Where to buy spinning wheels 2021

In this post, I try to answer the question "Where can I buy a spinning wheel?"
In Carndonagh, County Donegal, there is a spinning wheel maker and repairer, Johnny Shiels. His website is here:
www.spinning wheels.ie.
Johnny has followed in his father's footsteps, and also, if I am correct, in the steps of his grandfather. The family featured in the TV series 'Hands' which was filmed by David and Sally Shaw-Smith in the 1980's. Johnny is still spinning and making and repairing spinning wheels in Carndonagh. The wheels from the Shiels workshop have a distinctive look. They turn up occasionally for sale secondhand. 

My Johnny Shiels wheel in action, Summer 2017. 

The UK has several distributors of spinning wheels. Try Winghams wool work, Frank Herring, PM Woolcraft, The Threshing Barn,  Weft Blown, Fibrehut. Now in January 2021, what with Brexit, one has to be aware of Customs and all the other extra charges that could apply. 

What brands are available? Ashford Spinning wheels, Lendrum, Kromski, Schacht, Timbertops, Louet, among others.

On left above: Ashford Traditional, from 1982, approx and on right, sideview of the Ashford Joy I

. 

Buying new does not suit everyone's budget. I keep an eye on www.adverts.ie and on www.donedeal.ie for spinning wheels, but I would not pay some of the crazy prices being asked, like 300 euro or more. For that you can get a new wheel, see below!

Buying secondhand from a website like adverts or donedeal in Ireland has its hazards. You may end up with an incomplete wheel, that will cost a lot to get it ready to spin. 

There are wheels that were built as ornaments, which never designed to work as actual spinning wheels.
There are wheels that are extravagant lamps, they look like Spinning wheels, but they were made without vital components, such as the orifice (the opening at the front of the flyer for the spun yarn to go through from the spinner's hands onto the bobbin via the hooks): if there is no orifice, it is very likely that the wheel was not originally built for actual spinning.
There are wheels that are missing vital parts, such as the flyer, (u-shaped piece with hooks), or bobbins; these parts can be almost impossible to find for antique wheels and can be very expensive to have made.
There are old wheels, that are difficult to keep spinning, with rusty hooks, dry wood, tiny orifices suited for spinning linen not wool, and warped drive wheels that stick, or throw the drive band.
There are people, who know nothing about spinning, selling wheels with problems like the above at exorbitant prices.
I would suggest that you always try to get the opinion of an experienced spinner before you part with your hard-earned money. Take somebody with you to try it out or ask for lots of photos and send the photos to an experienced spinner. 

There is also the option to turn to the secondhand market or to vendors in UK or in Holland, or further afield.
I have bought secondhand wheels from people selling their wheels on www.ravelry.com, especially in the groups Irish Spinners,  UK Spinners and/ or UK Classifieds. Once again, be aware that with Brexit in 2021, we are now liable for customs charges etc for goods purchased from the UK. 

I have bought secondhand spinning wheels from Holland from Marianne at www.wolplantage.nl/ger; her site is in German but do not be put off, Marianne speaks English and replies promptly to email enquiries. She mostly sells Dutch wheels, as well as wool, and sometimes hand carders. She will post to Ireland. You could find a Louet S10 wheel on her site sometimes. 

I have also bought Dutch wheels from the Dutch equivalent of ebay, ie marktplaats.nl. Here are the hits for Louet on that site. https://www.marktplaats.nl/q/louet/   You would need to look for an ad where the seller says they will Send . You can always send a message to a seller, the messages get translated automatically. Postage for a Louet wheel from Holland to Ireland is about 35 euro, as of summer 2020. 

Buying New Wheels from European sellers:

Here is an affordable option for buying a new spinning wheel.
There is a company called Woolmakers.com, a daughter company to the well respected Dutch company, Louet. Woolmakers make and ship a flat pack spinning wheel, called the Bliss. The cost for a single treadle wheel with 3 bobbins and including postage to anywhere in the world is just under 300 euro. You can pay extra to get 3 more bobbins; that is a highly desirable option in my opinion. You can choose a double treadle if you wish, or you can order the conversion kit to convert your Single treadle to a double treadle later on.  Here is the link: https://www.woolmakers.com/product/bliss

Woolmakers also sell a small and a larger drum-carder, both also in white. https://www.woolmakers.com/products
Here is my Bliss, wearing her 6 bobbins recently.

Bliss spinning wheel, www.woolmakers.com

The Bliss is a great wheel to buy, very adaptable , affordable, tolerates travelling to Guild meetings and friends' houses in the car. I think I have to say that I love my Bliss!!

And of course, one can look at the full range of Louet wheels here , directly from Holland: https://www.louet.nl/product-categorie/spinning-spinning-wheels/?lang=en&v=d2cb7bbc0d23

I have friends who bought spinning wheels from Wollknoll, who sell Ashford wheels and Louet wheels, as well as their own brand Merino wheels: https://www.wollknoll.eu/shop/tools-equipment-machinery-895/spinning-wheels-915/

You can also rent spinning wheels from the Irish Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers, so you get a chance to try out spinning and perhaps discover what you like to spin and what you like/dislike in a wheel. Contact the Guild here hello@weavespindye.ie

Keep searching, keep trying out wheels till you find one you can get on with.
Then just keep spinning!

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 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 2, spinning wheel exchange

Day 2 , Wednesday 27th December.
Let's start with a bit of background info: I have 10 spinning wheels and 4 children, one husband and one cat, all in a relatively small house. Coming up to Christmas, I realised that I needed more floor space in the living room in order to have space for the Christmas tree. Also , I had two daughters who would be coming home from college and they would not appreciate sharing their bedrooms with a spinning wheel or two, from this little group of wheels.

the view of the corner of my living room

To cut a long story short,  I decided that two of my spinning wheels could go on a Christmas holiday to two new spinners.
One wheel (a light coloured Dutch wheel in the style of a Louet S10) went to B outside Ennis.
The other wheel, (a dark coloured Willy Spinnewiel from Holland also) went to S, from County Limerick.

Willy Spinning wheel, from Holland

However, the leather tension strap on the wheel that S got broke shortly after she got it home.

The leather strap on the wheel before it broke. It is connected to a tension peg, which is hanging loose on the left lower part of the photo.  

That was two weeks ago. I really wanted S to have a working wheel.  So yesterday's spinning activity involved me meeting S and taking back one wheel from her and giving her a different one. We met at a hotel in Limerick and had a lovely chat and cuppa, joined by  another knitter/spinner/dyer, G.
S took to my Ashford Traditional without too much bother, and I tried out the dark Dutch wheel again.  Amazingly it spins and takes up without any tension at all, and I got it to spin quite finely. Apparently it is a bit of an acquired taste, the other two girls did not find it comfortable to use at all,  so it looks like this old Dutch wheel will be staying with me for the time being. No bother....

I am glad it works without the leather strap. Maybe I don't need to be in a rush to replace the leather. I do not fancy taking out those 3 studs holding the strap, I am afraid I would damage the wood. Not to worry, I know an excellent woodworker, who can do these small jobs for me.


It was lovely to spend time with two other spinners last night and it was just what I needed.
The waitress even recognises us now because that hotel is where we go to meet up for the weekly Limerick Knit night which G started. The waitress offered us some wool as she said she had a fleece from one of her family's sheep. Immediately, I offered to teach her how to spin the fleece. So maybe one night she can come join us and learn how to spindle spin!

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!

Happy Christmas 2017

Happy Christmas everyone!
Just keep spinning...

St Stephen's Day, December 2017

Spinning wheel and spindle spinning workshop

Welcome to my new blog about Spinning! Here I will be nattering on about the wonderful craft of Spinning wool with spindles and spinning wheels.

I have been spinning as a hobby for the last 7 years. I took my first spinning class about 23 years ago, in the autumn of 1994. It was a weekend class given by a spinner by the name of Julie Calloway who was then living in West Limerick. I promptly fell in love with spinning and rented a spinning wheel from Julie for a month or so. However  I handed back that wheel and packed away the spindle when I found I was expecting baby nr 1. The old stone farmhouse we were house-sitting in was just  too cold to allow me to sit and spin comfortably in the evenings and I needed my pennies for baby stuff, not wool.
Roll on 16 years, and I had some time off work on sick leave. I discovered the internet, and knitting blogs, and www.ravelry.com. From there it was but a few steps to unpacking the spindle and buying some wool to spin. Before I knew it I had an offer of a spinning wheel for sale. Yes! I bought my first wheel that summer, 2010.
Things have moved on, I have more wheels and lots of wool. More on this another time.
For now, here are  photos from a spinning workshop I gave in October 2017.

Above are the photos of the finished plied yarns. 

Below are some more  photos. First, the books I had on display, then my new Hero Drumcarder. 

Next, skeins of my handspun yarn, spun with dyed fleece from Kerry Woollen Mills; a

pair of hand carders, and finally two pieces of weaving, woven by me, all wool, warp is commercial grey wool and weft is all handspun, mostly my own.

Happy spinning all!