Tax money

Here's one more thing I could have bought with the money that went to pay taxes:

A Wyatt Pegasus double-treadle

Never mind that I don't have any room for such a thing! Never mind the fact that I already have two wheels and yet the second one doesn't get used as often as it should! If this administration is really serious about economic stimulus, they'd give me my money back so I can get one. The Wyatts are small-shop American craftspeople - I can't think of anyone the government would support more. Why do they hate America?

Anyway, the Wyatts sell spindles, too, so I might just buy one to remind me of what I'd like to get at some point in the (hopefully nearish) future.

Well, son of a box of cookies!

I've been in an spending-spree period lately; we all go through them, usually around the holidays but for some reason I'm having a Spring Spree.

There have been a lot of purchases I've been making because things have gone on sale, or I've been wanting them for a while. Case in point:

Sara mentioned on Ravelry that she wanted an Avi Wasserman spindle and asked if I had one she could try. I don't, but in a moment of idleness I typed "Avi Wasserman" into Google. That's when I saw it: a parasol-style spindle with a Bethelehem olivewood whorl and an ebony shaft. It was one of my dream spindles; olivewood and ebony are two of my favorite woods, and the parasol design is one of my favorites.

Of course, this means I'm brown-bagging my lunch for the next two weeks. I think it's probably worth it.

Idle thoughts : Woolee Winder

So I've been thinking about buying a Woolee Winder for my Schacht.

There are some things I need to consider beforehand. The first one is the cost: for a WW and three high-speed bobbins, plus three regular bobbins, the combined cost is basically as much as a mid-range new wheel. Youch.

Considering the need for a WW: I don't really feel the need for one, except when I'm plying. I've mentioned before that I can't get as much plied yarn on one bobbin as I can singles. I'm sure this has a lot to do with how unvigilent I am when changing the flyer hooks when I'm plying. My hands get busy and I forget to slow down and change the hooks. However, it is really annoying when I have a quarter of an ounce left over on my bobbin and the other one is full.

Still, is this problem worth $400? I don't know.

Wheels

My Louet Victoria, Chibi, has a slight problem - I was spinning tons of baby alpaca a few weeks ago, and some fiber got stuck in her drive wheel axle. It's too recessed for me to go at by hand, so I need to take her apart and clean it out. Unfortunately, none of the wrenches I have at home seem capable of not stripping her main axle bolt, so I need to go to Home Depot and find a proper metric socket wrench for the job.


I haven't done this, of course, because I'd rather stay home and play with fiber (or go out drinking), so I've just been using Clotho, my Schacht Matchless.


I don't know what the trouble is, but we've been together more than a year and Clotho and I are still not in love with each other yet. Maybe it's that I'm so used to Scotch tension and she's a double-drive (I know I can convert her to Scotch tension - I'm trying to learn to love DD); maybe it's that I've been spoiled by Chibi's sealed bearings and I have to oil Clotho regularly; maybe it's that Clotho has ginormous bobbins and I have to spin forever to fill them (and yet, they're still too small to hold the same amount of plied yarn as singles). I really don't know. But in this time of trial with Chibi being somewhat out of commission, I'm hoping I can establish a better relationship with my Schacht Matchless.


On the upside, I spun up 2 oz. of the CVM/kid mohair Bonnie from frontierfiberfarm sent me, and I'm very happy with the results. I was thinking that the mohair would make this a really good sock blend, but it seems too soft for socks. I'll see how I feel once it's plied - maybe I've been conditioned to think that all sock yarn has to be stiff to be strong.


I've also been kicking around the idea of spinning something specifically for heel/sole/toe reinforcement - a longwool or mohair single in a bright color would make a cute accent and would also mean that I could use some softer fibers, like alpaca or angora, where I wouldn't expect a lot of wear.

Yeah, more fiber

I now literally have more fiber than I know what to do with.

The exciting acquisitions:

- 4 oz superwash in Leaf from Pigeonroof Studios (Yay! It's always a good day when I can get some of Krista's fiber.)

- 8 oz. soysilk/wool in Alia colorway from marion

- 4 oz. Shetland in Reds colorway from marion

And something I'm especially excited about:

- 8oz CVM roving and 2 oz. English Leicester Longwool from Frontier Fiber Farm (also at sheepythyme).

This fiber is amazing. Bonnie also sent me a bonus 2 oz. of a CVM/kid mohair blend that will be so great for socks.

I haven't recieved these yet, but I'm really excited to see what they're like:

- Posey Toes sock batts in Lunaria and Snake Plant colorways from feistywomandesigns

Tiny looms!

