Hearing Colors

No, I haven't suddenly developed synesthesia. Just a wacky idea.

I may have mentioned some time ago that I bought a knitting machine. I bought a machine that works with bulkier yarns, with the idea of being able to use handspun on it, and also to use it for prayer shawls for our church - since I am currently the only person creating them, I have to hope that not too many are needed at once otherwise. Using a knitting machine for them is much, much faster. I also figure I can pray just as effectively for someone while sliding a carriage back and forth as I can while hand knitting.

So, I got a Studio SK155 in the door - and became fascinated with it. I've spent quite some time swatching on it, I bought a second machine with a ribber, kept the ribber, refurbished the second machine and sold it again for the cost of the machine+ribber - so I essentially got the ribber attachment for free. I've knit a sweater and a prayer shawl on it.

One of the interesting things about a knitting machine is how the needles are accounted for - from a zero in the middle. Hmm, says my brain to I, middle 0.

That reminds me of something....

Middle C. On this.

And thus was begun a wacky, crazy idea.

What if I could translate music into knitting patterns? A visual representation?

Cloth?

Well, that SK155 has a twelve-stitch pattern repeat capability with the use of punch cards, which is fine for a lot of things, but most music pieces are more than twelve notes. Clearly this will require something different.

In the 1980s and early 1990s knitting machines went electronic. Some of the manufacturers started adding computerized "brains" for stitch patterning, and also the capability of creating one's own stitch patterns and inputting them. These capabilities are tremendously primitive by modern standards, but they did the job. They also required a port on the machine for input. Of course this port is unique to these machines. Why would it be standardized? That's just too easy.

Some enterprising people have done a little hacking here and there and created cabling that will go USB to knitting machine port, and software  to allow one to program patterns on a modern computer and then input them to the knitting machine via the cable. Many people are using it for intarsia or for "picture knitting." Knitted portraits of the family isn't really my gig, but who says it couldn't be an abstract? It could also be used for lacework, for example. And you can program for the entire needle bed, which is 200 needles wide. So I could translate a music score into a pattern, or I could basically knit the score, or...let's just say I have a lot of ideas about this.

Great! I need another machine! Only thing is, these are in increasing demand, they are no longer manufactured, and some models are actually going for more on the secondary market now than they retailed for 25 years ago.

Ya gotta love Craigslist.

I came across an ad for a likely machine on CL posted by a woman who lived on northern Vancouver Island in British Columbia. The ad had been out there for some time - probably because of the relatively limited local population and the difficulty and expense of getting to her if one wasn't already on the island. So I contacted her and asked if we could meet somewhere in the middle.

Turns out she was about to move to Surrey, BC, which is only about 15 miles over the border. So a couple weeks later I took a little road trip to Canada, and came home with all of this stuff for about 20% of its market value:

Yes, I know. It looks like a bunch of junk. But in reality, it's a computerized knitting machine with just about every accessory they ever made for it, most of it in good, though rather dirty, condition. The machine itself turns on and appears to have its brains intact. And I got it over the border without incident, though the wannabe Secret Service dude with the mirrored RayBans at the US border was about the most unpleasant individual I've ever dealt with, barking orders at me and then practically throwing my passport at me while growling "goodbye." They must take classes in rudeness.

This week I will be tearing the knitter down and cleaning it, and also refurbishing it where needed.

The next thing will be programming testing (is the brain really intact?), and then if that goes well - can I get it to talk to my Mac?

In the meanwhile, we attended a matinee performance of the Seattle Symphony yesterday - and in addition to listening to the music I found myself contemplating colors, stitch patterns, yarns, and textures to go with Brahms' Symphony No. 1. (Moss green, kind of rustic, with blues and browns laid in.)

Stay tuned for updates. Let's hope this thing works.

Wednesday Wanderings: October 15, 2014

Here's what's new at the zoo:

I started a project with some amazing yarn from a tactile perspective - it's 70% Merino, 20% cashmere and 10% nylon (it is a sock yarn, after all!). This was the third monthly installment of a three-part yarn club from Simply Socks Yarn Company and I have to say all three have been nice - but this one takes the cake. That cashmere is yummy. I am not completely certain of the colors on me, but I'm willing to give it a try. I know I can pull the green off, but the gold? Hmm. 

I'm knitting a shawl (the pattern calls it a "shawlette" - a term my father found rather funny) called Pendulum, a rather simple pattern, to show off the yarn itself. And, it's my first foray into short rows. I try to assign myself projects that give me something new to learn - I may end up with an odd assortment of items, but I'm learning in the process which is part of the goal.

(photo clickable to embiggen)

Fiber Fusion NW is this coming weekend, I've set a budget for shopping, and I can almost bet I'm going to blow it. Aagh! This from the woman who has 90+ items (yarns and fibers) in her stash, and those are just the ones I've logged into Ravelry. Hopefully I can at least keep myself from buying something just like something I already have - I do seem to buy the same colors over and over.

Lacemakers of Puget Sound are having their lace day on October 25, from 1 - 4 at the Kent Commons. I am not a member, but I'm thinking about it, and Joe is out of town that weekend so I may wander down and see what's up. Rumor has it that the speaker at the event is good, and she is speaking on Elizabethan costuming which I think would be fascinating. I have two bobbin lace pillows - the type for making lace, not pillows with lace decoration! - which have seen basically no use in umpteen years (just like all the other equipment around here!) and I'm thinking of dusting them off and giving it a shot. Unlike some people I have no grand ambitions in this direction, but it'd be nice to be able to make my own edgings for reenactment garments, for example. Those of you who know me well know that I am not a "lacy" person by nature, so I'm not sure how much use I'd make of handmade lace in my everyday wardrobe.

