss spinning wheel

This blogpost deals with starting to spin on the Bliss spinning wheel from Woolmakers. 

 

What you need to start:
A spinning wheel, it can be a Bliss, if you have one, or a Louet which is sort of similar, or any wheel really;
some acrylic yarn;
some fleece to spin (Corriedale, or BFL or Jacobs or Shetland work well for beginners, it might be best not to start with Merino, angora, alpaca or silk);
a crochet hook, or a paper clip bent into a hook type shape;
little bottle of sewing machine oil, with long nozzle.
Patience, resilience, fortitude (not to worry if you don't have these, the wheel will teach you them!)

Take off the bobbin from the flyer and put a drop of sewing machine oil onto the metal axle of the flyer. The flyer is the U-shaped piece with hooks.

(Older wheels without sealed ball bearings could also do with a drop of oil at the centre of the drive wheel and where the crank of the footman is. Check the manual for your wheel if in doubt, or check online.)

Step 1: start by getting used to using your feet, ie treadling, starting the wheel going clockwise and practising keeping it going. To get the wheel to spin clockwise, you need to have the top of the footman at what I refer to as 1am on the clock, so slightly to the right of the central crank.

When the footman is here, the treadle is at one of its highest points and when you push down with your foot, the wheel will spin clockwise.
You might find that you treadle very fast at first, however, I am going to ask you to slow that pace down, so that you are treadling slower, but still getting the wheel to go around clockwise and not stop/reverse direction.


Then practise stopping treadling and re- starting in the clockwise direction just using your feet and a little push with your hand if needed. Remember the importance of the 1am position for the top of the footman. There is no fleece involved at all at this stage.

Repeat this step but now go in the anticlockwise direction. See if you can figure out where you need to have the wheel positioned to get the anticlockwise spin when you press down with your foot. (Did you figure it out? It is when the top of the footman is pointing to 11 on the clock.)

Step 2: Tie on a leader. Get a 80cm long length of acrylic knitting yarn and tie one end of it securely to the axle of the bobbin on the wheel. This is your leader.

 Thread it on the hooks and through the orifice (hole) at the front. Hold it and treadle clockwise as above. See if you can feel the twist come up through the yarn. Look closely and you will see the actual twist in the yarn, coming up along the leader . Let the leader go and the twist will go out of the leader.
You can now tie a small loop in the free end of the leader.(below)

Step 3: Now we will practise spinning with commercial yarn:  take two x 40cm long lengths of acrylic knitting yarn, different colours, and attach these two together with a knot at one end. Slip one strand through the loop in the leader and draw it out so the knot is in the loop of the leader and you have both ends of the threads in your hand.

Next you are going to spin and make ‘barberpole ‘ yarn, by inserting twist into the acrylic yarn. With your left hand, hold/pinch the threads firmly together about 3 inches from the orifice, start treadling clockwise, and begin to feel the twist come up the leader to your left hand. You will see the yarns twist around each other. Keep your left hand pinching in place here to contain the twist.
 With your right hand, hold the two untwisted strands back about 4 or 5 inches from the left hand. When twist has built up in front of the left hand, release the left hand pinch, let the twist run into the strands as far as your  right hand and you will see them twist around each other.  At this point also, you can let your arms and hands move closer to the orifice and offer the spun yarn to the wheel. Ideally, the wheel will 'take up' the yarn.

If the yarn is not winding on, then tighten up the tension knob just a tiny bit ( the circular knob under the flyer. ). Check also that the yarn is not caught or snagged on a rough hook, or twisted around a hook. 

You can do this exercise a few times, by pulling the twisted yarn back off the bobbin, letting it hang and untwist and catch it again and spin again, just for getting the feel of twist, pinching and releasing, and feeling the wheel draw in the newly spun yarn from your hands.

Next step: Real spinning! Discard the two acrylic strands. Get some wool to spin.(Which wool, I hear you cry??That is a whole other blogpost! However, I do find that combed top of Shetland, Jacob, Corriedale or BFL work well)
Pull off a short fat sausage of fiber, and draft it into a longer thinner sausage, by placing your hands about 3inches apart and pulling gently to thin out the the fiber. Later when you are more experienced, you will be drafting as you spin.

