Change of Heart

When I left you last week, my readers, I was all enthused about knitting a handspun Round the Bend jacket. After finishing the first corner on Monday, it looked like this.
The contrast colors are some cochineal dyed Coopworth/silk from Stephania and spindled silver Shetland. I love how they look together, but alas, the cranberry keeps telling me that it wants to be a cabled sweater. So, this project was put away while I cogitate on the matter.

Instead, I took to organizing. Found a new storage/display option for my spindles. I hung them by ribbons in one of the wire cubicles.
And, found room for my niddy noddies on the side of it. There are a couple of spindles not included as they're residing in project baskets.
But, there's a new spindle to the collection that arrived this week. It's a Tibetan spindle made by Edward Tabachek. It's similar to a Russian spindle and was created by Mr. Tabachek after this video on YouTube was discovered of a woman in Tibet spinning.
My spindle has a Purpleheart whorl and Hickory shaft and is pretty heavy at 60 gm. The little pink ceramic waterlily bowl was something I brought back from Hawaii last year and has just the right amount of slipperiness.

The weight and length of this spindle is much larger than the Russian spindles I bought from Galina several years ago so it's taken a bit of time to get used to it. It wasn't comfortable to sit with the bowl on one side of me because the height the tip of the spindle ended up at was too high, so I put the bowl on a small box (the box it came in) in front of me and sat cross legged on the sofa. That solved one issue.

Then, there was the weight to deal with. It's slow so I started out using some pink alpaca from Spunky Eclectic which has a fairly long staple and doesn't need/want too much twist in it to keep it soft. Also, on their site, Joanne Tabachek recommends winding some of the spun single up near the spindle tip to keep it in from tipping over. That definitely helped.
To see spinning on this type of spindle in action, here's a video of Faina using one--she's much more proficient than I.

Next knitting project for the year is the Mallins 44 doily by Herbert Niebling. The Yahoo Niebling group is using this piece for a KAL and as I have no doilies on the needles, I joined in.
My first start was with some pink Omega thread but I'm considering switching over to #60 Cordonnet. Check back next week to see how many other changes of heart happen around here.