What's new in your zoo?

Wednesday Wanderings: October 1, 2014

A few bits of fluff about what's been going on around here:

1. I am a couple feet into the "project" on the rigid heddle loom. I say "project" because, well, it's not really meant to be anything, just a learning experience. And that it has been. I've already made so many mistakes that I sometimes think I should just yank it off and start something else. The only thing that stops me is wondering how many other mistakes I can get over with while weaving away on this non-project project. If you know what I mean.

Please Don't Look at This Picture

2. I've gotten pretty involved with Knitted Knockers. I have helped facilitate connections between the organization and the NwRSA, both my local chapter of the spinning guild as well as the guild board. I've gotten room for KK to have an informational table at the NwRSA St. Distaff's Day gathering on January 3, 2015, which will potentially give them exposure to some 300 or so knitters - exposure I understand they greatly need as they are in need of knitters to contribute to keep up with demand. I've met people from businesses and other guilds who are working on this cause. And in between all of my glad-handing and smooth talking, and emailing and phone calling, I've actually managed to knit a knocker. (That phrasing makes me laugh every single time. I know. I'm easily amused.)

3. My fringe twister is here, and It Is So Cool. I know it looks vaguely like some sort of medieval torture instrument, but it is a lifesaver for me, Ms. Chronic Tendonitis which I am afraid is trending toward arthritis. This leads to...

4. My third prayer shawl for the Consoling Grace Ministry at our church will be done as soon as - you guessed it - I put the fringe on it. Which I need to do before next Tuesday, when the reboot meeting for the ministry will occur. I am very curious to see how this goes and what it ends up being, and I have hope for it being a meaningful and helpful thing to those in our parish who've lost a loved one.

5. We (I say "we," but it's mostly been Joe) are nearly done with finishing the top of the island that serves as a stand-up work table. I am anxious for "us" to get this done, as the room is pretty much unusable while it's in process, and I'm beginning to get a little twitch in my left eyelid when I go in there to try to retrieve something. I think I vaguely fear that, the room having just come out of almost 16 years of chaos, entropy will strike yet again and I'll lose all my progress. Did I say anything about logic applying here? No, I didn't think so.

And that's a brief cross-section of my life right now. Stay tuned for more! I can hear it coming already!

Growing Pains

Yesterday, when I picked up my knitting, my husband said, "Oh - are you going to be working on your swearing again?"

What? You mean I swear at the project every time I pick it up? Evidently so. And, really, it's not that hard; I just make mistakes.

@#!%^&^&^$#$$#()(**)&_^*!!!!!!!1!!

I make mistakes because I'm learning. I have a fair amount of theoretical knowledge about knitting, but little practical experience - my life before retirement was such that I had virtually no time to gain that experience. So I'm making up for it now by pushing myself a little. I have in mind a series of projects for the future to specifically develop that experience.

And apparently, um, I'm "improving" my vocabulary in the process. Maybe I need to learn more swear words in other languages as part of my self-education. I know a few in German, French and Spanish. Perhaps it's time to branch out beyond the Indo-European languages. Oh wait - Joe taught me a few in Korean too.

And the experience factor goes beyond knitting too, of course. The other day while recovering from the stomach bug we seem to be sharing around here, I felt enough better that I was a bit bored, so I decided to warp the rigid heddle loom I bought in April and haven't yet used. Fortunately RH looms are pretty simple, so the warping process only takes about an hour, because the next day I realized that I had warped it backwards. Completely unuseable. So I had to partially disassemble the loom and reverse what I had done. At least that was possible and I didn't have to just undo an hour's worth of work.

It looks innocent enough, doesn't it?

Somewhat in my defense, it's hard to tell one end of this loom from the other, unlike any shaft loom I've ever used. I've now employed some blue tape and a Sharpie to fix that little issue. And when I posted what I'd done and how dumb I felt on the rigid heddle loom Facebook group, I was a bit comforted by just how many people had done the exact same thing. (I particularly enjoyed the comment from a man, an experienced weaver, who said he did it in front of a group while doing a demo, and then turned it into a demo of how to fix it. "Um, I meant to do that. Yes. Yes, I did.")

If you care to follow along, I'm documenting my various projects under my profile on Ravelry, here. (You may need to sign up for Ravelry to view that, if you don't belong.)

Though I haven't yet found the section there where one can document the expansion of one's vocabulary.

Coming together

So what's new? A fair amount, actually.

I've been working hard getting everything back into place. (Or at least into some place or other.) Even with having disposed of probably a third of what was in the room before, there is still a lot of stuff to sort out. And, frankly, more that will probably go. (No probably about it - there's more to go for sure.)

I am super pleased with how the room storage is working out, though. The combination of dressers and shelves is working very well so far. I want to get some bins that fit into the shelves to hold smaller stuff, and to create a neater appearance. This means another trip to IKEA, which is almost an hour away, so I've been putting it off until I have a little more time. Hopefully soon.

(click on photos to embiggen)

Gee, do you think perhaps I'm not tall enough to reach the top? What's the clue?

I also made the decision to store all of the animal – based fibers in sealed bins. As pretty as I think it would be to have all the yarns and fibers artfully arranged on the shelves, in effect this is like setting out a buffet for wool moths. Having dealt with them once in the past, I never want to go through that again! It'd be quicker to just set (lots of ) dollar bills on fire and avoid the cleanup hassle!