So far this week:

- 2 oz. naturally-dyed Ramboulliet roving in a raspberry colorway from Tactile Fiber Arts, waiting to be chain-plied.

- 4 bias squares on my 7" Hazel Rose loom, made out of leftover sock yarn made from silk, superwash merino, and mohair batts from Franquemont Fibers. They are destined to become a 4-square bolsa like this one.

As part of my obsession with all things fiberarty and purse-size portable, I very willingly jumped on the Weave-It wave.

I have a a set of 4" and 2" vintage Weave-Its in their original Lucite box, a 7" walnut Hazel Rose loom, and I just bought one of her smaller, finer Multi-Looms. That's what you call hardcore.

My motivation for this is pure instant weaving gratification. I have a lot of random scraps of handspun left over, and I loathe seeing these going to waste. A 2" Weave-It square takes 2 yards of yarn. The other is that I love to spin cotton, but it takes forever to spin enough three-ply to make anything. I can make a six-inch cotton washcloth on my Hazel Rose in an evening of watching the CW.

I've been trying to figure out how to use these little squares in a way that doesn't look too...shall we say...church-basement-craft-circle. I'm thinking some omiyage bag patterns would look pretty cool in Weave-It squares.

Fruits of the weekend's labors

- 4oz of two-ply worsted baby llama in sea-green handpainted colorway (the January installment of Susan's Spinning Bunny Fondle This club)

- 6 oz. of two-ply worsted alpaca, spun from batts I made from 4 oz. of natural silver Louet baby alpaca and 2 oz. of handpainted alpaca from Lunabudknits in the "Rainbow Suicide" colorway.

- Knitted up 90% of the spindle shawl, and I'm extremely pleased with the results. The only thing that didn't work out so perfectly is that I didn't start the decreases early enough so I've run out of yarn. I wanted this to be made from exactly 2 oz. of fiber, but I'll have to break into my stash a little to finish. Next time, I'll remember that.

It may come as a surprise to some of you that I'm a shutterbug. Last night I got out my (fairly expensive) camera to see if I could take pictures of a lot of my FOs - I'm painfully aware of the picturelessness of this blog and my Ravelry project notebook. However, the light is so bad in my apartment, you guys don't even know. All the photos I took looked like I was taking them for insurance purposes.

I really want one of these: a tabletop lighting kit.

Because there isn't enough math in knitting as it is

Wednesday night I went by Ledger's Liquors and with Ed's help, I got my friend Morgan a bottle of Russell's Reserve Rye Whiskey for his birthday and picked up a little something for myself, a bottle of Wathen's Single-Barrel Kentucky Bourbon. Ed Ledger is a man who not only resembles a young Bill Clinton, but is one talented and knowledgable liquor picker. It was probably the influence of these fyne spirits that got me thinking about cellular automation knitting, which as far as I know is the brainchild of Debbie New.

Cellular automation is the mechanism by which a system self-replicates, i.e. every little part of something operates by it's own independent rules, but they all have the same rules, like growing crystals or bacterial colonies.

Way back in the dark ages (I'm talking 1997), there was the Knitlist. It was an email mailing list with something like 1500 people on it, which was substantial even back then. A lot of it is also archived on woolworks, and it was the center of knitting life on the Internet.

I had picked up a copy of Knitter's (remember when that magazine didn't suck?) and because I'm a geek I was fascinated by an article on cellular automation and how the principles could be applied to knitting. Of course, I didn't really get it (it's not a simple concept) so I posted my first and only email to the knitlist asking for help. I got an email from the actual Debbie New, who'd written the article. Over the course of several emails, she'd helped me get the concept down. I printed out all those emails and stuck them in my knitting notebook, knitted a couple of scarves in CA lace, and promptly forgot it. I still have the notes, in my knitting notebook, at the bottom back corner of my storage space. Blast!

But the Internet never forgets, and thanks to the knitting-and site:

"You start with a seed row. Imagine you are working with a dark yarn on a light background. You scatter your dark seeds across the bottom row. As you get to your second row, you look down at the seed row. Each dark seed will be able to touch three stitches in the new row. The color of the stitches in the new row is determined by the location of the seeds. If a new stitch will be touching exactly one seed, either by being directly above or to the upper right or left of the seed, then you knit that stitch with the dark yarn.

new row      xxx  x  x

seed          x    xx

..."

