3 MarchWell, anyway, I managed to make a drop spindle, loosely following the instuctions on The Joy of Handspinning. Due to the apparent absence of toy car wheels anywhere in the State of New Jersey, I went to my local craft store and picked up some random ornament-making kit consisting of an extremely short cylinder vaguely resembling a toy car wheel and several dowels. Hey, it works. After filling in the holes on the dowel I wanted, I cut off the end so it was the rough length I wanted. I then proceeded to spray paint it blue, with an "aluminum" coating on top. (I have way too many leftover spray paint cans than I care to admit from previous school projects). I tried it out, realized that in my unskilled state, although un-historically accurate, a hook was really necessary, and tried again. The resulting yarn/thread/stuff that looks like the cat dragged it in isn't even very visually pleasing. I will post some visual references in the near future...
4 March
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| The first attempt... |
Well, I tried again today, and I think it looks a little better...It definitely needs quite a bit of improvement, though.
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| The second attempt... |
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| And my lovely spindle... |
2 AprilI've been making a few more wool threads... nothing new, here, really. Some little news: my dad's friend (the one with all the sheep) has flax, too! I might get to make some linen thread... oh boy!
24 NovemberMy dad's friend came over again yesterday and she brought the COOLEST stuff with her! I got loads more wool, along with small amounts of cotton, cotton/wool blends, silk, glitter, nylon, silk noils, angora, llama, alpaca, a couple different kinds of mohair, pencil roving, and this cool stuff called ecospun that's made of plastic! I'm very excited... but that's not all! She also got me a cd spindle and I can use it properly! I think I made mine in a strange way, which was why it wouldn't work very well. I can't wait to get started, but I'm still getting piled in work, some of it actually involving costuming! My scanner is working again, so hopefully I can scan or take digital pictures of my new fibers and spindle...
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