I spent a morning cataloging all of my fiber and putting it in numbered bins. I will do the same with the yarn. That means the shelves will be a bit more bare, but I won't end up having to throw things away either. As a side effect, my tools and supplies will be more organized than they've been in the over 20 years I've been doing this.

All those bins on the left? They'll be gone. Someday.

"Sealed bins" means "store in the garage" which is, um, kind of full of stuff plus two cars. So we began sorting through the garage the other day. I love scope creep, don't you? It needs to be done though - we've lived here over 15 years and the accumulation of stuff is kind of frightening, actually.

Joe hung the TV a few days ago, and I am working on a way to deal with the cords. We didn't want to have to punch into the wall and pull wire, but I don't like the look of the dangling wires either.

The iMac I bought has been here for just over a week and we're getting to know each other pretty well. I managed to get my Roland keyboard hooked in and serving as a MIDI input with the Mac, and have been playing around with Garage Band - nothing serious but it's fun to play with the different patches. Not to mention that it's nice to not worry about Joe having to hear me practice the piano - I am so out of practice it's embarrassing! He says he doesn't mind - but I do!

In fiber project-related news, I began spinning for the Tour de Fleece with the Hansen miniSpinner team - all in good fun, actually, and I'm not getting as much done as I'd like, though I'll be done with the second half of this soon, perhaps today. I also cast on a shawl yesterday - hopefully I'll finish this one. Loooong stretches of stockinette but I think it will be pretty in the end.

Stay tuned for further adventures...

Some Assembly Required

Progress! At last!

Monday, a friend who is in the carpet business laid the new carpeting. Yesterday, two nice men from IKEA came with half a ton (literally) of furniture in boxes, carried it all upstairs, and assembled and placed it in the room.

Things are looking a little different now.

(click on photos to embiggen)

Just as a reminder - before:

And (drumroll please), after:

(I know the loom is facing backward; that's temporary.)

For the curious, the furniture consists of two HEMNES 8-drawer dressers with KALLAX 4x4 shelf units on top; a HEMNES desk; and a STENSTORP kitchen island for a worktable. (The white bookcases were purchased long ago.)The plan is to put the island on glides so it can be moved around the room as needed, and in fact I suspect it will spend some time up against the wall by the door when not in use.  I chose the kitchen island so that it's the right height for working while standing, and it also has room for two barstools for seating and two strong metal shelves for storage. I still have to sand and oil the butcher-block top, which may not be as necessary as if it were to be used in a kitchen but I'd like to keep it in good shape.

Of course, there is still all the stuff to move back in and organize, and work areas to get ready - some assembly is, indeed, still required. This is the current state of the guest room:

See the patch of blue in the upper right, to the right of the big box? That's the guest bed, which we tore down and upended to pack the room with All My Stuff. I'll be working on emptying everything back out and installing it all in the other room, but for now I'm enjoying the pristine look of my studio. That room has never looked so good in all the years we've lived here.

Getting there, and - getting there

This last weekend, I attended NwRSA's Conference 2014, held in Salem, OR at Willamette University. This conference has been held annually since 1985, and has evolved from a big spin-in to add two full days of workshops as well.

(click on photos to embiggen)

The Hatfield Fountain - of course I liked it, it has birds! 

Mill Stream

Willamette U is a beautiful campus, complete with a stream running through it with resident ducks and several beautiful common areas. The academic buildings are mostly newer. The dorm I was in? Not so much; it appears to date from the late 1800s and is about as perfect as a human would be at the age of 120 - uneven creaky floors, questionable electricity and plumbing (and the electricity clearly added after the fact), no elevator or AC. My punishment for asking for an individual room was to have that room on the top floor with two double flights of stairs as access - not a big deal until I tell you my thought process for packing was "I'm not getting on a plane, I can take whatever I want!" The stained glass over the front door was lovely though, and the carved banisters on those stairs were too.

One thing I learned: I am too old for communal showers. For sure.

The conference itself was a fun experience. I have been to similar gatherings in the (rather distant!) past, and always enjoyed them - this was a bit smaller than I had anticipated, with somewhere around 135 registered attendees (I am told that is unusually small). The benefit to me was that I got to know almost everyone at least by sight by the end of the weekend. There were likewise fewer vendors, which was probably good for my bank account - especially since I have a different event coming up in just three weeks! I did pick up some books I'd had on my wish list for a while, one of which is out of print and a bit hard to locate - Deb Menz's Color in Spinning. Bonus time: it's double autographed!

And honestly, most of what I learned is that I know more than I think I do. More than once I found myself explaining to someone else what to do, or helping to adjust a wheel to accommodate whatever was being worked on. The classes I took were good (working with mohair, art yarn creation, knitting with unspun silk), but not as much of a stretch for me technically as I had thought they might be - which was nice actually, because I could focus on the product and not worry about being able to do the process once it was explained.

Art yarn - building blocks, and...

Art yarn constructed!

Knitting with unspun silk - a rather painstaking process...

On Saturday there was a luncheon and fashion show, with some amazing work displayed. Maybe someday I'll have something worthy of showing!

And I think the funnest part was the spin-in - the gym was full of people with wheels working on projects, with lots of visiting.

All in all a great time, despite the fact there was a big accident the morning we were driving down so my four-hour trip to Salem took 6 1/2 hours to get there - ugh. Very glad I went, as I somehow agreed to be on the committee hosting next year's conference, which will be May 28 - 31, 2015 at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, WA. Keep an eye on the guild website for details coming soon. And as a side note - even if  you don't attend many meetings, if you're in the area (Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana) and interested in fiber arts, guild membership is a good resource for information and pretty inexpensive at $25/year. (How's that for a little advertising?)

