Fiber Fool

Today is the last day for submissions to Yarnival! Spread the word, share the most interesting blog posts you have run across in the month of May, or share your favorite post you made this month. I’d especially love good tutorials (bonus if they are spinning related) and fun stories/photos about fiber festivals as it is that time of the year. I don’t have a ton of entries and I’d like it to be a good edition, so please consider sharing a post or two!

On another side note, and I’ll warn you it is another rant. This time on my post on Tuesday about loosing twist when plying. Please read the post before you comment on it. I specifically stated “loosing plying twist.” I am not an idiot like some of the commenters (I think exclusively first time commenters) evidently think. I know and have known since my very first spinning session that you loose some of the original twist in the singles when plying. I’m a scientist by training. The physics behind that fact did not escape me. I even describe a loss of twists per inch in the PLIED yarn! Hello! I’m not an idiot thank you very much! Please READ posts before commenting!!!!

*sigh* Okay, end of rant! Now onto the real subject of the post…

I’ve been tagged by several people over the last week or so for this meme. I was tagged for the similar one that made the rounds near the holidays and never did that one so I suppose it is about time. I have a hard time with these sorts of things because as much as I would like to think I’m a very unique individual, I don’t think there are many very interesting things about me…

1. I am one of the few who has a decent driver’s license photo. Around the time we got married Colorado changed how they do license renewals, cutting down the number of offices needed to I think only one or two in the county. I had heard horror stories of 4 hour long lines and bitchy people. So, I got up early, did my hair and make-up and arrived about 15 minutes before the office opened. I was among the first five or so people to be helped so I wasn’t cranky and those working were not yet cranky from cranky customers and I got myself a nice picture. Thank goodness you don’t need a new picture for every renewal now :-) I’ll be 26 for life! LOL! I assume at some point they require a new picture, but I don’t know at what point that is.

2. I am the oldest of two girls. We are spaced 5.5 years apart. My mom is the youngest of two girls, also spaced about 5 years apart. My mom’s sister also has two girls, also spaced around 5 years apart. My mom’s cousins? Also two girls born about 5 years apart. I broke the cycle - no kids, daughters or otherwise. My cousins have as well, only one has had a child and it was a boy.

3. My hands switch roles when spinning, depending upon whether I’m using a wheel or a spindle. On the spindle my left holds the fiber source and my right controls the twist. On my wheel my right holds the fiber source and my left controls the twist. Go figure!

4. Perhaps number 3 makes more sense if you know that I showed zero preference for handedness as a developing child. My mom, being a lefty, encouraged right handedness, but every once in a while that ambidextrous early start makes itself known - whether in how I spin or the fact that I show no right or left brain preference either.

5. When I turned three I was so obsessed with orange that I had an entirely orange birthday cake - not even a green leaf in the decorations. Everything had to be from the orange family. I think I’m three again :-) I have been into rust for the last five years or more and it has expanded to include bright orange as well. In fact, I just bought some orange shoes! Wheeee!

6. I have terrible stage fright. Okay, not terrible, I can still get myself talked into performing in public (or I have within the past five years). That said, I always start off sketchy and slightly flat until I get my feet under me and get on a roll after a phrase or two. I have taken voice lessons on and off (more on than off) for the past 15 years. You’d think I could get down the performance part!

7. I’m not a fan of memes. I know I do them from time to time around here. I do find they can be convenient when one doesn’t have anything of particular interest to blog about and they can be a quick way for newer readers to get a bit better sense of me, but not one of my favorite blog topics.

As it has taken at least ten days to come up with answers to this I am not going to share the “joy” of this meme. If you haven’t been tagged and wish to do the meme, consider yourself tagged.

Okay, so I didn’t survive in the way one would think. I was not a participant in the insanity that is writing from scratch, recording, mixing, and releasing for free on the web a 20 minute or 30 track album in 24 hours. However, I had to live in the house where said insanity was taking place. Drew and Jessie managed it in about 22 hours and they even slept so it went better than I had anticipated. I provided cookies and even went on a malt run and was official photographer. Jessie was fueled by Rock Star (and sometimes vodka) in addition to the cookies and malt.

