Nothing is Obvious Until you See It... ongoing learnings

Sun., 1/18/09 - Splicing a newly-filled spindle shaft to a previously spun stored section:
I couldn't figure out how to do this, and something was missing from the methods I'd been told to do when I asked someone. (Aside: I've already decided I don't like wrapping stored section on empty toilet paper tubes because they're smaller and weaker than I'd like, so I just happened to have a paper towel tube. I like it for a number of reasons.) Anyway, I'd loaded two separate spins onto one PT tube, but didn't want to keep having separate sections, then try to splice them together after the fact. One of them had a more accessible free end that I'd slipped into a cut slit on the cardboard, except it had a knot in it. That was okay. I cut the knot off, then unspun a couple of inches. The spin had already set, however, so I took a regular hair comb (just a black Ace with both size/spacing of teeth). I combed out the two inches so it was nice, neat, fluffy fiber again. Then I put a ton of spin in the last foot or so of the yarn on my spindle. Carefully laid the two ends of now-unspun-fiber over one another, and held it in a flat pinch. Lifted it off the table, and slowly released it. SNAP!! That overspin I'd put into the spindle piece just totally gobbled up the joint's fiber. I then unwound a little longer length, both from the PT tube and from the shaft of my spindle. The overspin spread out, I pulled on it, and NOTHING was going to separate that splice short of breaking it on purpose. I relaxed the whole length, and it wasn't overspun, so that was that. I unwound my spindle onto the PT holder, making a big fat single yarn. YEEEEEE-HAW!!

Unfortunately I didn't do that to the first spindle cop, so that one is still separate and needing to be joined once I get one of them off the paper towel tube. But from now on, this is how I'm going to do it -- straight from the spindle onto the previously-stored source.

Couldn't figure that out prior to trying it for some reason. But it's so simple. Just leave a puff at the beginning and end of each cop, and use the puffed end of your stored cop as your fiber source during the splice. Et Voila. One down, a zillion to go.

Ordered a Spindolyn and Misc. Unrelated Blitherings

Oooo, I can't wait, I can't wait, I can't wait!

Maybe it's something to do with the music that accompanies Cady May's demonstration video of her spindolyns. Or the image of such a peaceful seeming soul sitting there in her cabin, cat stretching in the background. But this just looked like a wonderful way to spin.

Add that my back has gone out, out, OUT! and I'm worrying that it's the position I get into when spindling. Now that I'm so hooked into it, that's a big fear.

I do know I can't live with this back pain. It feels like a nerve that runs through my entire pelvic section from my back straight through to the front, then across and 90 degree turn down the inside of my thigh. It feels like that nerve is being subjected to a medieval torture device, then bashed with a sledge hammer for good measure. So if it is the position of spindling with my top whorler, then the spindolyn might be more than just an intrigue, but my solution. I'm hooked into spindling, one way or the other.

Cady May did email me and said that she hadn't sent mine out as of Friday because, with the frigid cold front, her cabin rooms were 45 degrees except right by the fireplace, so she was afraid the glue wouldn't have dried. But she said she'd gotten an electric heater and would send it tomorrow (which is now yesterday) if the heater helped. So I don't know when it'll arrive, probably sometime this week. It won't be soon enough! I'm dying to try it.

This is one of those times when having a horse is huge overhead, and I'm not talking about cost. I'm talking about in 10 minutes I have to fill 4 gallon jugs of water, carried two in each hand (that means no gloves for that part) out to the barn, saved from slipping on the solid sheet of ice that's my driveway by some serious spike button ice cleats, and do just what my back feels like most (NOT!) Fork out Cloud's indoor pen, bend in that awful position to pour the water, and all the other moves that result in her getting grained and 10 lbs. of hay, those tight leaves spread open. I'm not looking forward to that, but gotta do it.

