I love my New Skein Winder

Hello everyone, Happy New Year! Yes I know I'm slow but I'm getting there! I would really like to get back into blogging, so I'll try and get back here much more often from now on!

I have a large swift/yarn winder  for knitting yarns, which is electrified thank goodness, but have always wound my embroidery silks and wools by hand on a niddy noddy. Age catching up on me, I am finding that my shoulder can't cope with winding as well as it used to and I've been chuntering for a while that it would be good to have an attachment to a spinning wheel. Louet used to do one I am sure for their wheels and some antique wheels actually come with them, but when I started searching for one I drew a blank! There is also the problem of the size of skein - they had to remain the size they are now when using my niddy noddy, the display stand is already designed for them!

So John has taken my Louet S15 wheel and created a skein winder attachment that is the size I need for my embroidery threads. It slots into place instead of the flyer, the drive band is the same and to help me there is a yarn counter arm that feeds from the swift holding the hank into the skein winder.

Simples!! 

It is designed to fit my wheel, and would probably fit several other Louet wheels because they are so similar.

If I decide I want to do some spinning I simply remove the winder and put the flyer back in place. The counter part is totally separate, in fact it doesn't necessarily need to be there at all!

All I have to do now is sit down comfortably and gently treadle (even whilst watching TV!) to produce far more saleable skeins than I ever could before!

He's so pleased with his design he'll make them as an attachment kit if anyone is interested.

Thank you John!

The Original Reenactors Market

We are just back and surfacing from TORM. I love going to this market - it's the first "big" market I ever did and it goes from strength to strength!

When I became a re enactor I quickly realized that this could turn out to be an expensive hobby (it doesn't HAVE to, but...) As the boys were young when we started I had to give myself something to do in a Living History situation, so I decided to become a 17th century embroideress. I learnt to spin and dye the threads I needed and was soon being asked where I got my embroidery silks, when I said I was making them myself I was asked if I would sell some. - Aha! Maybe this was a way of funding the hobby a little? I started trading at Sealed Knot events, made friends with many of the traders and was asked if I was going to be at TORM. "What's that?" I asked. "A market run by Anne Laverick" I was told.

I found the lady in question and after a very thorough interrogation about whether I could maintain a supply of goods, what else I could do and whether I intended to keep going, I was told I could have a corner in the Sports Hall at Blackbird Leys and she'd give me a go!

The market has been running now for 21 years, growing into and out of venues over the years, but seems settled at the Sports Connexion in Ryton on Dunsmore. For me it starts the "season" every year in March (the next one is the 16th, 17th and 18th March 2012), it used to end the season too, but that just seems to get extended nearer and nearer to Christmas!

It is well worth a visit if you ever get the chance - real artisans producing furniture, pottery, jewellery, clothing (from whatever period of history you fancy), arms and armour........etc, etc. 

I am indebted to Anne for giving me that chance and for all the work that she puts into the organising, advertising and promoting of the market.
So I'd just like to end with - Thanks Anne!

A quick apology

I feel I have abandoned the blog, twitter and facebook - and in a way I have! Whilst working away in August we had a phone call from our neighbour in France to tell us that we had had a burglary. We dashed home to find doors and shutters destroyed - whoever wanted to get into our house was not going to be stopped. The place was a mess and quite a lot has gone. Lots of really precious personal things - of course they have no value to anyone else.....but........

I have gone into a strange vacuum - I am reluctant to put anything on the web - where I am, what I am doing, anything really. The Gendarmes think that whoever it was had been watching the house to see when we were away - do they watch the websites too? Someone has been trying to hack into my facebook account.........

I will get back to writing, but for now I am licking my wounds, dealing with officialdom and re - assessing how things are publicised.

Hope you will forgive me!