Inventing the Wheel

I know what you've been thinking:  What ever happened to all that blather about spinning?  Did she finally wise up and resist the urge to take on YET ANOTHER form of fiber fixation?

Duh.  We've met, no?

I've just been quietly obsessing about discovering it for a little while.  Ready for my first ever spinning show and tell?  Here goes (actually taking a cleansing breath):

Clockwise, from left:  Ashland Bay Colonial Top, Kundert spindle resting on singles of unknown WPI, my first finished 2-ply.

Spinning is teaching me, in no particular order:

1.  Learning a new thing is good for you because remembering what it's like to know nothing keeps your britches fitting.

2.  Being a first-time hand spinner sucks until you figure it out, and then it abruptly and completely stops sucking.  The distance between "Oh my gosh what have I done?" and "Oh my gosh I can't believe I made yarn" is both millimeters and light years. 

3.  Experienced spinners who tell you that you really need a human teacher and not just a book are completely right.  I know because I have neither experienced human teaching, nor yet received the book I ordered.  I figured it out on my own, of which fact I am very proud; but I know it would have taken Abby about 30 seconds to teach me what I discovered alone over the course of two weeks.

4.  Whichever direction you spin your singles in, you have to ply them together in the opposite direction.  I know this was probably outlined somewhere in my research, but I swear I don't remember seeing it.  Only when 4 days' worth of singles were in a tangled backward-plied mass, literally leaping out of my hands, did I realize that something had gone horribly wrong.  Ever try to make two magnets stick to each other the wrong way round?  That's what plying backward does to would-be yarn.  Fascinating.  Infuriating. Nauseating.

Two glasses of wine later, somewhere around 1AM, a lightbulb went on and I began reversing the ill-plied horror.  Turns out it takes more than twice as long (as correct plying) to reverse an arse-up of that magnitude, but I don't care.  Not only was I able to rescue the 4 days' worth of singles spinning (can you imagine having to throw that away?  Yes, I did come close), but I also feel that I well and truly OWN this bit of knowledge.  Don't think I'll be repeating that particular mistake. Hope Not.

My Yarn (how much do I love saying that?) is pretty.  Not great, or even good, but mine, and, gosh darn it, its good enough, for a first effort.  For that I love it.  For what it's teaching me, I love it.  And let's not forget that its color ROCKS:

My first handspun yarn porn

Ever held a newborn baby?  That you made yourself?  This is like that, but different.  Handspun yarn will never throw up on you, hide your keys, or comb the dog's eyebrows with your toothbrush.  Probably it won't throw its arms around your neck and squeal that it loves you, either; but you get the idea. 

How do people who don't make stuff ever have any fun?

Oh, and in case you're wondering, I ordered a spinning wheel.  Fish On.
 

Just Like That

The very day that I posted about a lack of photographic evidence of the things I'm working on, I found something new to share after all.  The thing I needed was right there on the dining room table, and I had been walking past it for two days without seeing it.  Typical.  My dining room table erupts piles of mail at an alarming rate.  One day I'm gonna locate the continuum rift conducting these piles and plug it up for good.  Until that happens though, my strategy will be to manage the mail-hills by ignoring them until they become mountains.  Works a lot like the laundry heap, I notice:  Must come from the same quantum rift.

If I had opened the front cover of the latest Knit Picks catalog, I would have noticed that I had a photo for you the other day.  If I had remembered that I made a swell pattern for them due out in April, I might have visited the KP website and seen that there was a perfectly good show-and-tell opportunity right there:

This is the very same reverse-engineered pullover that I wrote about last November, finished in its proper yarn and pretty Dang Cute, if I do say so myself.  

{SOAPBOX ALERT:} I especially love that Knit Picks uses real humans to model their designs (isn't she lovely?) - I can imagine this on my sister, my neighbor, or any of the beautiful ladies in my life.  If you agree, let them know please - I'd love them to hear that showing designs on actual women instead of emaciated teenagers is appreciated by more than a few knitters. {END SOAPBOX}

I have to admit that I am still new enough to the design world that seeing something I dreamed up right there in the flesh is a real thrill.  I hope it will always feel like that.  It's not every day I get a horn of this nature to toot, so I'll just leave it like this:

Hope you like it too.
 

A Visual Medium

It turns out that if you want to be a knitter, or in any case, a knitter who shares what they're up to with anybody else, you had better also become a photographer.  Not that I had any clue about that when I went public, or I probably would have contemplated it a bit longer.  Nevertheless, here I am with a bunch of stuff to report on, and no pix to show you.  Why no pix, you may ask?  Because one wee drawback of being a knitter who publishes work is the fact that I'm supposed to (usually) keep my work under wraps until it's available for your use/enjoyment.  Why, I'm not fully sure, but I think it's mostly to preserve the surprise.  You are (so the theory goes) less likely to dash out and snap up my latest books and patterns if you have already seen them in gruesome detail for the whole time I'm developing them.  Makes sense, I suppose.  Who wants to buy a pattern once you've endured photos of me frogging it nine times?  Still, the issue does make for bland blog posts sometimes; notably the busier I am making things, the less likely you are to see engaging photos of works in progress. 

Here is what I learned this week about photos of knitting:

            1.    You cannot photograph Dark Purple knitting in any room of my house.  The photos are all overexposed, underexposed, too yellow, too blue, too close or too far away.  If you want a decent shot of Dark Purple knitting, you have to go outside on a nice sunny day.

            2.    It rains in Portland, Oregon, every single day.

            3.    If it has stopped raining in Portland, Oregon, then one of the following must apply:
                a.    It's the middle of the night
                b.    It's the weekend and I'm in a windowless arena observing my children's athletic activities.
                c.    It's the Rapture

So while I have a swell purple vest, and an equally inspiring gray sleeve to show you, they are on the QT for now.  Be patient with me - I really am up to something good.