Wouldn't Wanna Bug Ya

Tomorrow I'm off to beautiful San Francisco to combine several of my favorite activities:  Knitting Class, Visiting Friends, Drinking Wine.  Probably not in that exact order.  Here is a funny little hat I made to demonstrate several techniques that I will be teaching.  I am crazy for ladybugs!  I've long wanted to make a ladybug-something, but it's a motif that seems to get knitted by other designers pretty often, so I have not indulged until now.  Lindsay picked out the colors, and made immediate plans to wear it next winter.  I don't need a better reason than that, but using it for my class was an added incentive to get it done.  I hereby assert that hats are a more perfect knitting project than socks because you only have to make ONE.  I love them unreasonably.

There are large plans afoot for the weekend:  Carson and I are going to do a self-guided fiber crawl, upon which I cannot wait to report.  He promises that I can be taught to operate a spinning wheel, and I'm going to help him fire up his very own website (which the knitting world very much needs - wait till you see what he has to teach us!).  Oh, and the Bridge Knitting Guild and I are gonna bust out 14 hats, give or take.  Ambitious plans for 48 little hours, no? I can't wait to see what goes on!
 

Charmed, I'm Sure

Friday was a banner day.  My 39th 25th birthday present arrived with grand fanfare.  The smallies called me on my mobile as I sat in traffic on the way home from the office:  "Mom!  A BIG BOX came on a brown truck!"  "How big is it?" I asked  "Cam!  Get the measuring tape - Mom wants to know how big it is!"  Sounds of measurements being taken by children.  My excitement mounts.  Traffic stubbornly declines to move.  "It's 27 inches high and 20 inches wide.  Who's Lendrum?"  My knuckles whiten on the wheel and I will the traffic logjam to release with all the power of my being...
Nothing.  I fantasize about the moment when I will greet my wheel.  MY wheel.  Love the sound of that.

An hour later, the smallies and I bust open the box.  As thrilled as I am to meet the new wheel, I never anticipated how much my kids would like it.  They treadle for as long as I will let them, lulled to relaxation by the gentle motion.  So far they are much better spinners than I am.  When I treadle, I am also attempting to add fiber to the process.  This has yet to result in anything resembling yarn. 

I never have spun on a wheel.  Any wheel.  I only last week managed my spindle. But true to form, I signed up for a class with the venerable Judith MacKenzie McCuin, hoping I can learn to make a continuous thread in time, and only then began casting about for a wheel to purchase.  Turns out you're supposed to try out wheels before you buy one.  Turns out there are all different kinds, and if you buy one without trying it first you might not like it.  But how am I supposed to do that?  There isn't anywhere to see wheels within 80 miles of my house.  And if there were, wouldn't I be unequipped to judge equipment that I cannot operate?  So just as with motorcycles and books in languages I cannot read and lots of other things I get excited to discover, I picked one that seems right, and that's the one I'll learn on.  This reverse strategy has served me well in the past, so who am I to start questioning it now?  Besides, as difficult as it is to get a wheel sometimes (whaddya mean, six-month wait?), I felt I should leap first and look later when this one presented itself.  Thanks Morgaine! 

I'm visiting my pal Carson this weekend, who spins on the very same brand.  Hopefully he can teach me a thing or two, though at the moment, I have my doubts.  I can't believe how hard it is to make string out of fluff.

In the meantime, I'm just playing with my wonderful machine.  The wood feels like satin and it makes the most lovely swishing sounds.  I'm dreaming of the day it will whisper its secrets to me...
 

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.