Orange, Pear and Spinning

It was time to move forward with the fruit project. Over the last couple of days I created an orange and a pear and am very happy with both. The orange is very orange in colour and the pear is that Bartlett type that isn´t quite ripe. BTW, I haven´t given credit to Susie Johns, it is from her book about fruit that I am getting all these patterns. (Check out my Knitting Books page for details.)

There was a lemon started, in fact, it is all but complete but the colour needs to be lemon yellow and mine is more golden in colour. Back to the drawing board on that one. I am also thinking about a bunch of Concord grapes; there is one already knit. I just have to figure out how to make them detach from the stem. There is more than likely a visit to Dressew in my future for Velcro dots.

Note the tiny bits of stem on each of the fruit

The oranges in my frig have that bit of pucker at the top.

And the rather long stem on the pear

The other news is on Tuesday I started a spinning class; wool spinning that is. At Knit City I did some asking around about where a class for spinning could be found that allows the participant to rent a wheel and take it home to practice. I was directed to Place Des Arts, an arts and creative center in Coquitlam. Bright Monday morning I called and was allowed to enroll in a class already two weeks into a 12-week class. Yesterday I was there trying to spin for two and one-half hours. As I knew would be the case, my first attempt was really, really bad, but the nice thing is it can be unspun and done again. The second attempt wasn´t much better. When I got home yesterday I set the wheel up so I wouldn´t forget all the steps needed to prepare it for use and this morning once this is posted I am going to give it another go.

An Ashton Joy brand wheel that comes in its own carrying case retail about $860

The instructor also lets class members take home some wool, so I picked up a lovely brown Shetland roving with a heavy lanolin content. We´ll see how much I like working with it. I also stopped on the way home to purchase some Shetland roving in a tan colour. I was warned the lanolin laden roving might be hard to use for a beginner so I need options.

There will be more spinning adventures reported here as the class progresses. In the mean time I must work on my foot-hand-eye coordination. There is a rhythm to spinning, a rhythm I need to find to be any good at it.

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