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!  

12 days of Christmas: Day 1, Spinning endeavours

The Twelve days of Christmas are traditionally the 12 days between Christmas Day and the Epiphany, on 6th of January. Although when you count it, that makes 13 days, so maybe the count starts on St Stephen's Day, what with Christmas Day being such a special day. I imagine that this was a time of relative rest or at least, a pause, (before the calving and lambing started, etc) for people in the past, especially people living in the country farming. I often wonder what the lives of the people who lived before us were like. 

My 12 days of Christmas are the wonderful 12 days of my Christmas holidays, after Christmas Day, i.e., after all the rushing and buying and cooking is over. Now that I have this extra bit of free time, I plan to do something with spinning, dyeing or weaving each day and to blog about it!

Day 1 was yesterday, St Stephen's Day. I did some plying yesterday, see the photo below. The fiber is Masham, which I got from a destash sale on Ravelry.com. It was a bit felted together when I got it back in the autumn, but I was not going to let that deter me. I worked patiently on just splitting the fiber lengthways and opening it out by hand. I spun it with my default spinning technique, which is short forward draw, semi-worsted.  I also spun some of it on a spindle, almost nekked spindle pictured also below.

Yesterday, St Stephen's Day, I got out the Bliss wheel and the bobbins and spindle and 2- plied the singles. 

Masham , 2 plied

Also yesterday, I had a lovely treat, I was asked to come give a few pointers to a lovely young woman, D, who had just gotten her first spinning wheel for Christmas. The wheel is a Timbertops Thurmaston 18" wheel, with 8 spokes. It is a beautiful wheel, and D's dad had cleaned it up till it was glowing, in a lovely chestnut colour. Luckily D had gotten through any teething problems by the time I got there and she was spinning happily. I had met D and her family earlier in the summer at a market and I had given her her first spindle and first spinning lesson back then. So it feels great to see her sitting and spinning happily on her very own wheel. 
If anyone wants to see what the Timbertops wheels look like, check out this site: http://www.woodland-turnery.co.uk/timbertops.html

When I got home from D's house, I was inspired to start thinking about weaving again on my loom. So I cleaned it off and dusted it down and checked the warp that was on it. It is several months since I used the loom, so it was indeed dusty. I had it warped for Double weave (more on that anon), so I am thinking of  doing a sampler of Double weave, trying out the different types : tubular, open pockets, closed pockets, pocket open at one side, etc. I just want to finish out the warp and then I can get a new warp on the loom. 

Back at the loom again

Gotta consult all the books of course!