New barn cat. S/he ran from me for months. Looked too fat to be ferel, but it's adopted my barn. I feed him now. He knows by now I'm not interested in eating him. He loves to be pet, even a little roughly (my test). I sat down out there to see if he'd come to me, and he did. This cat ain't de-clawed, along with the purring came the claw-kneading. On my leg. That cat's a mystery. He's either very trusting or is owned. Or was. He's taken up residence here for sure.

I'd bring him inside if Bella-Dawg wouldn't eat him. But I have no doubt in the world that she would. He never looks cold. With all that thick fur, no one would be. He's adopted a bale of hay as his bed. I put a blanket on it for him. I think I'll find a more crumply one he can snuggle into, this is a mover's furniture protector pad. Not very snuggly.

More on the Third Spin -- Thick/Thin/Slubby HELLL!

Maybe this is too far advanced for me, at least with this particular fiber. It's a wool mix, and extraordinarily spongy. Yet it compresses more than you'd think. Only sometimes though. Sometimes it compresses less than you'd think. (This is where experience would come in really handy!)
Yet still, I persist.
I'm getting the idea that one way to go about this would be to just not let the yarn get too thin. I wasn't guarding against that last night, or when I first picked it up this morning, but I've returned to it with the thought that my thin parts ought to be thicker than I've been letting them be.

The big problem with thick/thin is that the spin gravitates toward the thin. It gets overspun. Meanwhile, the thicker parts don't... well, MAYBE they don't, get enough spin. So I'm now thinking if I try for less of a difference between the extremes of thick/thin, that may help.

Drafting this fiber is also full of challenges. In some ways it acts like a long staple length (you need a longer draft zone) yet in others, it acts like it doesn't (will drift apart easier than I'd expect.)

Challenging!! Yet I have the feeling if I can pull this off, it'll be a lot of learning curve under my belt. I haven't yet figured out whether I'm going to get the hang of this anytime soon (expensive fiber to experiment with) or whether I should abandon the thick/thin/slubby idea, and just go for making the goal of a consistent yet fairly thick yarn. This fiber will spin thin, definitely. But I think it would lose some of its character, or at least the character that I see in it.

This will be an ongoing learning thing, and one I won't want to lose track of, so I may just keep adding to this post.

THIRD (interim) Spin: Trying for Slubby!

Okay, even at the beginning of this new spinning endeavor, I've found that when I look at a fiber in its braided, unspun state, it just seems to tell me that it would SING and ZING if it were to be spun in a certain way. This fiber... its colorway of golds and greys, from light to charcoal, along with its coarser (perhaps more kinky) texture... it just said, "Spin Me Slubby!"

Well, in the middle of Spin #2, I decided to load another spindle (Jenny loaned me her Kundert while a glitch was being remedied on the one she got me) with that fiber, and see if I could purposely spin thick-thin and slubby.

Man, did I EVER overdo it! I'd draft what I thought would be a slub, and it just spun quiet. A little thicker, of course, but no slub. And those really thin parts next to the thick parts... I didn't know how much spin to put in a combination like that, but those thick parts just didn't seem to take any spin, so I spun more. And more. And more! I decided I'd definitely stop after an ounce or thereabouts, and process it, then see what I got. So when I soaked it, I used HOT water for this because I'd read that you want to kind of slightly "felt" a slubby yarn so the slubs won't come apart. I also whacked the crap out of it. I mean, my dog ran for cover. Slam, slam, slam!! I then spun it dry in the salad spinner, and hung it to dry.

Oooomigod. It was a freaking kinking mess. I ran to Beginning Spinners Forum on Ravelry, and screamed HELP! I mean, I could practically hear this yarn screaming,

"Ouch! Argh, OUCH!!"

Well, in Beginning Spinners I asked if there was any way I could gently UNspin it to some extent. I had really processed it, I didn't think I still could.

They said I probably could, so that's what I tried. Now that was a neat learning experience, because it's a thing you do by feel. You just sense when to stop, and I mean for me, it came down to one revolution of the spindle.

