Knerdy Knitting
where spelling isn't as important as awesome

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.

“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?

The Oregon Flock and Fiber Festival was a blast!  It was also three weeks ago. But there was so much to say about it that I hardly knew where to begin. When this is the case, I usually say nothing at all. To guide me, I’m going to make this a photo essay, just talking about some of the pictures I took on Sunday. This has the advantage of allowing me to actually, you know, write about OFFF. It has the disadvantage of ignoring Saturday, as I forgot my camera that day. Also, the beautiful loot acquired at OFFF will be discussed in a forthcoming post. On to OFFF!

We arrived early in the morning. Ok, so it wasn’t early when we got there. But Canby is an hour and a half away, so we had to leave Corvallis at 7:30. Which is early. This way WildThingsRun could make it to her all day class on natural dyeing.

There was some mix up about when my class was to start. We assembled, but through a mix-up the instructor wasn’t there. This is us all waiting in a circle with our spinning wheels. The instructor, Laura Cunningham, offered the class in the afternoon to compensate. It was increadible! I learned how to spin with a long draw, and from the fold, and how to use the different ratios of my wheel to make really fine worsted yarn. Before I could only make loosely spun aran weight doubles. Now the possibilities are endless! And I know how to adjust my spinning to the kind of fiber and to the kind of fabric I want to create. It’s awesome.

You know what else is awesome? The PDX Knit Bloggers! They had chairs and a canopy, and were very warm and welcoming. While waiting for my class they let me leave things there (like Cynthia the Spinning Wheel), and I even got to spin some with them. I’ve joined their yahoo group, which is also awesome.

No fiber festival would be complete without fiber animals. There were all kinds of sheep, all kinds of goats, rabbits, and alpaca. They were all beautiful and soft and fluffy. And you could buy their fleece, if you so chose. I did not so choose, through enormous strength of will.

All in all, it was a wonderful time. I got to sit in the sun and in the grass, spinning and carding and knitting. They even had a stage where people sang folk songs about fiber. How happy does that make me? Answer: pretty dang happy.

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.