Learning Curve

These past couple of weeks I seem to have been on a learning curve for all sorts of things. I’ve been trying to sort out the spinning wheel at work, which seemed to be going really well! I’d identified it as being a 1960s/70s Ashford Traditional, found a diagram to help me set up the brake band for the bobbin, and oiled it to within an inch of its life. It now treadles beautifully, and the flyer is very smooth… until I start trying to spin. Whether I’m trying to spin my own yarn or just wind readymade yarn onto the bobbin, as soon as I put the slightest tension on the yarn, the flyer stops turning. I know it’s a question of getting the tension for both the drive band and the brake band in balance with one another, but I just can’t seem to get it right! Very frustrating.

Last weekend (the weekend before? I forget), I made some bootlaces. This involved a great deal of swearing at offcuts of bias tape and various feet on my sewing machine. I finally managed to get the stitching even and without danger of slipping off the edge of the laces (the blind hemming foot turned out to be the thing I needed!), but then I mucked up the aglets.

I bought the lace tipper originally to put the metal ends onto corset laces. Then I stopped making corsets, so it’s been in a drawer for the longest time. I made some hand-folded bias binding for the Etsy store, and when it didn’t sell (despite a lot of people having favourited it – I think they all went away and made their own!) I thought I’d repurpose it to make pretty bootlaces. I’ve made laces with sewn ends before, but metal aglets are obviously much more durable.

Can I get the dratted tool to work right? No, I can’t. These laces were just too thick, so I trimmed them down… and didn’t manage to catch the trimmed part inside the metal. The instructions say that one side of the tool is bigger than the other, but it’s not marked in any way, and I genuinely can’t see so much as a millimetre of difference between the two. The laces are getting shorter and shorter as I cut the tips off and try again, and I’m not sure now many more little pieces of metal I can afford to waste!

So, the bias binding’s back in the Etsy store, along with the first batch of vintage buttons. Now I’m off for a quiet little lie down as, on top of everything else, I’ve somehow managed to put my back out again!

On the plus side though, I’m very excited to report that my hat blocks from Guy Morse Brown have been made, and will be arriving this week! I expect another learning curve to follow shortly…