Time Out for some drippy stuff: It seems to me that as ridiculous as this sounds, if you almost "listen" to your fiber or yarn in progress, it'll tell you exactly what to do. It's an instinct thing. It's not something that screams out at you, you have to listen for it. I've had just glimpses into this, and I'm sure it's commonplace with experienced spinners, but for other newbies, just be open to what the yarn is telling you.

Anyway, I did that unspinning in places, and not in others (that's fairly obvious EXCEPT that you have to mentally picture what's going to happen to the unspinning. Where will it gravitate? So I soaked it again, spun it in the salad spinner again, and this time I didn't whack it. I also didn't want to put a weight on the bottom of the skein loop because some of these slubs are damned long. I figured they could easily pull apart. So I looped just a dry wash cloth over the bottom of the loop. Not a lot of weight, true. But just enough to... well, it wouldn't hurt. It felt right to do. And this is how it came out. Still a little squiggly, but soooooo much better. And I didn't hear the yarn yelping anymore.

So what did I learn that I THINK will be the case?

When I draft thick and thin, I'm thinking that doing everything in more moderation is best. Things that looked like little slubs grew. If there was too much difference in yarn thickness, it invariably overspun the thin parts, and the bigger difference between thick and thin, the more that would happen.

With this spin, and this treatment (which is probably above my head at this point to be trying it), I'm going to do another ounce before proceeding, just to make sure these learned ("suspected") points are real.

SECOND Spin and notes

This is the fiber I bought on New Year's Eve in the snow storm, fearing I'd run out of my first dwindling "stash" on New Year's Day when ALL stores are closed, and when I thought I'd want to spin while watching the parade and pondering New Year's Resolutions. Besides, I had made a mini-breakthrough on the drafting. The safest textured fiber, and in a colorway I thought I'd like, I bought Louet Northern Lights wool blend that came in an 8-oz. bag of what the store owner told me was a little thicker than pencil roving. I later learned that this form is called a "sliver" (pronounced sly-ver).

Here's my best photo of what I was now able to get in terms of even thickness. I was now just getting the hang of the FEEL of how much fiber I was releasing into the draft zone. Still slow process of park-and-draft, and still holding my drafting and pinching hands too close together (for some reason terrified the fiber would drift apart... I was not good at joining, and still have a little trouble with it. I understand the tendency is too close together. More about that later.

Well, as Jenny put this yarn on her niddy noddy, she said that it was actually pretty tightly spun. But then she also said she thought this yarn would be great if I plyed it. She thought I'd see a whole lot less purple, to boot. So she put it on her umbrella swift and split it into two equal lengths, for two equal sized balls. And showed me how to ply yarn on the drop spindle.

ET VOILA!!! My first plyed yarn!

Gee, for first photos on a first blog, these just don't look as clear as they do elsewhere. If anyone knows some setting to get them clearer, please let me know!

Anyway, I didn't have wool wash yet, or a niddy noddy, so just wrapped it around the bottom of a plastic storage box and soaked the yarn in pretty hot water, then stuck it in a salad spinner which works amaaaaaazingly well. Hanging on a hook, it dried in just a few hours! Way faster than when we squeezed it dry. I did whack it, but not that much. There was some clockwise twist still in it after it dried. I guess I plied it even tighter than I spun it!

So I am now spinning up the rest, planning to ply it and hopefully the two shall be the same. What spinning a sample did teach me is to make a control card! One that shows the singles and the ply. I can't remember at this point how thickly I spun the single originally, so no clue if it'll come out looking the same as the ounce I have here.

I'm still in the process of spinning up the rest of this fiber. I don't yet know what I'll make out of it. I'm going to knit a swatch with this sample, and see if any ideas come to mind.

FIRST Spin - Photo and notes

Along with my brand new kick-ass Kundert Spindle that Jenny gave me for Christmas to see if I'd like spindling, she gave me a braid of gorgeous blue and white hand-dyed BFL Superwash fiber that she'd bought from The Woolen Rabbit. I LOVED that fiber! So here's the initial stab at my first spin.

