Anna

Anna is a German double-flyer "wedding" wheel, dated 1893.  A wedding wheel was typically given to a bride as part of a trousseau (commemorated with a nameplate behind glass), and she was designed for two-handed spinning of flax.

One of the most special things about Anna is how her path to me was made possible by a very modern phenomenon: the smallification of the world due to the Internet.  I discovered Anna on a German eBay listing in the middle of the night in New England.  The seller listed her as "pick-up only" in Hamburg.  I consulted online with a wheelwright/antique wheel collector in Australia, who confirmed within an hour that the wheel appeared to be in good condition.  I contacted another antique wheels fan in the Netherlands, who helped me communicate with a German spinners group on Ravelry, and within six hours, two people had volunteered to pick up the wheel from the seller and ship it to me.  It was a wonderful first experience tapping into the wide community of antique spinning wheel enthusiasts!

Anna arrived a little worse for wear after her long journey across the ocean.  The most pressing problem was that her back leg had snapped off.  I repaired it by pulling out the stub of remaining leg, drilling a hole for a peg through both pieces, and gluing the peg in place.  Once that was repaired, it only took a little shimming and shining and a few nylon washers to get Anna ready to spin again.

Double-flyer wheels have two sets of spinning mechanisms.  Most of the European double-flyers I've seen are driven on two separate sets of drive bands, so the flyer grooves are offset to hold the two bands apart.  The idea is that each of the spinner's hands is feeding fiber into a flyer, which doesn't quite double production but does make it faster than spinning one strand at a time.

Since I haven't mastered one-handed spinning yet, I run Anna with only one drive band set up at a time.  Both flyers work well, though one is in better condition than the other.  Most double-flyers seem to be marked with an "X" on one side or the other.  I have been told that this indicates a repair or replacement piece, and I have also heard that the "X" is meant to distinguish which flyer/bobbin goes on which side.






This wheel has some lovely finial decorations, typical of this era of German wheels.  I haven't determined whether they are bone or ivory.  Her nameplate has some water damage, but a bit of playing around with photography software brought out the "1893" with reasonable certainty.

For a small wheel, Anna is an effective little machine!  We flew through four ounces of Merino/silk blend a few weeks ago, and I wondered how long it had been since Anna had hummed along like this, doing what she was built to do.

Hugh Ramsey

The first time I ever spun anything on an antique spinning wheel, it looked like this:

I found this sweet little flax wheel on eBay in April of 2014, and drove to Rhode Island to pick it up.  I had no idea what I was doing with an antique wheel, but the seller managed estate sales and specialized in reselling gun collections, so he had even less experience than I did, given that I had actually spun fiber before.  In truth, I was suckered in by the beautiful patterning in the wood I could see in the eBay photos.  That pattern is caused by quarter-sawing boards from trees, which produces lumber that is stable but more expensive because of the higher ratio of waste.

I took a deep breath.  I took the whole wheel apart.  Cleaning each piece and giving it a coat of lemon oil was most rewarding: the wood glowed.

Here you can even see scribe marks made by the wheelwright (those vertical lines down the center of the bench).

Like many old wheels, this one had a lovely well-worn imprint on the treadle, made by the ball of the foot of a previous owner.

As an extra bonus treat, I discovered a maker's mark!  It enabled me to unlock a lot of information about this wheel's history.  "HR" is Hugh Ramsey, who was born in Londonderry, NH in 1753 and died in Holderness, NH in 1831.  He was the son of Irish immigrants and a Revolutionary War veteran.  His wheels share many design features with those of a cluster of spinning-wheel maker families based in Londonderry in the early 19th century.

(Spinning Wheel Sleuth #48 has two articles about Londonderry makers and Hugh Ramsey.)

It was a perfect first-wheel restoration project: my HR was completely intact and needed only minimal shimming to get everything into alignment.  I added a nylon spacer to snug the bobbin up to the whorl and part of a bamboo skewer to peg the wheel axle in place, and away we went!

The Herd

One of the things that has kept me busy for the past year is a sudden and acute addiction to antique spinning wheels - particularly the ones that are languishing away as decor just begging to be tuned back into the spinning machines they were built to be.  I acquired many of them in short succession, enjoying each wheel's particular details of mechanics and geometry, and this winter I decided to turn my attention to spinning a significant amount of fiber on each, to really get to know them all well.

Here are the ones I have currently up and running:

The oldest is probably in the 1810's range, and the youngest around 1920's.  They come from Canada, America, Germany, Denmark, and Switzerland.  The unifying factor among these wheels is that none them came to me directly from a spinner, so they all required some restoration and fine-tuning before they were once again working wheels.






I rummaged through my spinning fiber stash and pulled out 28 ounces of fluff to spin up on these babies, and each wheel will be getting a blog post as I go - one wheel a week - stay tuned!

