It only took me six months, but here is my latest bit of spinning:

Affectionately dubbed ‘Cheese and Wine’. I have no idea what to make out of it, but as always I’m just chuffed to have made nice yarn. I’d like to be making nice yarn a bit faster than this, but that desire inevitably leads to thoughts about buying another spinning wheel.

I’m not sure Harvey and I are all that well suited, you see. I suspect it’s a bit like putting a beginner horse rider on a show jumper. He requires a skill, deftness of touch, and physical co-ordination I don’t yet have.

Harvey, you see, has a small wheel on which a large section – maybe a fifth or sixth – is a dead zone for the treadle shaft thingo (where if you stop or slow down it freezes in postion). I have to pedal faster than I want or need to get enough momentum to avoid this dead zone.

I realise this is probably my technique (or lack of it) rather than a fault with the wheel itself. But I can’t get it out of my head that a double treadle would be easier to learn on. Like when I learned to drive. I practised on an auto for several weeks so I could get the road rules, etc. right, then returned to a manual to get the hang of the clutch. It worked a treat.

Trouble is, I’m not 100% sure I like spinning enough to spend the money and spare the space for a second wheel. I like spinning. But do I like it enough?

I could just stick to knitting, which I know I like a LOT. Here’s my second pair of socks made out of leftovers:

Red Scrappy Socks. They were such a fast knit. Before I left for Katoomba I had a toe and a few cm of the first sock done. Four evening’s work was all it took to finish them. I might have been rushing a bit too much, though, because when I was sewing in ends I discovered a dropped stitch on the first one. A quick stitch fixed it, but I did wonder how I managed not to notice it for so long.

Now here’s a bigger quandry:

This is the Glamour Vest. Now, it’s supposed to have a front band and collar in one piece, that is about 6 cm wide. When planning this project I looked at ball of handspun and got excited about the match, but never questioned whether there’d be enough. Now that I think back to the size of the ball, I wonder to what extremes my ability to delude myself can go.

I’m a bit undecided now. I could leave it as it is, with just a trim of the handspun, and a vest that doesn’t meet at the front. Or I could remove the handspun (it was just a sample ball of something I found in the ACS mill shop, not anything I or a friend made) and do the collar in something else. I don’t have anything that leaps out as a good match. Oh – and I’m out of the black I made the body out of.