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.

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.

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.