Introducing “Suzie Q”
This post is long overdue. However, life just gets busy sometimes, with things outside of the spinning and knitting world! Anyway, I’m back to blogging!
First off, I want to introduce you to Suzie Q, my new Majacraft Suzie spinning wheel. She’s adapting well to life in the Guin household, moving gracefully between the living room and TV room for long spinning sessions.
As you can see, she looks right at home, complete with some Merino/Tencel fiber that I picked up at the same time. I purchased Suzie Q at Woodland Woolworks in Carlton, OR. We were traveling to Portland for the long weekend, so I made plans for a little side trip out to Carlton, in Yamhill County. It was about a 45 minute drive through rolling hills dotted with vineyards and small wineries. Had I known that we would encounter these, I might have planned better to include some wine tasting in our little excursion – maybe next time.
When we got to Carlton, we found a very small town, not too much different in sized than those I grew up in – likely having a population of less than 1000. When you consider that Woodland Woolworks is one of the premier retailers of fine spinning and weaving supplies and equipment, serving a large customer base through mail and online ordering, this was rather surprising! The business itself is housed in a large warehouse structure, with two levels of shop space. The lower level includes their offices and shipping area along with a large room filled with yarns, knitting supplies and spinning fibers. The second floor includes a weaving area with looms and thread, and the spinning equipment showroom – my destination!
Woodland Woolworks carries a greater variety of spinning wheels than any other retailer in the Pacific Northwest. It’s really difficult to find a place to try out wheels to the extent that you can compare them as well as you can at WWW. I was especially interested in trying Majacrafts, the Lendrum, and a Louet Victoria. I had been told earlier in the week that they did not have a Majacraft Little Gem for me to try, but one came in the day before I arrived. However, they did not have a Victoria for me to try. But since my ultimate goal was to get a good second wheel that was just a little more portable than my Schacht Matchless, I ended up with Suzie Q. I fell in love with the Suzie as soon as I tried it. The Majacrafts just have a very solid, stable feeling to me. The only thing that didn’t thrill me was the Delta Orifice, so I purchased a round one too. I’m very glad I made that upgrade. I loved the Little Gem as well and I’m fairly certain it will be my next purchase – I just need to sell off some old camera equipment and yarn stash to pay for it!
One thing I really like about Suzie Q is that she makes it so easy to change ratios – just move the drive band and you’re good to go. With my schacht (Annie is her name by the way), you only have a choice of two ratios at any given time, and to change beyond that, you have to remove the flyer and change whorls. With it so easy to change ratios on Suzie Q, I’ve actually been far more successful at spinning fine singles. I’d been hesitant to try spinning as fine on Annie, but now that I’m using Suzie Q, I’ve quicky become more confident in my abilities. Now my idea of fine is likely still “rope” to some of you more experienced spinners, but I’m pretty happy for the time being. Armored with my new-found confidence, I broke out the smaller whorl for Annie and have been happily spinning some fine baby alpaca that I purchased from Crown Mountain Farms at the Madrona Fiber Arts Festival. As you can see, it’s spinning up beautifully.
The alpaca is a beautiful silver color. I have 8 oz. of this fiber and I plan on plying into a 2-ply yarn to use for a loosely knit wrap or shawl.
Below is another sample of some finer spinning. This is spun from one of the batts I blended in my fiber blending class at Madrona Fiber Arts. It’s made up of pink & charcoal wools with a generous amount of synthetic sparkly fiber blended in. I only have about 32 grams of this, so I plan on plying it with some pewter merino silk for a nice lacey scarf. In this photo, you can see the ceramic lined round orifice upgrade I purchased for Suzie Q:
Well, it’s off to spin some more before heading out to a “sit’n'knit” this afternoon!