Draw out a wispy tail from the piece of fleece, insert about 3cm of the tail into the loop in the leader.

Fold the tail back on the rest of the fleece. Draw it back a little and pinch here with your left hand.

The pinch is very important, it stops the twist running up into fleece that you have not yet drafted. If you let the pinch go, the twist you have generated will run straight up into the undrafted fibers, jumping the thick parts and twisting the thinner parts , creating clumps of semi- twisted fiber which is impossible to draft as is. If that happens, just pinch again with your left hand near the orifice and with a rolling anticlockwise action of your right hand and wrist, untwist the twist out of the fiber until you can see the fibers are looser again and can be drafted.

Start to treadle and spin clockwise.  The twist will run up the leader and begin to spin the fleece into yarn. Keep your left hand in the same place , pinched.
Now you need to draft back the fleece behind the tail to make it a bit thinner. To do this place your right hand about 4 or 5 cm back from your left and draw gently back. Your aim is to thin out the fibers.
When you have drafted back a good bit, but not too much, then pinch at that point with your right hand, let go your left hand pinch , let the twist run up into drafted fleece, and you have created your first handspun yarn!
Don't Stop Now! You change your pinch, so that the left hand is now pinching where the right hand was, you move your hands closer to the wheel, the wheel takes up the newly spun yarn, your right hand is simultaneously drafting back the next section of fleece, and when twist has built up again, you release the left hand, let twist into the unspun fibers to spin it into yarn and pinch further up with your left hand , let the wheel take up the yarn, etc.....

So, how do you spin - in a (largish) nutshell,  you start to treadle clockwise while pinching the fiber at the front with your left hand, draft back with the right, release left hand pinch, let the twist move up the fiber, let the newly drafted yarn wind on to the bobbin. Meantime keep treadling!!
Phew …..that is spinning.

There are many small factors that could affect spinning, so do not be upset if it does not work first time out. It can take a bit of adjusting for human and wheel!
I hope that you can see what I mean. If you want more photos, just say so. And if there are any queries, do not hesitate to ask!

12 Days of Christmas: Day 11, a day of rest, kind of

Day 11, Friday: A kind of Day of Rest, as in not much spinning done, because life caught up with me.
However, I did manage to listen to a podcast of Marian Finucane's radio programme from 16th November, 2017, where she spoke to three people involved in the Irish Fashion industry. One of them, Deirdre McQuillan, a fashion journalist,  has written a book called The Aran Sweater, which I subsequently went and found on amazon and ordered. She also mentioned Mourne Textiles, which I would love to go and visit next summer. Maybe I could combine that with a visit to my brother in Monaghan and a trip to Belfast to see the Ulster Folk Museum and to the Titanic museum also.
https://mournetextiles.com/
Another of the participants spoke of recreating the same fabric that was used to make coats in the First World War, on the old original hand-operated loom in Sussex, I think.

This reminded me that I also want to visit McKernan Woollen Mills in Tuamgraney Co Clare, not too far away at all, They make scarves and their website is at http://scarves.ie/

I also had a look at my Craftsy account and realised that I have a few classess there waiting for me about Spinning and Drafting etc, which I would be well advised to have a good look at, Craftsy often have sales, and I may have purchased another class or two this week.
www.craftsy.com

And I had a good look at the Yahoo Group for the Online Guild of Weavers Spinners and Dyers, which I joined at the end of 2017. I do not think that Yahoo Groups is very user friendly, but I guess I will have to grin and bear it. I will overcome!

And this morning, the spinning goddesses were certainly smiling down on me - yesterday when I was fixing up the Prinsenhout, I realised I had lost a little circular clip which comes from Ashford Spinning Wheels and holds the footman onto the crank of an Ashford Wheel, I thought maybe I had dropped it at M's house, or it had gotten lost somewhere in between. I was sad, as I wanted this for another friend V, who needs one for her Ashford wheel. I would just have to order one from UK, imagine the postage, grrrrr.....
Then walking out onto my porch this morning, I happened to glance down onto the black wooden step and what was there right in front of me, yes the black Ashford circular clip! Amazing, what with all the people who had come and gone in and out that door over the past 36 to 48 hours, plus heavy rain and high winds, the clip had fallen just there and stayed put till I saw it. Oh The JOY!!
Happy bunny now - nr 11 wheel works and can be fixed, circular clip is in my bag of First Aid for Spinning Wheels and all is well with the world!

