Babble

With the Other House being worked on by contractors, we're taking a little break from all the sorting and cleaning, which is finally giving me some time for Fiber Therapy. I don't have any pictures to show you, because if I stopped to take pictures of stuff, I wouldn't be spinning.

I freaking LOVE my new wheel.

One thing it affords me is more efficiency. I'm a much faster drafter now than when I first started, and I'm discovering that, with the Rose, I don't have to slow down to match the pace of my wheel. Over the weekend I finished spinning and then plied 3 monster skeins of chocolate brown alpaca AND spun a full (giant, Majacraft-sized) bobbin-and-half of merino-silk for my next sweater. Days of work now takes hours.

OH YEAH, I've started spinning for the next sweater. I decided Malicious Salad would best be used for other projects, which left me still without a green sweater. The Diminishing Rib Cardigan by Andrea Pomerantz, featured on the cover of this spring's Interweave Knits, seemed like a good project for Spring knitting:
I'm doing something new and courageous with this project: I am attempting, with my spinning, to replicate the gauge of the yarn used by the designer. I ended up falling for this pattern because it happens that the yarn used (Savoy, by Stacy Charles) is a wool-silk blend, and I, coincidentally, had 2 lbs of wool-silk blend fiber waiting for my next project. I have dyed it green, but not solidly - I want the yarn to have a bit of a tweedy look when I'm done. (I also am spinning this yarn with a bit of "character" - not going for the ultimately smooth, milled look of the Savoy stuff - and I think this sweater design will really suit that look.)

The internet tells me that this yarn is an "Aran weight" and measures about 8 wraps-per-inch - that is, if I wrap this yarn around a ruler without pulling or squishing it too tightly, it's going to loop around the ruler approximately 8 times per inch. I started spinning the singles and then just 3-plied it back on itself, measured it, then adjusted the thickness of my singles until it worked out to 8 wpi. (Okay, fine, I didn't adjust and remeasure; I just eyeballed it and announced, "That looks about right!" and knocked on wood.) There is a wee bit of variation in my my singles, but that's alright; I'm just going for an approximation, not an exact science.

Maybe tonight I'll take pictures and then tomorrow I will go on and on about how much I like spinning this particular fiber. I could definitely see myself making more than one sweater with this stuff.

I got a(nother) spinning wheel!

So, after months of research, I finally settled on the Majacraft Rose. I ordered it from a local shop, and they told me that Majacraft would ship the wheel directly to me from New Zealand. (I'm going to have to curb my sudden love of all things New Zealand; I fear that if I force Dug to watch one more Flight of the Conchords video, he's going to inflict bodily harm upon himself and others.) Anyway, so, shipping from New Zealand takes awhile, and I hadn't received any shipping notices, so I just figured I'd see my wheel in a month or so.

Somehow, though, I wasn't surprised when the mailman brought me a little package yesterday afternoon!
(I think you can click on this photo and it will open in a bigger screen, so that you don't have to squint so much to look at all these fascinating spinning wheel parts.)

I spent the evening assembling and then briefly getting to know my wheel. It's so different and slightly more complex than my Kiwi, so the learning curve is more than I expected. There was a little troubleshooting as I had a few no-that-part-goes-HERE moments and discovered that I needed to break in the bobbins a little because they're very tight on the flyer at first and don't want to spin freely. I also discovered that you want to adjust the whorl position so the groove on the whorl and the groove on the wheel you are using are directly lined up with one another. Somehow all of that figuring-it-out stuff was really fun.

I only did a wee bit of spinning, just using leftover scraps of wool as I tested everything out. This wheel has Scotch tension, but it's quite different from my Kiwi. It's actually easier to use because it's quite precise and you can see exactly where it needs to be before you start spinning - a little too loose, the bobbin doesn't brake; a little too tight, the drive wheel doesn't turn. Not much guesswork there!

The treadling on the Rose is so smooth. Dug noticed that it's a little harder to get started than the Kiwi. I did, too, but then the inertia makes it easy to keep on treadling, and there's no position where it wants to "stick"; it's very easy to control the wheel with the treadles alone, versus needing to sometimes...wait...

