New toy

Every once in a while I get on Marktplaats (Dutch selling site) to check out what people want to get rid of. This time I found a charkha, a spinningwheel from India. The last owner brought it to the Netherlands in 1973. It hasn’t seen much use.



This is what I got. No instruction included. Surfing the Net I found plenty of pictures, all of them looking different than this one. I got how the wheels work and I even figured out where the spindle goes. How I got the spindle to work was another story.

Thankfully I have a dad with a technical eye and we got it to work. I sanded, scrubbed, oiled and lubricated any part that moves. And after an intensive search I finally understand it better.



As you can see it works! It doesn’t spin quite as pleasant yet as I’d like. It’s going back to my technical advisor. Too bad I don’t have any cotton to spin (which is spun mostly on these) but the bit of BFL works just fine. As soon as I get the hang of this I’d like to use it to spin silk.

A couple of projects done

I finally finished a couple of things. Two pairs of socks, a shalw and a cowl. The shawl was done in May, I just got around to blocking it and taking a picture. Unfortunately the Internet isn’t really cooperating and the picture will come later. I’ll add to my little list the coming week. After all, it’s already August and there wasn’t really that much on there yet.

I blame my spinning. Since I spend more time making yarn I have less time to knit stuff. Of course it doesn’t help that I keep starting new projects instead of finishing them first.