Spinning on my Ashford Joy.

12 Days of Christmas: Day 10, fixing a wheel

Day 10: Thursday morning, bright and early, and it was time to start working on the Prinsenhout Staphorster wheel which had followed me home from M's house on Tuesday.
The problem: a footman that hops off.... all the time.....
I started by going online on Ravelry and posting photos and asking questions, and then after an answer or two I took matters into my own hands.
It seemed to me that for some reason the white plastic bearings in the hole at the top of the footman was protruding too much and not giving me space to put a washer on the end of the crank to keep the footman from jumping off. So I got a hammer and gently coaxed off the white plastic from one end.

I cut off a small ring from the plastic, with the thought that I might put it back on now that it was shortened, bu only if it turned out to be necessary. I tried the footman first with only one plastic bearing on and a black rubber tap washer to hold the footman on.
I also retied the cord at the end of the footman which had tied it to the treadle. Now both ends of the cord go through the treadle and that means less wobble and jerking around of the footman as I spin.

And then I sat to spin - and it spun!
Only minor problem was that the knot under the treadle worked its way up through the hole and now the treadle fell to the floor. I used the tiny ring that I had just cut off to anchor the threads together under the treadle to eliminate that problem, and retied the knot.
I had already noticed that the one and only bobbin was missing a bushing at one end, and that the existing bushing at the other end looked identical to the white plastic piece I had taken off the footman, So I tried it, and yes it fitted. Waste not, want not!
I tried again, and yes, the spinning wheel spun without any problem.
Later that evening I spun on it again, and yes it still continued to spin.
 All I need now is a better, more permanent solution than the rubber washer, I am thinking that if I can find a C-clip or a lock washer with teeth, diameter quarter inch, that I could use that to hold the footman in place, especially if I could get somebody to just cut a shallow groove in the crank for the clip to catch on to.

And the wheel ideally needs two or three more bobbins, so that the spinner can ply with it, with relative ease. (Otherwise, with only one bobbin, the spinner has to wind on the singles from the bobbin onto kitchen roll cores and then ply using them. Possible , but not easy)
The bobbin on the wheel seems to be about 16.8cm long, and the bobbins I see for sale on www.wolplantage.nl/ger are 17.5cm long, sadly. Nevertheless, I will send a message to Marianne on that site and see if she has anything that would suit.

I have started an Instagram account and I aim to post mostly spinning stuff on it. Rest assured that there will be no photos of my children doing funny sweet things! You can find me there, under the name spin_me_a_yarn_ie. There is a 30 day photo challenge for spinners, #wemakeyarn. I am trying to post one photo a day for that challenge. Let's see how that goes, once I return to work next week!

12 Days of Christmas: Day 9, Knit and Spin and Weave Night!

Spindle spinning at Knit Night

Wednesday 3rd January and an invitation pops up my Instagram: it is Knit Night tonight, hurray!
Roll on the evening and I head in to town to the hotel where Knit Night is on and my dear friend G has booked the comfy couches for us.
There are 5 of us altogether. We sit and craft and drink tea or hot chocolate and chat.
One is knitting a beautiful jumper of her own design in the most exquisite soft yarn, it is Baby alpaca dyed indigo blue, so soft and squishy and fine.
Another is knitting, then doing some carding of alpaca in preparation for spinning it at home.
Another is working on her crochet and embroidered cushion cover.
G is weaving in the Ashford Sample It loom she has rented from the Guild in Dublin.
And I am spinning on the Bliss initially, then on my spindle.
Photos of my efforts:

Second bobbin spun on the Bliss.

12 Days of Christmas: Day 8: Spinning excursion

Day 8: Tuesday 2nd of January, 2018.
It will take me ages to get used to writing 2018, this I know from past experience.

