DIY Lazy Kate and Lazy Spinner

I don’t want to admit to how many years it’s taken me to complete two of these skeins of yarn.

Suffice it to say there was a long intermission, with not enough popcorn and soda, in the middle. It all started with some very dirty Shetland wool that came from a sheep named Cocoa. My sister had lucked into several Shetland fleeces for $5 each, right off the sheep, and she split them with me. Note: $5 per fleece, not $5 per pound. Hard to resist, right?

Mmmm, crimpy goodness!

Now, fast forward through the washing and the hours (and hours and hours) of picking out vegetable matter. There was a reason the price was $5 per fleece. These Shetlands were more or less pets who must have had their hay dumped onto them, not next to them. Anyway, I chose out the best bits of wool, picked, carded and spun—again, over the course of years—two ultra-full bobbins.

The goal: 2-ply natural brown yarn. Only problem was that I still hadn’t found a real lazy kate within my budget. And despite finding several really good plans for building a kate, nothing had materialized. Apparently it takes more than just finding the plans to make it happen. Who knew?

So, I channeled all my pinch-penny, make-do German ancestors and devised my own lazy kate in 10 minutes. For free. Voila:

Cardboard box? Check.
Two size 8 steel knitting needles? Check.
Tensioning device? No, but I could have tipped the box a wee bit to add a little tension. I could have also added a piece of string connecting the two bobbins with a loop to add tension. As it was, my singles were pretty thin and I wanted to avoid breakage.

It’s not lovely. But it also wasn’t $50-$80 and it got the job done fantastically. Plus it’s 100% recyclable and reusable. She’s not lazy kate, she’s environmental activist kate.

In fact, kate has issued a challenge to me: finish the next skein of yarn in less than 3 years. Like, before she falls apart.

• tess •

New Gadget for Spinners

I think I have invented a new spinner’s gadget. Well, “invented” sounds a little grandiose, I suppose. Mostly I just improved, and optimized, and ornamented.

I made an orifice hook (do we really have to call it that?) and combined it with a pair of folding scissors and then came up with a functional way to attach them both to the wheel, so they are nice and handy, and look lovely, and are still detachable, all at the same time.

But, a picture (or four) is worth a thousand words. Here are my first designs, now for sale on Etsy.

I’m having way too much fun coming up with new bead combinations for these. Seriously. Way. Too. Much.

But enough plugging my wares. Here’s my homespun life update:

Currently on my size 19/15 mm needles: fishnet shawl (I’ve only had this yarn & pattern for a year)
Currently on my wheel: Angel, a heather gray shetland (she’s going to be 2-ply when finished)
Current audiobook for crafting: 1984 by George Orwell (no, I never read it in school)
Current reading book: The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (wow)
Current ingredients waiting in the kitchen: limes, sweetened condensed milk and graham crackers to make a (not so) Key lime pie.

Shall we all agree not to talk about what’s on our current to-do lists, aside from the fun stuff? :-)

So, what’s on your needles and in your kitchen?

• tess •

Ply me to the moon…

Here are pics from my very first ply-job. Why did I wait so long to try this? I love to ply!

Fresh on the Bobbin

Ply-licious!

This is the dandelion-dyed Shetland plied with a natural cocoa-brown Corriedale single I spun several months before. It turned out bulky and squishy and yummy!

Not sure I’m going to list this for sale in my Etsy shop, Cold Hands Warm Art, because I think I plied it a little too loosely, though the skeins hang nice and straight as if to say, “check out my balance!” I’ve been eyeballing the Kitty Pi cat bed pattern by Wendy Johnson of Wendy Knits, and I think this yarn would be a great match for it.

Plus, with black and white cats, I need a cat bed that hides both dark and light fur.

• t •

DIY Lazy Kates

At the risk of vexing the fiber gods with my hubris, I have to say it’s been a pretty spin-tastic week. :-)

Early in the week I went on a quest for an affordable lazy kate. Kates are pretty simple devices that hold multiple bobbins of spun yarn to allow for plying two or more strands together. A laundry basket with horizontal dowel rods can function as a kate. A quick (and I do mean quick) Google search provides no etymology for “lazy kate,” but does provide a number of very tempting links that have almost derailed this post as I venture down rabbit holes. (Google is my frenemy.)

But I digress…

Thanks to Ravelry and my frenemy, Google, I found some great links to DIY kates, as well as some lovely blogs. So, here are instructions for:

A 6-bobbin kate from the blog Unravelling.

A 4-bobbin kate from the blog Sharp Pointy Objects

Another 4-bobbin kate from Sewwhatsports (links to Ravelry)

With all this new-found knowledge, I was ready to hit the hardware stores with my list of to-buys, find a helpful hardware man (or woman) to hunt it all down, and get busy. DH was plenty willing to set aside another monstrous pile of grading and tackle it with me.

And then, it hit me…my Ashford Traveller has three spindles that are supposed to function as a lazy kate. Doh! Here’s a pic from the Ashford site.

So, I have done my first plying this week. According to DH, it actually looks like “real” yarn.  (Um…thanks?)   Pictures to come. I’ll let you judge for yourselves.  (But I still want to make that awesome 6-bobbin kate!)