Saturday, July 28, 2007

back to basics....

My daughter will be turning 40 in three weeks, and when I asked her what she wanted for her birthday, she said some Roving would be nice.

ROVING? What the hell is roving?

Roving, from what I can gather, is wool, that has been carded and cleaned, and ready for spinning into knitting wool.

Donna has taught herself to knit, I tried to teach her, but She is Wrong handed, and I am right handed, and it just did not work out. She has gained a reputation at work for the one who knits baby sweaters and hats, and everyone just adores what she creates.

THe other day she came bee-bopping into my house, with the BIGGEST pair of hand knit slippers I have ever seen. SHe was making them for Bill (SIL) and needed to use my washing machine to felt them. SHe is MS GREEN, and has one of those new low, agitate, low water level, front load washers, and they wont work for felting. Had to be a high level, high agitate washer. SO she shows me the size 112 slippers, and says wait until I am through felting them. (yeah right)



After about an hour of her going back and forth to the machine to reset the wash cycle, she pulls out the prettiest pair of green mereled size 8 slipper clogs! All she needed was to sew the leather soles on them. Wow! I was impressed.

SHe has decided that she needed to do it theold fashioned way, so she bought some roving, and a drop spindle, and is now spinning her own wool, and dying it herself!

So now she wants a Spinning Wheel and a set of hand carders, so that she will be able to buy the fleece straight from the Lamb, and ready it herself!



I was duly impressed! THe spinning wheel above retails for almost 800.00!! ACK!!
I thought spinning your own wool was the cheap way to go...guess not huh?


She also wanted a set of the carders above, which are only 65.00 so she just MIGHT get those.

I am so proud of the way she has gone after learning how to do this herself. She is so talented! I am just amazed!!!

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