Whoops!

I have agreed to buy a spinning wheel.


Perhaps I should start at the beginning?

Back in December I was able to visit the Cottenham Spinners to talk to some of the folks there about their wheels. I got some nice advice and even got to have a go on a couple of wheels.
Of all the wheels that I tried in my price range my hands-down favourite was an Ashford Traveller, preferably double treadle.

Since then I have been occasionally looking on ebay, but since we’re getting married in April I was not planning on buying a wheel prior to that. In fact, the plan was for me to save up and buy one at Woolfest when we go.

On Monday we were talking about wheels and such, and the girls at knitting reminded me to check the UK Spinners forum occasionally. So, on Tuesday I thought I’d have a quick look, not expecting to find anything – my ebay searches over the past months have got me nowhere.

Lo, there was an Ashford Traveller on the list.

I thought to myself, it’s probably sold. Still, I talked to my fiancé about it, in case it was still available. He told me to go for it, and I needed no more encouragement!

Well, the wheel was still available, and on Sunday it will be mine.

In the meantime I haven’t been able to resist ordering some lovely fluffy fibre to spin on it when it comes! I’ve not ordered a lot though, and I’ve kept to the stuff which is more suitable for beginners. I do have quite a stash of fibre already, ranging from single colour Corriedale to handpainted bamboo-merino and BFL, and everything in between. I even have some of my own hand-dyed alpaca roving to have a go with. (It is only 50g though, I’m not sure what I’ll be able to make out of that, even spun really fine!)

I’m currently planning to sort out my craft room. I know, I only moved in September, how bad can it be, right?
Wrong.
It’s been a bit of a dumping ground, there is an air bed in there and some other crud. The place is awash with card-making supplies from making all of the invitations (and I still have a couple more to make) and I don’t really have enough places to put my card making things now. There’s a big bag of yarn (I was looking for all my pink yarn, turns out there’s a lot of it!) and several boxes and bags of yarn, fibre and stuff that need to be properly sorted out.

Basically, the things I should have done when we moved in? Doing them now.

I reckon I should be able to sort it in one evening. This evening we’re going to look at some frames (wedding related) and I’ll probably try to convince the fiancé that some more storage for stuff would be useful. I could really use another bookshelf actually, maybe I should be on the look out for that. If Ikea wasn’t such a time-suck I’d consider going there after I collect my wheel, but I really want to start using it (Sunday afternoon is already planned for spinning) so it might have to be an Argos special!