Today, I went on a mini spinning excursion. I went to visit a spinning friend, M, who lives about an hour's drive from me, not necessarily including the ten minute traffic jam in the small county town nearest her house. I think I counted 3 or was it 4 sets of pedestrian crossings in that town, with the result that all the traffic between Limerick and Cork and vice versa just c...r...a...w...l...s through the town. The promised motorway between Limerick and Cork would be a great relief to drivers and townspeople alike, I imagine.

M has two wheels, an Ashford and an older wheel. I was particularly interested in the older wheel,  which at first reminded me of an East European wheel, as it has a pronounced slant to the table. However, closer examination a few months ago showed that it was probably a much more modern wheel, maybe 1970's or 1980's even and of Dutch origin. I am tentatively calling it a Prinsenhout Staphorster wheel.


It had two problems, firstly, the footman kept on hopping off as M tried to spin on it and secondly, it had no bobbin brake.
First things first: I had a few different washers  and circular metal clips with me. I found one that more or less fits the end of the crank where the footman sits. However, the crank seems very short and the clip hops off and then the footman hops off, after ten seconds or so of spinning.

Undaunted,  I rigged up a basic bobbin brake from kitchen cotton cord and got the wheel to spin by shoving the clip on as tightly as I could and just spinning. The clip hopped off again and again, but at least I was able to get it to spin and to take up the yarn.
Later, after a lovely lunch, M had a spin on my Bliss and my Ashford Joy, and I admired the lovely batts of Zwartbles and merino and alpaca she had made and the blue and grey punis. Well done M!
I need to dust off my drum carder and get blending too!
The Prinsenhout has come home with me. Nobody at home has even noticed yet that I have brought home another wheel. Excellent! This means I have built up their tolerance to wheels to the point where one more doesn't matter!

the Prinsenhout Staphorster 

12 Days of Christmas: Day 7, New Year's Day

Day 7: New Year's Day, 2018.
I continued to do a bit of spinning on the Bliss on New Year's Day, however, there was not much time, what with visiting my parents to see my brother and his family, and later visiting friends for dinner.

When I got home from all the visiting, I got out this beautiful spindle and this wool that I started spinning on it last summer. I love blues and blue-greens, and teals and turquoises. I love spinning on spindles too. Very convenient and very portable.

I have quite an assorted collection of spindles, including the first spindle I ever used, back in the late autumn of 1994, when I took my first ever spinning course.  It still spins and looks like this currently.

That is handspun Jacob's fleece on it, the fleece comes from a sheep living at a local open farm . I was given the fleece and I prepped it myself, i.e., I sorted it and washed it and carded it.
Apologies for quality of photos , I will try to take them again tomorrow in natural light and replace the current ones you see.

12 Days of Christmas: Day 6: New Year's Eve

Today was a day of visiting and taking my children to the (temporary) ice-skating rink in Limerick city. I wonder sometimes what life would have been like if we had stayed in Sweden in 1994 instead of coming back to Ireland. One thing is fairly certain, my children would probably have learned to ice-skate on the local frozen-over football field!

After the driving and visiting and our traditional New Year's Eve meal of 'Whatever you want from the take-away restaurants in Limerick' , I settled down with two of my Dutch wheels in the kitchen to spin.

1980's Willy Spinnewiel on left, Bliss wheel from www.Woolmakers.com 2017 on right.  

I love spinning on New Year's Eve. It connects me to spinners all over the world and also back in time. However, I am well aware that for many women in the past spinning was a necessary and demanding task, as they had to spin a large amount of yarn of a specified thickness for the weavers. 
Me, I spin for a hobby!

Dark brown and a lighter grey-brown Shetland spun on the dark Willy wheel. The blue is the leader yarn.  

I usually link up with some spinners somewhere on Ravelry who are also planning to spin for New Year's Eve and we all spin in our own homes, take photos and share them along with a comment on how NYE is progressing wherever in the world we are.

Spinning on my Bliss, unlabelled fiber, probably hand-dyed( not by me) merino.

Happy New Year everyone!