So, since I still can’t show you my Mystery Project, and my other knitting projects are pretty much at a standstill, I thought I’d show a little more of my Turkish Spindle. Especially since I “start” a little differently than instructed in the book. The booklet, written by Wanda Jenkins, wife of the woodworker Ed Jenkins, is excellent, don’t get me wrong. But it has you start by tying a slip-knot at the bottom and then tying the fiber to the end of the leader at the top . . . which I find problematic.

Although, I’ll admit that my method uses twice the amount of yarn over the same length, which adds some extra weight . . . if I’d had any lace-weight yarn handy for this tutorial, though, I would have used that . . . a double-thickness of lace yarn would be close enough to a single-thickness of sock yarn that I think the difference would be negligable . . .

But anyway, here we go!

First, take a long length (a couple of yards/meters) of yarn and tie a knot at the ends, making one, long loop.

Wrap the yarn around the bottom of the spindle, under the “arms” and feed one end of the loop through the other.

Pull tight to secure, and then wrap the yarn onto and around the arms as instructed.

Introduce your spindle to the fiber. (It’s always good to be polite.)

Now, make a similar loop at the end of your leader yarn, and thread some of the fiber through it.

Pull tight. At this point, I fold the drafted fiber in half around the leader so that it will twist back on itself, giving a doubly-sure join as you start–both from the leader grasping the fiber, and from the fiber basically locking around around the leader yarn.

Add twist . . . well, you know the rest!

Of course, it never hurts to have an admirer lending support…. Chappy actually posed for this photo, which is practically unheard of. Usually he turns his head away from the flash of the camera, so looking up and smiling? Priceless.

Oh, boy, did the Ann over at Mason-Dixon Knitting ever come up with the perfect knitalong for me at this point. The Slogalong. Remember last month when I bemoaned the fact that my existing projects were endless? And which, naturally, have slown down even further since I started my Mystery Project? I think I definitely have to sign up, huh??

And, I thank you for the compliments on the pansy pictures yesterday. I hope none of you thought I’d actually taken them myself. To have pansies (that many at least), I’d need to garden, and we already know that I don’t do that. (Achoo!) I have a hard enough time keeping my house plants alive. Hurray for Google, huh?

For the record, though, yeah, I still think my Tibetan Dreams roving is looking like pansies.

And, hurray for the Dillon Panthers. Not only was the season finale excellent, but it got some encouraging news. Fingers crossed for season two!

Hey, that story about Joshua Bell I told you about the other day? Picked up by Reuters. I still love that story.

I can’t believe Risa got another new toy.

Tags: Knitting/Spinning // 8 Comments »