The next photo is after I brought my FOUR (4) little balls of spun yarn to Jenny's to be washed and whacked. (It kept falling off the shaft.) We were really short on time, so I told her to just tie the ends together, I'd deal with it later. This is apparently very typical for a first spin -- thick, thin and slubby. As it was hanging to dry, I thought I had slubs throughout that seriously exceeded the staple length (for non-spinning friends, that's the length of each fiber and that would make it easily split apart)...

BUT! When I wound it into a ball, I discovered much to my delight that the really long unspun parts were all at the knots! Yeee-haw! I cannot wait to knit this yarn, the rest of it came out much to my liking. It's going to become a neck warmer (probably ribbed) that has a split at one end that the other end slips through.

This is a single, I got approx. 123 yards out of this 4-oz. braid. And I will treasure it forever as my first spin, and also just as meaningful to me, the result of the best, sweetest Christmas present I've ever received.

How I Even Got A Drop Spindle Anyway

My daughter took up knitting several years ago, and while I absolutely appreciated her work (still do!), I have never been much of a knitter. Well, a couple of exceptions: Way back when God was a boy, I made a big, snuggly, practical shawl, but only because I couldn't buy one like it. I still have it. Twenty years later, I also built a crewneck sweater I saw in a pattern by chance. Again, it had everything I couldn't find in a purchased one. And then last year, I was in need of something to do with my hands, so knitted another sweater. I still don't know how to sew it together. I will though.

So with all the above being super simple stitches, I currently know the following: Cast On, Knit, Purl, Increase, Decrease and Bind Off. That's it!

Meanwhile, daughter Jenny had also now taken up spinning on a wheel. Last Mother's Day we went to a Sheep & Wool Festival for a nice day out together. She wanted to see the fiber and tools, I wanted to see the Sheep Dog Demo's. She bought an inexpensive Drop Spindle for fun. Since then, whenever she'd come over, I'd casually watch her twirling and whorling as we chatted. It was her thing. Horses were mine.

Just on a chance, Jenny got me a Kundert drop spindle for Christmas along with 4 oz. of beautiful BFL roving in my colors. She thought just maaaybe I might enjoy it. But she included the preface that if I didn't happen to take to it, do not feel bad, her feelings wouldn't be hurt one bit. She knew it was a crap shoot, and not for everyone. So Christmas day she showed me how to spindle. I felt as though I had 15 fingers, all tangled together, and then at other times, I needed two more that had to be at least 8 inches long. I had a death grip on the draft, my hands were way too close together and fighting one another. Clearly this was going to be a definite learning curve. But it was really challenging. And kind of fun.

So fast-forward to New Year's Eve, daytime. During the six days hence, I'd picked it up several times a day, and was learning a tad more each time. Park and draft, park and draft. Death grip. Pull, ease... quite a process. But I kept at it because I was seeing YARN! Late afternoon, there was a howling wind and snow/ice storm in progress and all news sources were saying to stay off the roads "unless absolutely necessary." Well, it started dawning on me, I'd gotten pretty far through the 4 oz. of fiber, and no yarn shops are open on New Year's Day. Suddenly I felt clutched. So I called the cops and asked how bad the roads were, reeeally. They said just go very, very slow and take back roads. So I drove just that way to a yarn shop two towns over, and chose from their small supply of fiber. That's when I realized, I was addicted.

Having joined Ravelry, starting membership on New Year's Eve, I see that everyone keeps a blog of their progress and projects. That makes a lot of sense, because you can look back and see your steps and later remind yourself what you did to get different results. And what not to do next time.

So that is how I got my Drop Spindle, and my new hobby, and a blog. Spinning will probably be with me from now forward.

Thanks Jenny, that was the bestest gift to your mom, in the whole wide world... ever!