When you put Drew and Jessie together (and in some cases add alcohol, though that is not a necessary catalyst) these two can be a hoot (and often no one can get a word in edgewise because they are on such a roll). I was feeling awful on Friday when the insanity began so I was actually a fly on the wall for a lot of their writing in the early phase. I often found myself laughing at Jessie’s sarcastic and silly lyrics (many of which made it into the final album without being cut).

They have a definite ear worm on the album (a fav track so far it seems) and several of the songs I would love to see worked on a bit more to either make it a bit longer or just to flesh out the backing track some. It is a fun album and I’m rather impressed in the quality given the time constraints. I think having those time constraints can be a good thing and force you just put something out there without being too picky and overall I think it is a pretty darn good album.

If you enjoy quirky lyrics with a good melody and guitar backing (acoustic, electric and/or bass in any given track) I encourage you to check out the debut album of Spandex Jellybeans - Watermelon (yes, that was what Jessie chose). They are both on facebook so if you’re there and you like the album pop in there and say hi! Or leave a comment on Drew’s entry about the experience at his blog.

I did start feeling better over the weekend and did a fair amount of the spinning you saw yesterday and I knit on Mashup Madness V2.0. It seems those cables checkered in the lace just don’t show up when you are knitting it, but if you step back they actually pop pretty well on the stockinette lace. Today, I’m off to knit on it some more at My Sister Knits later this morning. Hopefully this week I’ll actually get to knit more than about four rows. The last couple of weeks have been really busy so I’ve stepped up to the plate and helped customers with their knitting mistakes and qustions when Cathy O. has been busy with other customers. Even though I’m not paid it feels good to share my experience with others though and was kind of fun to have encouraged a few sales.

Fiber: Shetland Roving
Source: Snow
Weight: 0.5 oz
Drafting Method: Supported Long Draw (Woolen)
Wheel: Cathy’s Schacht Matchless Single Treadle in Double Drive Configuration
Ratio Singles/Plying: 11:1/7.5:1(? the smallest whorl on the “plying whorl?”)
Yardage: ~40 yds
WPI/Yarn Classification: 13 wpi/Sport
TPI: 3.5

I’ve been with the Schacht Matchless that Cathy so kindly lent me last weekend when my wheel became incapacitated (no, my wheel is not yet functioning) for a bit over a week now. I have learned a ton working with this wheel, but we had a bit of a sketchy start.

When I took possession of the wheel I was hoping my wheel wasn’t going to be out of commission too long so I didn’t want to dive into a project. I knew Cathy had some specific things she wanted my opinion on so I just grabbed about 2 oz of Shetland roving that I’ve had forever. Snow had kindly gathered together a bit of a fiber sampler when I first got my wheel (almost 2 years ago now). I just did a quick run of spinning and plying about a half ounce of roving. The above was the result.

Now, I must admit to laziness on this one. I did not prep a reference card or even take some of the fiber and let it twist back on itself. That means part of the underplying can likely be attributed to me. And, it wasn’t too drastically underplied. I had about a half turn to the right in the hank post-washing, but just laying it straight while drying took out that twist. Just handling it though I still feel it is underplied. So I admit to being partially at fault. But, I also found that as the plied yarn was fed onto the bobbin it lost some of the plying twist. I have noticed this to a certain extent on my Majacraft and asked another Majacraft owner if they noticed the same thing and they said yet. That said, it seems much more drastic on the Schacht.

Can anyone ring in on this phenomenon of loosing plying twist as the yarn is fed onto the bobbin? Have you noticed it? What kind of a wheel do you usually ply on? Double drive or scotch tension or bobbin lead?

I decided not to run this 40 yards back through to put more plying twist in it because I wanted it as an example, but it is easy to run it back through.

