YARF!

First of all, I would just like to say, "Ta-Da!"




My wheel arrived yesterday!

Also, the lovely yarn and a big bag of wool

I didn't have the time and energy left to put it together last night after my brother's birthday dinner so had to wait until today. Spent the morning getting the rest of the room ready. I need to get some pictures of the whole thing. I finally have my craft room / closet room now. Cleared everything out of the extra "storage" bedroom (previously the fish tank room), pulled the carpet, and repainted the walls. Then put in a couple dressers and some shelves with places to hang clothes underneath. Also a long table for workspace and eventually to put my sewing machine once I get it out of storage. There was a perfect little spot left for my wheel. Granted, I don't have a great view while spinning and can't watch tv or anything but I think I need to concentrate right now anyway. Lol. And I can set my laptop up in there for music or movies or whatever if I decide I need some entertainment. It's a work in progress but a great little space. And a cat-free zone so I don't have to worry about anyone eating fluff or stealing yarn or scratching my wheel or anything. (Not to mention an area where I might be able to keep the fur off my clean clothes for five minutes).

Anyway...

After getting all the yarn and clothes baskets and half put-away stuff cleared up and the shelves up and all that, I put my wheel together. It went pretty well. I just have this totally OCD fear of messing something up when I put things together so it takes forever because I want everything to be just right. But everything was so nicely packaged and grouped and labeled that it was much easier than I feared.

So here she is:

Once I got it all together I practiced treadling for a bit with nothing on it. No problems there.

After dinner I pulled out the wool and a book and got down to business. :)

Ultimately, I ended up with this:

It was great fun once I started figuring out the adjustments. I don't really have a problem with the treadling and moving my hands at the same time. I do stuff with my feet a lot anyway. Lol.

One area I did have a bit of issue with was working out how to hold the fiber for drafting.

Apparently I'm a weirdo because when I spin on my high whorl spindle, I use my right hand as my "fiber hand" and control the twist with my left. (I also roll it down my right inner thigh with my left hand, which I guess isn't the norm either but it does get it going in the right direction so it works for me.)

I tried that with the wheel but it just wasn't quite right. But I'm so used to having the fiber on my right that it took a while to reverse that. I finally got pretty comfortable with it though.

Then I had to work through some adjustment issues with getting the drive band tension right. I have it set up in double drive right now. Haven't tried the Scotch tension yet.

In the process of all of this, there was a bit of yarf created...

That bit is pretty much beyond repair at least it got better.

At one point this was created and I immediately had to yank it and save it. Behold my first bit of balanced yarn:

I may very well mount it. Lol. Maybe on that blank wall behind my wheel.