Saturday, March 21, 2009

Happy Spring!

The fish are jumpin' and the cotton is high....

Oh yeah, speaking of the spinning workshop, I learned a little about spinning cotton. Someone made the comment about cotton being extremely directional and spinning from the right direction of the roving making all the difference. Ding. The light went on. On Tuesday, one of the ladies in the Woolgatherers Spinning Club brought her charkha, which is used to spin cotton at a very high ratio (which cotton needs to hold together). She let me experiment and I was able to spin a fairly decent thread that held together and was fairly even. The charkha works on the same principle as the great wheel so that helped my understanding of how things should happen.

I’ve had a takhli spindle for a while now but had never had any success with it – because I was spinning from the wrong end of the cotton roving. Who knew?! So I took it out, dusted it off and lo and behold…whaaaala…

spun cotton. What’d’ya think about them apples?

Actually, it’s the most rudimentary success but far more than I’ve accomplished to this point. And with the cotton spinning workshop coming up in April, I’m very excited about the possibility of the medium. I know I should be able to spin cotton on my new Kromski but I couldn’t quite get everything to work together there so I’ll wait for the workshop and see how that goes.

Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Display

Jane and I took our stuff over this morning to the Library for their display of Lincoln era knitting. Jane had some great old needles that she’d been given from a housecleaning a while back as well as a copy of the most recent Piecework magazine that had several articles on Civil War Knitting that went exactly along with the display. I had my Spanish Opera Hood (both versions), my version of a 19th century jug coin purse and a couple of beaded bags. I also worked up a skein of handspun for them to use if wanted. The Librarian, Gwen, was very excited about the display and said she would call us when they got it done so we could come have a look. I’ll try to get a photo to post. I’m sure they’ll make it look grand. Since the Spanish Opera Hood was from an 1863 Peterson’s Magazine that’s in the Library’s collection, she’ll add a copy of that along with the display.

Some of Jane's needles were marked "Chesterfield." Does anyone have any information about when they were in business?

Car

I’ve got the best little car in the world - 110,000 miles and hardly anything ever done other than regular maintenance - but it’s now starting to have some little troubles and gas mileage challenges. In fact I’ve had to spend over $500 on it in the last 6 weeks or so. I keep telling myself that it’s far better than having a car payment (which I haven’t had in a number of years) but today as I ventured over to Lincoln for a day of exploring I turned off the highway and up to a traffic light. When I stepped on the accelerator, I heard the old redneck muffler tune. Arghhh…. Again to the mechanic. Evidently it’s a section of the muffler that’s given out. Guess I’ll find out how much THAT’s going to cost on Monday. A new (to me) car is starting to sound like it’s in my future.

No comments: