Knerdy Knitting
where spelling isn't as important as awesome

Inspired by the Ravelry group Ply-By-Night, some of us at Corvallis Ravelers decided to have a spin-a-long using wool from Bellwether Wool Company. (Whew! That’s a lot of links!)

Here’s how it worked: we each got the same 4 oz of roving (2 oz of aqua, 1 oz of blue, and 1 oz of lime green) and then secretly, under cover of darkness, spun it up any way we pleased. The goal was to see how different people could start with the same roving and get wildly different yarns.

I decided to card my roving with hand carders, just barely mixing the colors. I mixed half the the aqua with the green and then the other half of the aqua with the blue. Here are a few photos of the process.

I then spun two singles, one from each of the mixes. I spun fairly loosely (as is my tendency) using a long draw. This, along with the carding, made for super fuzzy yarn.

I then plied the singles to create a balanced yarn. I believe I described it at Knit Night as “cat yak,” and I’m sticking to that. Not pleased with the results at all. But maybe with the right project it will look lovely. Here’s hoping!

I learned pretty much all I know about spinning at OFFF. One thing I noticed in particular was that the veteran spinners would spin a single, wind it off the bobbin into a center pull ball, and then ply the two ends of the ball together. Ta da! You don’t need to worry about having more on one bobbin you’re plying from. You always end exactly in the middle! I had to try this.

I’ve experimented with various ways of creating my own center pull balls. They have almost all failed miserably. Or at least in a tangled mess. But I got a new toy…. a wool winder! I’ve seen them work! They make magic center pull balls! I’ve seen it! How hard can it be?

Setting the Stage

Here are my weapons: a wool winder, Cynthia, and a slightly smelly single of mohair spun from the lock. I will use them to make yarn! I hope.

Step One: Spin a Single

Done and done. It’s some of my first spinning, and so dreadfully underspun. It barely hangs together. But I was so proud that I could spin thin! And I still love how it smells — a little like a goat dipped in Kool Aid. Funny that.

Step Two: ????

So I put the bobbin on Cynthia, strapped down the wool winder, and went to work. Getting a wool winder to, say, wind wool isn’t as easy as it would at first seem. The wool kept catching on the bottom disk and twisting around the base of the unit instead of around the post. And somehow I ended up with…. two center pull balls? On top of each other? Did I try to wind too much at once? I don’t think that’s it. Further study is clearly necessary.

Step Three: Profit!!

Now, to ply the yarn. I cut the mushroom into a top and bottom to make things easier. It’s actually really easy to ply from a ball like this. You sort of slip your index finger through the center of the ball and hold the outside loosely, rolling your wrist in a figure eight. And the ball doesn’t fall apart or get tangled! It’s awesome!

So that’s my 2-ply experiment. I think it yielded interesting results and merits further investigation at a later date.

Even though going through mohair by hand is lots of fun (see Goats), I wanted to go faster. So one of my goals at OFFF was to get a pair of hand carders. It turns out they are fairly expensive, but I found one pair that was half the price of the others. They were used, apparently for “Dark Wool” as they have a masking tape label to that affect attached to them, and their former owner is deceased. Her friends were selling some of her things at their booth.

Just as mortality inspires other forms of great art, mortality affects knitting and knitters. No, we do not knit little stuffed Death dolls. (Though that is a good idea.) But a common was to describe a yarn stash is that it exceeds life expectancy — that there is no way the knitter will use all this yarn before her death. And what starts out as a joke can become very real. I have only been a part of the knitting community for a short time, but I have been to two “give aways” following a fiber artist’s death. In both cases I didn’t know the knitter personally and the relatives of the knitter were trying to give things to someone, anyone, that would use them. I knit, and so they gave me yarn. But I also eat, and they didn’t push silverware on me with nearly the same intensity.

Knitting is such a huge part of knitter’s lives. It becomes more than playing with string, more than the pragmatic need to keep our loved ones warm. It is a reflection of ourselves and our lives. When our lives end with projects unfinished it’s like cutting off a song half sung. Even non-knitting relatives recognize this and feel the hunger to see the projects finished. Nature abhors a half-knit sweater.

After I die (…and I will die in the middle of lecture when I’m 96… all my students will get automatic A’s due to the trauma…) I’d like to think that Pirate Boyfriend would bring all my yarn and needles and books to Wednesday night knitting. That people would fight over the hand painted sock yarn and try to figure out from my Ravelry queue what projects I was intending for what yarns. I’d like to live on in the stitches that they make. I would like a Knitting Wake, where my yarn is divided and my patterns scattered to the four corners of the earth and the spirit of my knitting is laid to rest.

Because if you don’t, I am so haunting your asses.

“What kind of spinning wheel do you have & where did you get it? I’m thinking about buying myself a spinning wheel for graduation in a few years, but if I get excited enough I might have to make it a late going-back-to-school present for myself. :)” — esperry

Rather than answer in the comments, I’m making this its own post.

Cynthia in my studio. (Squeeee! I have a studio!)

My spinning wheel is named Cynthia.  Say hello, Cynthia!

She is a Secret Ashford Traditional.  This means that she looks exactly like an Ashford Traditional, but has no identifying marks to prove it.  I suspect a former life of crime.  She’s single treadle, single drive, and when I got her she came with seven bobbins.  She’s exactly what I wanted in a starter wheel — easy to spin with, easy to fix, and quite cheap.

I had been checking Craig’s List for about a month looking for a wheel when I heard about Cynthia.  I even went to a couple people’s homes and looked at their wheels.  One was so rickety that I was afraid I would break it.  Another didn’t even have a footman — and they offered to throw in the pole that turned it into a lamp for free.  Craig’s List is a great way to know what kinds of prices are reasonable for used wheels, and a used wheel the way to go for a first wheel.  New wheels are hella expensive, and who wants to spend that kind of money before you know what you really like in a wheel?  It’s like buying a grand piano before you even take lessons.

I heard about Cynthia from Vicki at my LYS, Fiber Nooks and Crannys.  I was griping to the owner about how none of the wheels I had been looking at have panned out, and Vicki mentioned that she was thinking of selling her starter wheel.  She was selling it in my price range, and I practically gave her a check right then and there.  But I am nothing if not restrained, so we arranged a time for me to come in and see it.  I mean, see her.

Because Cynthia isn’t just an “it,” she is a lady.  A cankerous old broad who isn’t afraid to jab you with her cane.  So I must give her the proper respect.  And when I do, she spins beautiful, beautiful yarn.  Which is exactly what I want in a spinning wheel.

How could I resist its power?

Sunday morning at OFFF, I discovered in short order that (1) my class was actually in the morning, (2) my instructor was running late, and (3) my class was going to be moved to the afternoon. This left me and Cynthia with no knitting, no fiber, and no car keys to obtain either one. Clearly I was fated to make one last purchase.

I chose some yummy superwash merino dyed up beautifully by Maisy Day. So what if there was less then 2 ounces? It called to me. So I hung out with the PDX Knitbloggers and began to spin. This was when I only knew one method, so I used the largest ratio, short draw. As usual, it came out slightly underspun and very sproingy. (Yes, that is a word.) Spinning all morning I finished the entire two ounces and got about 60 yards after it was plied.

So it’s beautiful, sure, but what can you do with 60 yards? Not much. Even little projects seemed to require more yarn. What I really wanted was a pair of mitts, but no go. So clearly I had to make up my own pattern.

I started with Fetching, the extremely popular Knitty pattern. Even these little mitts called for too much yarn. So I went up two needle sizes, cut out one of the cable twists at the wrist, and made the hands slightly shorter. It worked wonderfully, and I even had ten yards of yarn left. I used this to pick up around the wrists and knit another two rows; without these rows the mitts were pretty but not long enough to be useful. Now they are both! Knitting them up took about a day.

Being so small and slight (both in size and in woman hours of work), I call them Slightly Fetching. And I’ve been wearing them nearly constantly ever since.

Aren't they Fetching?

Except it doesn’t eat people, it’s just purple. I got about 10 ounces of beautiful, beautiful Lorna’s Laces top wool in the colorway Black Pearl. Did I mention it’s beautiful? It’s squishy, with lots of shades of purple, a little blue, and a little brown. So of course as soon as I thought I was a decent spinner (that is, after a month of spinning) I started with this. I spun it that only way I knew how; short draw at the ratio the wheel was at when I got it. This made a nice, soft, fluffy yarn, slightly underspun. It’ll be great for this pattern here (a warm cabled hat), but not this pattern (a streamlined 20’s style hat.) This would be fine, except I was trying to make the second one.

At the spinning class I took at OFFF, however, they taught me crazy new techniques. Like how to use the ratios on my wheel. Basically, this means that I can treadle the same speed and get more twist. A lot more twist. So I went home and tried it out. Same wool, same wheel, same draw. But this time I used a different ratio. And I got much finer, tighter, more even yarn. It’s like magic! Except it’s actually using tools correctly. See if you can tell the difference….

Ok, so maybe the pictures don’t show it well. But believe me, the one on the right is much twistier.

So my spinning wheel made a strange thunking sound. I say “made” because I fixed it. Through the Power of Science. I’m like that.

Every time the treadle came down it would make this strange thunking sound (STS). It was a little disconcerting, every time my foot came down hearing this sound. But it came that I would just spin to the Ramones instead of Vivaldi and the STS fit right in. I didn’t think anything of it because it always made that sound. The woman I bought it from said it always made that sound. I thought that it was normal to have a STS.

Then it got louder. Then the footman (the stick between the foot treadle and the big drive wheel) would fall suddenly when the treadle went down. At OFFF, Amanda and I tried to figure out what was wrong. We determined that the leather strap between the treadle and the footman was pulling funny, making the footman and the treadle slap together on the downward stroke. Ah ha! Problem solved!

So when the wheel stopped working entirely, I knew what to do. Thought I knew what to do. I tightened the screws to the leather piece. This did nothing to help the wheel. “Oh shit,” I thought, “My wheel is broken. I must contact the local yarn store (LYS)!” Then I remembered the kind of people found at the LYS. The chance of finding someone that knows I am an Autumn — highly likely. The chance of finding someone that knows what a Philips screwdriver looks like — less likely. I was on my own.

Those that know me can attest that I have a tendency to Freak the Fuck Out. This was nearly one of those times. I was going from “broken wheel” to “never fixed wheel” to “never spin again” to “dying alone in a ditch.” That’s my style. I was near tears. But my years of training as a physicist came through. I can solve any mechanical problem with the Power of Science!

I carefully went through the scientific process of making theories from observation.
How is the wheel behaving strangely? — The treadle won’t spin it.
No really, describe the problem fully. — Ok then, sometimes when the treadle goes down it doesn’t spin with the wheel.
No, really really describe the problem. — When spinning the drive wheel with the treadle, although the drive wheel is always spinning clockwise, sometimes the top of the footman falls counterclockwise.
Well when you put it like that, it seems the footman and the drive wheel aren’t connected. — That makes is sound so easy.

Somehow, the pin that connected the drive wheel to the axle had gotten worked loose. I pulled the axle apart. The hole for the pin with completely filled with grease gunk. This part hadn’t been working for a while. I cleaned it out, wiggled everything back into place, and tried treadling again. It worked! First try, and it worked! Thanks, Science!

So what can we learn from this little story? That my scientific training is more powerful than my Freak the Fuck Out biochemistry. Which is a nice thing to know.

Sheep are ok, I guess, but goats are great!  They have rectangular pupils!  They give delicious milk for making even more delicious cheese!  (And nun goats make even more delicious cheese!)  My favorite book as a small child was about a goat pulling a cart!  So clearly, goats are a superior animal.

Therefore, when I got the opportunity to buy some cheap mohair, I jumped at it.  I should not have jumped.  It is beautiful, sure, but it’s still in the lock and hasn’t been well washed.  So I’ve been picking away at the locks, breaking them up and brushing out as much dirt as I can.

Notice the pretty orange in the top corner.

It takes a lot of time, but I’ve found it’s almost as relaxing as spinning itself.  I open the front door, which faces west, and sit in the afternoon sunshine and brush through my mohair.  The cats play around me and sniff the wool suspiciously, and all is right with the world.

What this yarn will become is a mystery.  I’ll have about 350 g of the orange stuff, and it’s spinning up about fingering weight.  A shawl?  A scarf?  A something?  Something tells me it is going to be much more fun spinning this stuff than wearing it.  So I try to pretend I don’t care what it’ll become.