Speaking of getting there - while I was gone, Joe emptied the studio in preparation for new carpet which is due to be installed late this week! I am excited, though when he brought up replacing the carpet I was apprehensive at the amount of work involved to clear the room out. God bless him, he took that on for me. Once the carpet is installed, I can commence Ikeacizing, and then move back in - the end is in sight!

Joe dodging the camera

I had forgotten how big this room is!

It actually echoes in here now!

Jam Break

Yes, it happens to be lunchtime and I happen to be hungry - so a PB&J may be in my near future, but I'm talking about a different kind of jam break right now.

That is, I've broken the logjam of I Can't Make Any Progress On Turning the Storage Room into a Studio.

Yesterday, I listed on Craigslist the three old furniture items I needed to get rid of as "free to good home," and also listed an older table loom for sale. By 3 pm, all were claimed. The dresser went to a couple with a young daughter, whose dresser it will be. The desk went to a man with his own business who didn't have a desk to work from at home. The table went to a woman who had just moved and needed a dining table that would fold down. 

I'll be delivering the loom to the purchaser next week when I head into town for other reasons.

So now that side of the room looks like this:

And it's the other side that's truly frightening - see below:

Next steps? Con Joe into helping me shampoo the carpet - or at least the 20% or so that's exposed, then....

Ikea, here I come!

I might actually get this done before the end of the year!

By the way, I'm really liking Craigslist right now. I just sold a set of Addi interchangeable needles too. Anyone need a warping board? In digging out the room I discovered, somewhat shamefacedly, that I now have three, which is at least one more than I need.  That's going on Craigslist next.

Jam not included.

Stalled

When I retired last year, I had accumulated a fair amount of paid vacation time, which was paid to me  in a tidy lump sum as I went out the exit. I set aside a portion of it to redo the room I am going to use as a studio, and I've spent several hours sorting, packing, moving and discarding things to get ready to make that room more "useable studio" and less "storage space."

Much of my new workspace and storage was intended to come from IKEA, that bastion of room re-dos and college dorms everywhere.

In February, my friend and I were near IKEA (which is about 40 miles from my home), and decided to stop by and look at the furniture in person. Imagine my horror when I saw all of their EXPEDIT line, upon which nearly everything in my plan was based, tagged with "closeout!" signs. (Of course, "closeout" did not mean "reduced price.") In addition, I was nowhere near ready to buy the furniture, as the room hadn't yet been cleared and I had nowhere to store several large boxes full of pieces. EXPEDIT was wildly popular and it disappeared fast. Its replacement, KALLAX, is only just now hitting the stores - and it doesn't come in the same configuration I'd been counting on for my room.

So, it's back to the drawing board for me. I had planned to have the room work-ready by April; it's more likely to be at least June at this point. And, of course, none of my new options are as affordable as the EXPEDIT would have been. Gah! Decisions, decisions.

Meanwhile, I am continuing to refine the equipment selection. (Doesn't that sound grand and official?) This basically means buying things I have no room for yet, as the studio is in a shambles, but I'm finding good deals that I can't pass up. The friend mentioned above in the IKEA debacle kindly helped me acquire a four shaft Rasmussen table loom, 30 years old, in pristine condition save a bit of dust and rather dry wood. According to the seller's daughter, who was the Craigslist contact for her mother, Mom bought it, wove two pillow covers on it, and stuck it in a closet. I've also picked up a 25" Schacht Flip rigid heddle loom with a host of optional accessories for less than 50% of list from a woman in Texas who was a motivated seller. At least this one will fold and go in a tote bag for storage!

And, in an odd case of "it's such a small world that I can't quite believe it," I stumbled across the woman from whom I purchased my eight shaft Loomcraft floor loom, which is basically a clone of this loom, in about 1998. I was impressed with the fact that she remembered the loom well and made a couple of suggestions on things to update if I hadn't done it already.

Stay tuned; I'm hoping to break the logjam sooner rather than later and actually create a space where I can use all this stuff.

Not to mention Joe would probably like that Rasmussen loom out of the middle of the living room floor, which is its current resting place.

Sleeping Beauty

We have a new family member, and her name is Sophie-Marie.

I'm not always given to flights of fancy, or to naming my possessions, but she insisted that was her name and that was all there was to that.

The backstory: a good friend recently purchased a spinning wheel off of eBay. It was really pretty, and a bit unusual, and I got curious so I started reading about them. It is of a type known as a Canadian Production Wheel - they were made largely in Quebec, from about 1875 to perhaps as late as the 1950's, by companies that also made farm equipment (wheeled and wheel-powered things: threshers, sawmills, water wheels, spinning wheels - there's a certain logic to it). They were made to produce yarn in quantity at home, which means they are speed demons and workhorses - though they are also pretty. Based on its design and fittings it seems likely this one was made by Compagnie DesJardins - which is still in existence, though out of the spinning wheel business.

They have a distinct look to them, the most obvious of which is they usually have cast iron fittings. And the tension system is pretty unusual, too. I don't know where tilt tension originated but it was used a lot on wheels out of Quebec, and Canada in general - including the Watson wheel I have on order.

I've never used tilt tension before, and I know the Watsons are also built for speed, so I thought it would be a good idea to see what I could find in a CPW for myself as well, so I could get into the swing of things before the Watson arrives. 'Cuz, you know, I need to justify buying the new toy.