Sock Lab Special Bonus Round: Cinch

Between my six-pair project this past winter and the Unusual Sockitecture KAL I ran for the Ravelry Sock Knitters group, I spent many months positively steeped in alternate sock geometry.  And then I had a little seed of an idea, and it caught fire and the next thing I knew, I had created this:

Last year during Tour de Sock, I was clamoring for all sorts of whacked-out sock patterns.  I wanted alternate construction.  I wanted colorwork and cables all together.  I wanted something no one expected.

So imagine how thrilled I was when my friend Sarah said she wanted to use my pattern in Tour de Sock this year!  The pattern is called Cinch and it was released yesterday for Stage 5 of the Tour.  It will be available to the general knitterly public on September 4th.

This sock borrows construction ideas from Stripe Tease.  The cuff is knitted in the round to provide a base for the four panels, which are each knitted flat and joined to the next by picked-up stitches at the edge.  The heel is a short-row, no-wrap heel and the toe is worked in the round when all four panels are complete.

The cable pattern is based on a Barbara Walker pattern called the Triple Gull stitch.  I love the smooth look of the crossed stitch - it comes from slipping the stitch in the row below the cross.  I added a fourth gull and flipped it upside down so the cables pointed down the sock instead of up.  I think they look like little corsets, hence the name of the pattern.

Sock Lab, Round Seven: Bluemchen

Ready for spring?  Check out these Bluemchen!

I have made many, many crochet afghans out of motifs.  I have never constructed anything similar with knitting.  These socks are created toe-up with two hexagonal flower motifs attached at three sides.  Two little triangles fill in the gaps at the sides.  A pentagonal flower motif forms the heel, with a short gusset above.





I found some great alternate instructions on Ravelry which helped me figure out how to eliminate all the seaming in this sock.  The motifs were cast on provisionally, and the little gap-triangles were formed with short rows.

Some lessons learned with these socks: long floats are ok!  My stranded tension came out better when I wasn't putting the knitting down every four stitches to twist yarn strands around each other.  I tacked some of the floats together when I wove in my ends.

And crochet can be used to bind off a sock.  Nice and stretchy!  Who knew?

Sock Lab, Round Six: Estonian Heel Socks

I read this pattern over before I started my whole Sock Lab adventure, and it made very little sense to me.  I read it again after knitting Skew, and it clicked immediately.  The concept is a dead simple and seamless way to make a heel-out sock: make a four-sided motif which is concave, to form a heel cup.  When the opposite corners can meet over your instep, work two adjacent sides of the motif in one direction to make the foot, and the other two adjacent edges in the other direction to make the leg.

The original pattern calls for a star toe that ends up sort of on the top of the foot, but I chose to use short-rows to level off the bias and make a standard toe instead.

I had a bit of a problem with fit.  By the time I had a motif that could fit over my instep, my stitch count made for a baggy leg and foot.  I decreased every four rows as described in the pattern, but next time I will decrease more rapidly or switch to smaller needles for the foot and leg.  I ended up having to shove some decreases in at the end so the foot of my sock wouldn't be too long.

Ravelry link.  I'd make these again!  They have an unusual and dramatic look to them, and what a fun use of striping yarn.  X marks the spot!

Sock Lab, Round Five: Skew

I took a half-hearted stab at Skew a few years ago, but I only got to the toe of Sock #1 before I hibernated the project, and then something else happened... oh yes, I had twins and my crafting time/brain became pretty limited.  When I picked them up months later, I felt disoriented in the pattern and didn't really feel the love, so I ripped them out.

Two years later, and success!  The pattern is very well written but it does require a little more attention at the sticky parts, especially, of course, the heel.  It seemed like the pre-heel set-up and the post-heel gusset took a little longer than on a regular sock, which may have added to my sense of vigilance.

Anyway.










What has made Skew famous is the dramatic and unique "Origami" heel.  It is formed by asymmetrical increases which create a flap off to one side.  This flap is seamed closed with a 15-stitch Kitchener, which makes it tuck in neatly and form the cup of the heel.

On Ravelry, I have read it many times: a first-time sock knitter navigating the heel for the first time.  Whether top-down or toe-up, the heel seems to be a little miracle of geometry that is hard to visualize.  The advice is usually "Run a lifeline, take a deep breath, and just follow the pattern blindly."  Skew felt like that for me - I really had no idea how this heel was going to come together until the moment it did.  Exhilarating!

My Skews fit my feet fairly well (although I made the foot a shade too long), but the feedback is that the fit is specfic around the ankle.  That band across the back of the ankle can make the sock too tight for people with wide feet or ankles.

The yarn is my own hand-dyed, using a base of Wildfoote Luxury Sock, which was squishy and lovely.