Fiber: Shetland Roving
Source: Snow
Weight: 1.6 oz
Drafting Method: Supported Long Draw (Woolen)
Wheel: Cathy’s Schacht Matchless Single Treadle in Double Drive Configuration
Ratio Singles/Plying: 15.5:1 for both
Yardage: ~120 yds
WPI/Yarn Classification: 16 wpi/Fingering
TPI: 6

I switched the fastest standard whorl and spun the remaining roving at 15.5:1 ratio. By this point I was doing very well spinning on the Schacht and I went through about an ounce at a fairly fine weight in just over an hour! I decided that on the Majacraft I rarely switch to a different ratio than I spun the singles at so I stayed at the same ratio when I plied. This time I did have a reference and I plied with a good .5 to 1 tpi higher than the sample (prior to letting the yarn feed onto the bobbin) to come out with a nicely balanced final yarn that matches the sample in tpi. That seems a rather drastic change. But I seemed to have made drastic moves along the learning curve for this wheel.

Either way, I’m quite happy with this skein of yarn. It is kind of itchy given the Shetland and woolen spinning. In fact, DH asked if it is always that itchy. I think perhaps there has been a bit too much spinning of merino around these parts. I’m pretty happy with the Schacht otherwise. I like the single treadle (which I had been afraid of when I was wheel shopping 2 years ago) except how it comes to rest at the bottom all of the time. The double drive is kind of nice as it automatically reduce the uptake when you are putting in less twist, though ultimately I think I prefer the greater control of the Scotch tension. I’m not sure why, but I feel as though I spin much faster on the Schacht. That is likely just an illusion since I spun a bit larger singles than I have been and I was spinning woolen rather than worsted. I think I’ll be trying some worsted on the Schacht next. Though spinning some other Shetland from the lock that Cathy gave me is tempting as well as I could maybe have enough yarn for a nice Shetland sampler of some variety. Stay tuned to see what I decide I guess…

Pattern: August Mailing of Yarn4Socks.com Sock Club (name not to be disclosed until then)
Designer: Myself
Size: Medium
Yarn: 1 - 115g skein Fleece Artist Sea Wool (70% merino wool, 30% seacell), Moss (club color will be different)
Recipient: Me :-)

These socks are inspired by the Spearfish Socks and I have to say that the lace elements (even though I can’t show them off to you at this time) look soooo fantastic in this yarn! It has just a touch of sheen, but not so much to make it hard to photograph. The seacell also gives the finished fabric a very nice drape and it was wonderful to work with.

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I am really hoping to get together with my best friend from college today. He has been in the area for his annual storm chasing extravaganza with some friends. Though when I texted him last night that my car isn’t the most trustworthy of vehicles I haven’t heard back. I know the vehicle they used for chasing was not rented in his name, but I said I could meet him in Longmont or Boulder as those wouldn’t have me on the Interstate and there is mass transit from his location to there. I’ll give him a ring after water aerobics this morning and hopefully we can work something out. I didn’t get to meet up with him last year either. In fact, I’m thinking the last time I saw him was at my wedding :-(

DH and SIL3 are going to be writing and recording music for 24 hours starting sometime this afternoon or evening. I guess I am “support staff” pizza orderer, drink refresher, and official photographer. Other than that, no big plans for the holiday weekend here. Those of you in the US who do have plans for the weekend be safe, but have fun!

I’m moving slowly today (well, this week really). I think it is the hormones. I have no energy, pain levels are once again elevated, allergies are at least 50% worse than normal, and I want to just be a sloth and lay in bed.

Instead, I showered and headed over to my fav locally owned coffeeshop. Partially to hang Script Frenzy posters up for DH (he got suckered into being the local coordinator for this first annual writing frenzy that starts in June) and partially hoping an influx of good caffiene and the different atmosphere might further motivate. That said, despite the fact that I’m the only on in here on a lap top, the Internet is *very* slow too.

When I’m feeling slothful one of the things I like to do most is play in Photoshop as I can do so comfortably from bed or the loveseat or chair or futon in the basement when my Vaio was functioning. It has been February since that was working (and no word from the shop). These graphics I started when I was on a roll from designing freezer paper stencils. (These are much too intricate for that.) I hadn’t really worked on them since. But, last week my new Adobe Creative Suite for the Mac arrived so I can once again do graphics work on a laptop! So, I returned to them. It was probably good to edit something already started to begin with as I took a huge version leap, from 6.0 to CS3. But so far, it still does what I’m accustomed to doing more or less the same. I can’t wait to start to explore the new stuff though!

Feel free to comment on your favorite color/background combos…