Of course, Quebec is a long way from here, and so they're hard to find nearby - the farther away you are from Quebec, the more rare and more expensive they get. They're also old and sometimes a bit fragile, thus expensive and nerve-wracking to ship even if a seller was so inclined.

I've been looking around pretty aggressively for a month or so. And I happened to find one in Bellingham last Sunday night, offered for rather less than it's really worth. I called immediately, hopping up and down in my chair and trying not to sound too excited, and made an appointment to see it Monday morning. Drove like a madwoman to Bellingham, where the seller told me the wheel really didn't work and she wasn't sure what was wrong with it.

Looking over the wheel, I could see that all the major parts were there, intact and mostly in great shape, and apparently original. That in itself is a bit unusual. The issue she described didn't really make much sense, but I could see the footman was all bent out of shape - it's made of a soft metal rod, and apparently she'd let her son use it as a play sword. (Ed. note: Not a good idea. On so many levels.)

After a nice visit, I handed her the relatively small sum of money she was asking for the wheel, and we broke it down and put it in the back of my car.

The wheel was filthy, having sat around in her garage for years, but obviously had been someone's valued tool at some point as it had been well cared for in the past. A good scrub with a strong solution of Murphy's Oil Soap when we got home, and a lot of furniture oil the next day, and she was looking much, much better. It was clear she wanted to spin, she was built to do it, and just needed a boost to wake up and get going again.

I actually got her to spin Monday night after just washing off the dirt and grime, with no further work and not even oiling the moving parts. The bobbin will need some cleaning out so it turns freely, but that's minor.

There are a couple of things I'll need a blacksmith's assistance to repair - they are simple fixes, such as straightening that play sword back into shape, but I can't accomplish them myself. She will work just fine without these fixes, with a bit of improvisation.

The only thing missing is the axle peg, and my husband is working on a replacement, though she'll spin without one - and I've improvised with a pair of Chinese-takeout chopsticks for now. (She is pretty embarrassed by this though, so no photos. We are not the Kardashians here.)

You may note, as I'm writing about her, I am using "her" and not "it." She insisted on a female pronoun from the first time I laid eyes on the Craigslist ad.

And Tuesday morning, Joe was leaving the house early; I woke up just as he was leaving, rolled over in bed and said, "Remember Sophie-Marie is in the laundry room drying off after her bath; don't trip over her as you head to the garage." I have no idea where the name came from, it just came out of my mouth.

And out of Joe's mouth came - "Who on Earth is Sophie-Marie, and why is she in our laundry room?"

Flickr set of photos here - I am documenting the cleanup/restoration as I go.

The Ballad of the Woolee Winder

Come and listen to a story about a man named Jed 

A poor mountaineer, barely kept his family fed, 

Then one day he was shootin at some food, 

And up through the ground came a bubblin crude. 

Oil that is. Black gold. Texas tea. 

(source)

St. Valentine was good to me this year, and brought me a Woolee Winder and three bobbins for my Majacraft Suzie. Since St. Valentine is so very nice, I even got my gift early, so I've had a few days to play with it.

Or maybe that should be, I've had a few days to wrestle with it.

What, you say, is a Woolee Winder? It is an invention by a man in Oregon designed to improve the efficiency of spinning by eliminating the need to stop and move where the yarn is winding onto the bobbin. The device replaces the regular flyer assembly on your wheel with one that contains a travel screw inside one arm, which drives an eye back and forth using the movement of the flyer and bobbin, to distribute the yarn evenly.

The engineering-minded can see a schematic on the inventor's website, here, under "how it works."

And the visual learners can see the results below. 

Manual flyer on the left, WW on the right. Yes, two different wheels. You can see the difference in how the bobbin is loading!

Things go in trends in all aspects of life, and Woolee Winders seem to be trendy in the spinning world right now. The maker provides them to fit a variety of current popular wheels, and it seems more are in the works as well.

What do I think?

When it works, it rocks. The closest example I can think of for non-spinners is, it's the difference between having to stop your 4WD and get out and manually switch the hubs on each wheel (inevitably in the snow, ice, or mud, which is mostly when you'd want 4WD of course!), and turning a knob on the dashboard for 4WD on the fly. Okay, that's a bit dramatic - but I tend to zone out when things are going well in spinning, and I'm forever forgetting that I need to stop and shift things - it's interruptive, frankly. Plus the uneven winding-on means you can't get as much on any given bobbin.

The key term is, when it works. For the cost of this thing, it really ought to work out of the box. But no. It's finicky, grumpy, grabby, stiff, tense...sounds like me after a bad day at work in my old life, and working with it is about as much of a struggle as that job could be. 

And this is where our friend Jed comes in. Oil is your friend. 

The online troubleshooting I found, mostly on Ravelry, sometimes mentioned using a drop of oil in the traveling screw. 

I think they mean "drop" as an alcoholic would use the term in the phrase "a drop of whiskey." 

I've been oiling this thing like there's no tomorrow - and in waaay more places than people have mentioned. All the gears, particularly the gear shafts. The worm gear at the end. The traveling screw. And the bobbin shaft when putting on the bobbin. Not a drop at each end, a line of the stuff all along the bobbin shaft. 

I also switched out the brake band to a length of cotton crochet thread, and ran a 5.5mm sketch pencil (graphite! A lubricant!) along the brake band groove on the bobbin. Oh, and I ended up modifying the position of the eye that feeds yarn onto the bobbin by (this is very scientific) sticking a screwdriver through it and gently tweaking it counterclockwise, so it would align better.

