Babe spinning wheels are affordable, durable and the
simplicity of design
makes them very easy to learn on.
The PVC pipe look leaves something to be desired
though so I set out to change the look. First I painted
the pipe with black paint
designed for plastic, then
painted the wheel, foot peddle and flier metallic gold.
I decoupaged small peacock eye feathers onto the foot
peddle (called
a treadle). I cut out wood partitions to
fit in between the wheel spokes, painted them black
and decoupaged peacock eye feathers on both sides of
each
partition.
Peacocks have electric blue color body feathers and
these I gather as
they are shed and decoupage to the
painted PVC pipe. The end result looks nothing like it
did and not so much like it was made from PVC pipe.
It's
not the traditional wood but at least it looks better
than PVC!
Defferent phases of processing
Here are some of the phases of processing my own yarn. After shearing, I wash the fiber and let it
dry, then draft out long rough roving and feed it into the carder. This aligns the fibers and
when the drum can hold no more, I pull the batt off of the drum. Then I tear a strip off of the batt to spin. Once I have
two bobbins full of single ply, I put an empty bobbin on the wheel and then I ply the full bobbins together onto the
empty spool. From there I either make a skein or a center pull ball to knit or crochet from.