Dug, what do you mean "it's a little harder to get started than the Kiwi?" HOW WOULD YOU KNOW? You have been treadling my Kiwi! HAAAAA! Busted!!!

I knew Dug would succumb to the spinning wheel someday. I mean, I don't think he's going to take it up, but I can't deny that I am delighted at the evidence that he thinks it's just a little bit cool.

Anyway, I imagine Dug will be taking more photos of the wheel-in-use tonight so that I can blather on about it some more. One thing I do need assistance with is a NAME. I don't want to call my wheel "The Rose" all the time; it needs a proper name. What should I call it?

Bathroom: Before

Joy! I have found some poor suckers to gut and replace everything in my bathroom, and they are starting tomorrow. I thought I'd celebrate by throwing up a little photo mosaic of "before" pictures. ("Throwing up" is definitely the right phrase, here.)
They are ripping the whole thing out, drywall included, replacing all the plumbing and wiring, and rebuilding the room from scratch. I hope to get some in-progress snapshots as they go!

I don't have any humor-laden commentary about this yet (I mean, really, the photos speak for themselves), but let us all hope that the contractors performing my bathroom transformation don't give me any REASON for humor laden-commentary. Okay, count of three: 1...2...3...begin hoping NOW. [unnnngggggghghhhhh]

Hoping feels a lot like constipation sometimes.

While I'm Cleaning

I haven't been entirely unproductive with my spinning/knitting while cleaning out The House; just mostly unproductive.

Anyway, I started spinning Malicious Salad a while back but never posted any updates on it.

Look, Jocelyn - I put it on a SALAD plate. I am so clever!

The color is a little darker and richer in both real life and in this actual photograph (why is it so washed out when I post it?), but otherwise pretty accurate. I have about 3 full skeins of it ready to knit, and about 487 skeins left to spin. Originally, this was meant to be sweater yarn, but the way the colors are working out, it's going to be divvied up for smaller projects; Scott has already requested a hat, I'd like some socks out of it, and I think the skein with the bright yellow in it might make a lovely baby cardigan. The merino is so soft, it's really perfect for garments worn next to the skin. I also might throw some of it up on Etsy someday and see if I can make some money for my Remodel The Kitchen fund.Also, it's a #$#%#$# #$#%#$# to prep for spinning; it's not felty, but the roving is very thick, so I have to tear it into many strips and then loosen it all up, inch by inch, and there's so much of it. It's the same wool I dyed for Nuclear Pumpkin, which also was tedious to prep, but I could do less of it in one sitting. With Malicious Salad, I'm trying to keep the colors stripey, so that means I have to prep one whole length of the roving at once and it's reeeeeeeeally long.

Jennifer recently dyed a batch of shetland and she doesn't have to prep it at all; she just grabbed it off the drying rack (read: shower rod) and started spinning. Can you imagine how pissed I was, after all my dyeing experience and the ordeal of pre-drafting this merino wool, when the very first wool Jennifer dyed for spinning on her new wheel required NO PREP AT ALL? I blame the merino. I don't care if merino is supposed to be extra soft - next time I'm getting a slightly less spongy wool to work with.

Okay, yeah, so "next time" is four days ago, when I ordered a wool-silk blend. Okay, so the wool IS merino, but blended with the silk, it should be a whole different experience. Right?

I did it.

Surprisingly, through all this housecleanerupping we've been doing, I haven't abandoned my spinning. In fact, it may be the only thing keeping me sane. (Well, okay, besides you people. Love!)

For a long time, I've been ready to move up to a wheel that's a little faster, a little more versatile, a little more sophisticated, a little more...BAD ASS. Yes, that's what I wanted. A BAD ASS wheel. I took awhile doing my homework, and after about a year of obsessive wheel research, I kept coming back to this one:
It's the Majacraft Rose. It comes with 4 bobbins, a lazy kate, TWO flyers (one regular and one for fine fibers, and two whorls with a huge variety of ratios (speeds) - you'd be hard pressed to find another wheel that comes with so much stuff. It's one of the most highly regarded wheels on the market and I TOTALLY JUST ORDERED IT.*

Mine mine mine mine. I feel so decadent, so rebellious, so GIDDY!

*Those of you who are Windy will be pleased to note that this means you can borrow my Kiwi.