And FINALLY it is not routinely a struggle to use this thing. I just caught myself doing the "in the groove" mind drift which means everything is working perfectly, I don't have to fight the equipment, and I'm just cranking along, daydreaming as I go. 

So, if you happen to have just acquired one of these, and Dr. Google has brought you here in a search to help you with your troubles, get out Jed's Texas tea and don't be shy about using it. And remember the challenge starts anew with each new bobbin for a while too. 

As of this writing, Robert Lee & Son offers a two-year money back guarantee if you just can't make friends with your Woolee Winder. (See their website for details, of course.)

Y'all come back now, y'hear?

Consistency

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Unless, of course, one is speaking of spinning singles, in which case it's probably a good thing. I can't seem to spin a consistent single from beginning to end to save my life. This, therefore, has become my latest quest. I tried it on a braid of fiber that I bought recently; I took a 3x5 index card, wound some of the single around it, leaving a space where I could lay my actively-being-spun single in between the sample to see how close I was. And then I never used it! Old habits die hard!

That braid, a lovely thing, is the twin of one a friend bought - we decided we are going to try to chain ply it to maintain the color changes. It is rather, um, bright, which I am finding fun and my friend apparently finds ocularly damaging - though I admit I'm not sure what I'll do with it when it's complete. 

At any rate, we bought two braids of this same colorway at a show, and made the decision to do this homework. And then we never talked about how we were going to spin it, so I believe we ended up with two rather different sets of singles - she separated the braid by color and spun all of one, then all of the next, etc., spinning from the fold (or so I gather from the various texts we've exchanged mid-spin); I just opened up the braid and started spinning. My somewhat-consistent-but-not-really singles. Which means my plied yarn, if all goes well, will contain several rainbows, albeit possibly lumpy ones. I'll let you know next week how it turned out; the Great Ply occurs this coming weekend. 

In studio news, I have sold my two extra wheels (yay!), and cleaned out and removed an extra bookcase. I am hoping to have enough stuff actually packed away or disposed of by the end of February to justify the 40+ mile trip to Ikea to shop for studio furniture. (This means cleaning out and removing two old chests of drawers, plus an old gate-leg table that's open and completely surrounded by stuff on all sides.)

And in all this cleaning I've discovered no less than 13.5 pounds of scoured-but-not-otherwise-prepped fleece. That's just the stuff that's not ready to spin, there's a lot more in various stages of usefulness. I am thinking of sending it out to be prepped, rather than doing it all myself; I have all the equipment to do it but it's pretty time-consuming and I don't (yet) have the proper setup to use the equipment I have. I just recently took down the precarious setup I had for my cradle picker; imagine a device that swings back and forth with hundreds of large, needle sharp pointy things, balanced across two cheap bar stools that wobble every time the thing swings. Yes, this thing that's so potentially damaging that I wear a leather apron and large welder's gloves when using it, it has a padlock to keep it closed when not in use, and Joe will be putting a lock on the studio door to keep the grandkids away from it. I balanced this thing on two barstools to use. I know what assumption of risk means, and I've just illustrated it for you.

We won't even go into the drum carder that's sitting on top of a stereo speaker and at a height that requires the services of a chiropractor after an hour's use of it.

I'm figuring that 13.5 pounds of (mostly Romney) wool will give me a lot of stuff to practice with to achieve my consistency. Foolish as it may be.

Fairly Fiberous post no. 1: Bakewell Tarts

I've spent the morning test-baking almond tarts (aka Bakewell tarts) for my granddaughter's 5th birthday party, which will be a Beauty-and-the-Beast tea party extravaganza. Nonna is in charge of tarts and other dessert-y stuff, as well as tea sandwiches.

These tarts were first served to me by Mrs. Watson, the wife of James Watson of Watson Wheels fame, in September when we visited. (And there is the fiber tie-in, ladies and gentlemen!) You may recall that I begged the recipe from her. Mine aren't quite as pretty as hers were - she uses premade frozen mini tart shells, an item that is apparently impossible to find in the US unless I care to order them 200 at a time from a restaurant supply house. (Oddly enough, Walmart apparently carries them in some states - but not in mine.) So I had to make do with pie crust pressed into a muffin tin - not as aesthetic but still good.

I'm pretty pleased with how they turned out - though for children I think I'll use a mini-muffin size; these are two or three bites for an adult.

I am taking the majority of these to a spinning function this afternoon, in hopes both of properly disposing of dangerous objects and also to ingratiate myself, to be honest. I was invited to join this group and this is my first time attending, and I'm not sure what it'll be like, thus I will defend myself and my presence with Mrs. Watson's almond tarts. Food can be a good ice-breaker.

In other good news, it appears I have a buyer for my Ashford spinning wheel - a woman is coming to see it tomorrow. I'm glad it will go to a good home, though in getting it ready to go I've had more than one pang of misgiving - but I need to cull the herd, as it were, and it's time. The potential buyer seems really excited to have it too, which is great. I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

A Fibery Week

Suddenly I am up to my elbows in fiber. (Not that it's a bad thing!)

It all began last Saturday at the chapter 2010 meeting of the NwRSA. When I had attended in September, I had not one dime on me, so I was unable to purchase a raffle ticket for that month's raffle basket, which is done to raise funds for the chapter and the guild. In a fit of guilt (yes, I am Catholic, can you tell?) I purchased ten tickets for October's basket - and promptly won it. Fortunately for me, someone warned me that She Who Wins the Basket Gets to Provide Next Month's Basket before I committed my $10. And I certainly got more than $10 worth of great items and anticipated fun!

