Meet Lily...

... the Ashford Traditional spinning wheel. :)


D and I drove all the way down to near near Marlboro yesterday to pick up my accidental ebay purchase. It turned out to be a lovely drive down. We took the slow road there, lazily driving through pretty villages in the Cotswolds, and were welcomed at the ebay seller's place with a much appreciated cup of tea. They were interesting people and we sat around on their patio for quite a while, chatting about spinning, knitting, and travelling. She was a spinner and knitter, but has a wheel herself, so felt she didn't have the time to repair and look after another two wheels. Yes, you heard right, TWO wheels.

I omitted yesterday that the auction that I won was for two wheels rather than one. Not that it matters much, because one of the wheels is not complete, and comes without a flyer and bobbin. Otherwise they are both sturdy and functional, though and so so pretty!!

I think I'm in love... and so is D! He is fascinated by the simple yet ingenious mechanism of the wheel and when we got home he immediately set about getting one of the wheels to work. We spent the rest of the day on this, with me plying the yarn I had spun on my drop spindles and D watching and tinkering with the other, incomplete wheel. By the end of the evening he had it in pieces, which he is going to clean and then reassemble. :)

And this is what I did yesterday:




The second skein is the same type of roving, but not as good (it included all the rather bumpy first bits of handspun), so I used it to experiment with some Koolaid. I'll post a picture of the yarn when it's dry and you can see the colour.