Another Round of Spinning

A progress report

Two flax wheels. The smaller one in front is a reproduction, the larger, an antique. Photo by author.

A lot has, and has not happened in spinning world in the past few months. I haven’t used up all the spinable fiber. The great wheel’s hub has been repaired. Hubby made me six spools for the smaller wheel.

After a few more tweaks, the smaller wheel, the one hubby built, is working much better. The wheel spins almost effortlessly now. It is not as fast as the larger wheel, but it’s faster than expected.

It’s not perfect. It doesn’t hold alignment the way I’d like. Something goes off, and the flyer, although still moving stops pulling the spun yarn onto the spool. It doesn’t happen all the time, so I haven’t been able to track the problem yet.

I did four spools worth of yarn over the weekend. My spinning noticeably improved, which was good. The belt broke. I think it will probably break again, the leather doesn’t look good. When it does, I’ll replace it with linen. My linen belts are working much better on the other wheels.

I’ve used up all of my lesser quality fiber now. Most of it was spun on the larger wheel when I didn’t have bobbins for the smaller wheel. The quality of my spinning did not improve all that much. I’m chalking it up to wool that was probably intended for things like felting rather than spinning. Now that it is all gone, I am hoping for better results. As long as…