(photos are clickable to embiggen)

Two purpley/pinky "mystery batts," some Opulent Fibers merino roving in what will be an ombré yarn of pinks and purple, cabled notecards, a lavender sachet, oatmeal soap, some cute stitch markers, and a lovely lavender ribbon yarn.

Then, I had made a date to get together with my friend and former boss, Joann, who now lives on Whidbey Island, to go to lunch and the Whidbey Weaver's Guild annual sale on Friday, November 1. I had never been to this sale before, though I understand it's been going on for some years - it was held at Greenbank Farm, a very fun place in and of itself. Most of the things for sale were finished items - lots of scarves, shawls, some hats...and over in one corner were the spinners, with that one corner dedicated to a couple of people demonstrating spinning (one on a Hansen miniSpinner [ed. note: have one, love it!], one on a Lendrum) and a couple of vendors selling - guess what? Fiber! Of course I had to buy some; one can never have too much, and I always like to support my local artisans - not to mention I have the challenge of making up November's raffle basket! Now I just have to decide what I'm actually willing to let go of!

Clockwise from upper right:Shetland top in lovely fall jewel colors; mystery fiber (looks like Merino and Cashmere) in lovely teals and blues; a cute felted soap in a little porcelain dish; 1 oz. of lambswool and Angora blend in grey; a braid of mixed wool roving in spring greens and yellow; lovely dark fiber from Iggy the Alpaca

On Saturday, my friend Marianne and I went down to KnitFit in the Ballard area of Seattle to go through their vendor's market. Even the trip there was exciting; I was driving in the midst of a rainy windstorm that shut down the SR520 Lake Washington bridge due to tremendous wave action and knocked out power to hundreds of thousands of people, including the neighborhood just adjacent to the KnitFit venue, which caused traffic snarls like you wouldn't believe. Fortunately for the gathering, the immediate area where it was held still had power. This is the second year for KnitFit, and I noticed that there weren't very many people shopping in the market - which makes browsing easy for those of us who are there, but isn't such good news for the vendors. I overheard a couple of them commiserating with one another about the lack of sales, and tying it back to it being a pretty new event - for their sake I hope that assessment is correct and things will be busier in future!

Marianne and I certainly did our part to support the local economy, though I'd sworn up and down and sideways I was done purchasing stuff until I'd managed to turn some of what I had into FOs...Ha. Like anyone ever sticks to that resolution. And here is what I came home with:

Fiber and beads for a shawl with a beaded edging. The fiber is subtle colors of steel grey, green, gold, yellow and cream - really hard to photograph. Half wool, half Tencel for a really soft feel. I only noticed this morning that the two tubes of beads aren't quite the same - but I'll just alternate!

Aaaand, the "Crayola box" fiber. Interestingly enough, my husband Joe is in love with this stuff. This is 25% Tussah silk, 75% BFL wool. I will ply it with black and it will look a bit like stained glass when knit up. I am thinking some sort of open-stitch sweater/wrap/vest.

Today will be spent in creating some sort of inventory system for stuff (all of these recent acquisitions join more existing supply than I want to admit exists), and then starting in on something. It'll either be the greeny stuff that goes with the beads, or the Crayola-colored stuff. 

Or maybe...hmm...

In the Spirit of International Relations

In my last post, I mentioned I'd put a down payment on a Watson wheel. I'm on the list, and expected delivery is about two years or so out. I'm not overly worried about that, actually; it gives me more time to save up to pay for the rest of it, and more time to get my spinning under control - I have other stuff I can play with in the meanwhile.

So, here's how it all went down:

Watson Wheels was founded by James Watson some years ago. Andrew, his son, worked along with him for several years, and then took over the business completely about four years ago.

I've been emailing back and forth with Andrew Watson for months - probably, frankly, driving him insane, but he's too nice to say so. I was pretty sure what I wanted to do - but it's just so difficult to spend that kind of money sight unseen - or more accurately, without having used one. I'd only seen pictures - gorgeous, but there's no substitute for test driving.

Andrew lives about 2600 miles away from me in eastern Ontario. But his parents don't.

The Watsons Senior live in British Columbia, our neighbor about two hours north. So I somehow finagled my way into an invitation to drop by their home and see a wheel while Joe and I were up in BC for a long weekend in September. I conned Joe into coming along with me on the visit by promising him tea at a nearby tea house.

Keeping in mind that I was the stranger barging my way in, I expected to spend half an hour at most - visit for a few minutes, try the wheel, say the right things, leave so that I don't impose. Well, that went by the wayside quickly - James and Patricia Watson are delightful people, and we spent over 2 1/2 hours with them. Mrs. Watson gave us tea with two kinds of tea cakes - and I later begged her recipe for Bakewell tarts, which as a heathen American I had never had before. They regaled us with stories of their engagement in London during the Great Smog, and showed us some of James' other woodworking - he is marvelously talented! It felt like meeting old friends we hadn't seen for a while. We never did make it out for tea; instead, we had it at the Watsons' home!

The wheel is a masterpiece - even if it was set up backward for my left-handed draw, I could tell I wanted one within moments of trying it.

And so now the waiting game begins.

I am now trying to sell my Ashford Traditional, and will likely sell two other wheels as well. Stay tuned as we see how that whole process goes!

Upgrading

For the last several months, I have been eyeing Watson Wheels.

Here is the backstory.

