returned my wheel yesterday, sniff.

24 Jul 2005 in journal

i’ve been thinking about this for a bunch of days now, and it certainly shouldn’t come as any surprise: i want a wheel. real bad.

i don’t feel right buying one right now – i’m too disorganized and anyway, august is going to be so busy, i won’t have a lot of time to spin then, so i’ve come up with good solid three pre-requisites before i can buy a wheel.

1) try out at least five different wheels. so far i’ve spun on:

• ~ ashford kiwi. verdict: not crazy about it, it’s just ok
• ~ asford traveller. verdict: immediate ‘ahhh’ the second i tried it

i really want to try out a majacraft, a kromski, a louet, and a lendrum (thanks deb). i’m not really interested visually in a louet, but people seem to love them. i think i prefer castle wheels to saxony wheels, plus space is definitely an issue. i haven’t tried otherwise, but i’m digging the double treadle, single drive wheels. with that said, any suggestions/tips on buying a wheel from you spinners out there?

2) get rid of stuff. i have wayyy too much stuff – and as i mention all the time, my apartment is teeny, so the packrat in me shudders, but i intend on selling/donating some of the following:

• ~ clothing
• ~ books
  – ack, hard to do, but i have lots of textbooks so..</p>
  • ~ stereo – don’t need it, thanks to my mac
  • ~ fabric stash – totally un-necessary since i don’t like to sew much at all, i’ve realized
  • ~ food stash – yeah, all those canned beans and pineapple slices i’ve had for a good year, i need to clear them out</ul> and the real kicker:

  3) no fines whatsoever for 60 days. this includes:

  • ~ library fines
  • ~ atm and overcharge fees
  • ~ parking tickets

  i’m horribly bad at getting fines. i was doing some budgeting last week – ack! horrible! hated it! – and i saw that 8% of my income in june went to fines. 8!! ay…. so. i decided if i do get a fine, i can’t get a wheel till 60 days from that day. hopefully this will help me get a grip on fines, cause i’m obviously out of control with them, yikes.

  ah, and that’s the list. i feel good about it – a spinning wheel is most definitely a worthy prize to look forward to.

  p.s. the top pic shows the results of my handspinning for two weeks. i’m knitting up a scarf (merino – in this weather! crrrazy) using this stitch. also, i’ve started a journal detailing my handspinning progress for all the various yarns i made. the close-up pic shows some olive merino that was pretty evenly spun, yay. the last pic is the best of my handspinning -it’s superwash corriedale, only four oz., and i got two skeins of a little more than 120 yards each, plus a smaller skein of 30 yards or so (gotta figure out how to ply all the way through bobbins at one stretch), and a teeny skein of singles and some navajo-ply that i tried out. the yarn is totally balanced (hoorah!) and so super soft, i love it.