Foster Mom

Well, I'm trying my hand at being a foster parent-no-not a real kid.  It's an antique spinning wheel that belongs to my BFF (Yup, Carol, that's you).  I talked her into letting me take it home to see if I could get it working. Well, I polished it up, oiled it, made a new drive band and had it going in no time.  One problem was a horrible screechy squeak-with my windows open, I'm sure the whole neighborhood heard, and wondered if I was strangling a cat.  Oil didn't do it, so out came the candle wax.  I applied it about 5 times before it finally quieted down.  But, the squeak sounded like it was saying the name Judith Anne-so with Carol's okay we named her Judith Anne-I call her Judie.  Once I figured out the ins and outs of double drive I spun up some Egyptian cotton I've had packed away for a couple years, did some lace weight wool for a shawl I want to make, and-I bought some flax and started to spin that.  I had to make a distaff for it-parts of it were missing. So I dug up a couple dowels and fashioned a usable distaff.

Flax-interesting stuff.  I researched every website and Youtube video I could find.  It is very different to spin.  Not especially hard-just different.  I can get it pretty thin without it breaking, but I don't think it will become fine linen.  More along the lines of rope.  Oh well, at least I can claim to be a pretty well rounded spinner now.

It Sounded Like a Cool Idea

Ice dyeing-sounds cool-hey?  Well...not so much.  First I had to go shopping to get some ice cube trays, cuz who knows what happened to the ones I had?  Then I made lots of ice.  I put some wool (soaked in vinegar and water first) in the bottom of the bin to soak up the run off, and then some in a wire basket and topped it off with all the ice.  Then I sprinkled several different colors of dye all in the purple blue and pink family.  I covered it with plastic and set it out in the sun to do its magic.  Notice there is no finished dyed wool in the picture.  It did not turn out.  Soooo...I divided up the water on the bottom of the bin and the wool into two pots on the stove and did some boiling instead.  I added some dark purple to one of the pots.  I haven't taken pictures of those colors-but I got a lavender from one pot and dark purplish/burgundy from the other.  I didn't get the results I hoped for-but still got some pretty color.