I have three - well, really, four- spinning wheels. I have a walnut upright that was my first wheel, a project wheel if ever there was one. I bought it for somewhere around $75 many, many years ago at an "antique" shop, and my husband Joe helped me retrofit it with an Ashford flyer and new leather bearings. I joke that it only spins reliably in one direction - but it's true; you can make all the singles you want, but the drive band jumps off if you try to ply in the other direction.

I have an Ashford Traditional double-drive with the flyer on the left - the standard issue Ashford that everyone seems to learn on.

I have Mutti's wheel, which I've never taken the time to conquer - and it's pretty clear it was someone else's project wheel. A quick conversation with my friend whose mother-in-law owned it reveals that Mutti never spun on it; instead she used - guess what? - an Ashford Traditional.

And I have a HansenCrafts MiniSpinner which I bought earlier this year for travel. Though not strictly a spinning wheel, this is what I am currently using to spin on pretty much exclusively.

I bought the Ashford probably 20 years ago, new in box, in pieces;  Joe finished and assembled it for me. And I've never really enjoyed spinning on it; I get back and arm pain if I spin on it for more than about half an hour at a time.

Well, guess what? I finally figured out why. (Duh.) I need a wheel with the flyer on the right side.

I hold the fiber supply in my left hand, and control the drafting with my right hand - seemingly backward for someone that's left-handed, but I've spent so many years doing fine motor control things with my right hand in order to get along in the right-handed world that it's more comfortable for me that way. That means the left-hand flyer on the Ashford makes me twist my body in weird ways in order to try to accommodate it - thus the back and arm pain.

I spent a little while trying to teach myself to go the opposite way - but it's too odd and I can't get the hang of it.

This means the Ashford will go away, and I want a different wheel.

I stumbled across Watson Wheels on Ravelry early this year, and quickly became enchanted with them. I have one on order now, and as with everything else I seem to do, there's a story behind that order.

I'll share that story with you soon. And I'm gathering up all the bits and bobs that go with my Ashford Traddy, and will be offering it for sale as soon as I figure out what a fair asking price is. I may also let the others go, if I can figure out prices for them too. Stay tuned.

Mutti's wheel

As I work on getting my studio more studio-like and less storage-locker-like, I am sorting through my tools and equipment, looking at what to keep, what to discard or sell, what to replace.

And I am faced with the conundrum of this wheel.

(all photos are clickable for embiggenment)

Here is the story:

The wheel belonged to a girlfriend’s mother-in-law. She was very big into spinning, weaving, and knitting. When mom passed away in the mid-1990s, she left behind a quantity of fiber equipment, and I offered to purchase her drum carder. My girlfriend’s husband said that for the amount of money I was willing to pay him for the drum carder, I could have all of the equipment. That included this wheel.

Mom was from Germany, and emigrated to the United States in the early 1950s to marry her United States G.I. sweetheart. No one seems to know at this point, but I believe that she brought the wheel with her. Having met my girlfriend's mother-in-law at almost the same time as she had met her, I always knew her as "Mutti" ("MOO-tee") which must be the German diminutive for Mom or Mommy (as "Mutter" is German for "mother"), and in fact I never knew her first name until I heard it at her funeral.

I can’t tell what kind of wood it is made from. The distaff has been snapped in two and reglued, and there is evidence of various repairs made to the wheel over the years. There are multiple bobbins which fit this, but I suspect they are later additions. It came with another flyer as well, which is broken in two pieces; I suspect the flyer on the wheel is also a later addition. The orifice is lined with ivory or bone,I believe; the rod where the distaff inserts has a metal cap on it of some kind. It has Irish tension, and the same drive band it came to me with.

The wheel does spin pretty well. I have used it once or twice, but never extensively. Careful inspection has led me to believe she didn't use it much either, and part of the equipment I took over included a 1970s Ashford Traditional single drive, which I sold shortly after I acquired it.

I am debating whether to sell it, because it seems a shame just to have it sit around my house - I have three other wheels and am contemplating a fourth, which is causing Mr. Spins to make noises about divesting some of them - but it's hard for me to know whether there would be anyone interested in it with all its little quirks. None of the remaining family are interested in having it.

It is an odd little thing, and the wheel crank/footman arrangement is - um, interesting, but the footman does stay (mostly) attached at least, and it wouldn't be hard to craft something to keep it on the crank - even a wine cork might do it!

So - what does one do with a wheel like this? I'll let you know when I find out!

And So it Begins

Hello, the aether!

I am currently in the process of preparing to launch a new adventure. Or perhaps it's revisiting an old one.

I have a lot of fiber preparation equipment, and I like to knit. I used to like to weave as well. I knew how to crochet and make bobbin lace.

I've lost a lot of my expertise with these skills, and in a couple of cases nearly all of it.

So - I am preparing to launch back in to the world of fiber fanatics. As part of that, I have been cleaning out the room that I would like to use as a studio. When we moved into this house in 1998, I stuck my small-car-sized loom in a corner of this large room, threw a blanket over it, and it's sat there ever since. It's about half warped for a chenille throw that I started - oh, probably ten or twelve years ago, found a mistake in the warping, and abandoned it.

I have two-and-a-half spinning wheels (one only spins reliably in one direction - and you thought that wasn't possible!) as well.

This will be the documentation of my journey - my online journal of progress and experiences.

Here is the "studio" - it's mostly a storage room at this point, although it doesn't look terribly bad after several hours of work already. Posting this so I hold myself accountable for progress!

Other things to expect from me in future? The search for a good drum carder, and the search for a truly good spinning wheel - these have already begun.

Thoughts and photos of projects.

Comments about my re-entry into the fiber world.

And whatever else occurs to me.