Spinning Class #3

As you can see from my late post yesterday, I got to bring home the Ashford Traditional! I didn't buy it, it's one of the wheels in rotation in the class. After spinning on the Schacht last week, I finally got used to it Wednesday night. I think I'm going to experience something like that with this wheel. Once I tried a new wheel I realized that I had actually grown to love the Schacht! I would love to own one, but they are a little too expensive for my budget. Anyway, we oiled the Ashford up in class last night but when I got it home it started to squeak REALLY bad. I'm going to take it back down to the yarn shop today and see if it just needs some more oil.

I also got some more wool last night! And since I am so excited to start spinning on the Ashford, I gave the wool a good washing when I got home last night. Here is a before and after picture:


Because I had already spun all of the clean wool throughout the week, I had to spin dirty wool during class last night. While I hated teasing and carding it, spinning it actually seemed to give me more uniform yarn than I had been getting with the clean wool. So I am going to try an experiment (this explains why only half the wool in the picture has been washed). I am going to spin with dirty wool today and then clean wool tomorrow. This will allow me to compare my carding and spinning abilities. I might just be getting better at carding, picking out the stuff that I know won't spin up well, or it could be something about the lanolin in the fibers that is giving me a more uniform yarn. But we'll find out!

And here is some Eye Candy Friday. I took this picture during one of our recent flurries. The snow is dry and dusty so I knew if I didn't get the picture right away, it wouldn't be there for long.