Translating this to lace, which is a two stitch (YO, K2TOG) combo, looks a little something like this:

Row5   O/O/    O/O/ O/  O/  O/

Row4    O/      O/ O/    O/O/

Row3     O/O/O/O/ O/      O/

Row2      O/  O/   O/O/O/O/

Row1       O/O/     O/  O/

seed        O/       O/O/

What this means is when deciding how to work a new stitch, I'm looking at the stitch below to the left, directly below, and below to the right. If the stitch directly below is not a YO, but the one below and to the left or below and to the right is, I (YO, K2TOG). If they're both YOs, I knit a regular stitch. If I have to to do a K2TOG where there should be a YO, the K2TOG always takes precedence. The resulting pattern is sort of an organic triangular pattern that reminds me of snakeskin.

I love this, because the results are unpredictable and the rule is easy to remember. Total surprise lace. I'm going to knit my next spindle shawl in this and see how it turns out.

Feed the addiction

Tuesday, Kristine finally set out the fiber she's selling so we can all see it. I know she wants to be appropriate and all and not mix business with social events and that shows how well-bred she is. However, I'd tease her about how I feel weird about sneaking back in her fiber room to check out the merchandise. Even though I know that's what she wants me to do, I feel like I'm going through her medicine chest or underwear drawer or something.

So this time she set out a shelf and some baskets of yarn and fiber and I felt relieved - especially when I feasted my eyes on her polwarth roving in the "El Rio" colorway. At first I was thinking, well, I have a lot of fiber on deck, I'll just hang back and not get some. But Mike started picking out fiber to buy like a perfectly reasonable person and the addict part of my brain went all paranoid and started shrieking "MINE MINE!" like a kindergartner. I ended up with 8 oz. of the stuff because I'm not a reasonable person. I don't regret it. :)

I will be so sad when her naturally-dyed polwarth is gone (most of it already is it seems). But there's always next year, and her other pretty fiber to keep me occupied until then.

Speaking of utterly remorseless impulse buying, I went and ordered the Morehouse Merino Monet Shawl KnitKit the other day. I can't help it - I'm fixated on Impressionism after Eric took me to the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia and I want a Waterlilies shawl, goddamit! I also bought three new shorty Grafton spindles - a Mala, a mini Swan, and another Fibership, all in pretty wood laminates - mostly for portable spinning. They have the shorter shafts which make them easier to stick in a little project bag.

I actually broke a spindle a few weeks ago, my Dave Larsen acrylic laser etched one, and I'm totally in mourning, which is why I bought the Graftons. They've grown on me for sure. I really think that for all-around value for money in terms of artisan spindles Bosworths are the way to go (they're absolutely no-fail - you can spin anything on just about any of them). The advantage the Graftons have is they are not only fairly well-designed (especially the Swans) but are built Tonka-tough. I worry a lot less about breaking them in my travel bag, whereas I'd worry about my Bosworths.

(Oh my god, if I broke one of my Bosworths I'd be inconsolable.)

Being the bigger person

Part of the reason I took up this blog again is that I'm intensely passionate about fiberarts and as a result I have some strong, probably unpopular opinions that are best kept off the Ravelry forums and the Handspinning community. I also use this as an idea notebook and I'm thrilled that people actually read it sometimes (HI PEOPLE READING!).

I say this because Kristine bought me the latest issue of Spin-Off, and I stayed up way past my bedtime last night reading it. I've never had a lot of good things to say about the magazine in the past. Some of my criticisms have been:


- The articles are oriented to absolute beginners
- The articles are oriented to arcane techniques
- The patterns/techniques are ugly (come on, you have to admit, there has been some fug)
- The articles on individual spinners are too "in-flight magazine"


However, I want to go on record and say I might be wrong about Spin-Off. I found tons of really great information in this month's issue. It's possible the magazine evolved a little since I read it last, but most likely it's that I matured a lot as a spinner.

Next quarter, I'm probably going to do a trial subscription. That's right, you heard me - TRIAL SUBSCRIPTION!

Last night I was over at at Kristine and Adrienne's and Sara, Marlowe, Krista, and a new fun person, Mike of the Yknit podcast was there. As usual, it was a scream, and as usual I stayed way, way too late. It was really great to have Mike there, a rooster in the henhouse so to speak, and I hope to see him again at some future fiber events.

I really need to start a blogroll.

Artfibers Hana

I was going away for the weekend last week and I needed an emergency project for the plane, so I ran over to Artfibers and bought about 100g of Hana, which is a very nice 2-ply silk sportweight. I'm knitting some kind of smoke ring out of it, made up of garter stitch and dropped loop stitches.

I also picked up some of their spinning fiber, called Miso, which is a merino/soysilk blend. Generally speaking, their yarns aren't my thing - lots of ribbon and stuff, but it is pretty. I would like to see more spinning fiber along the lines of their design philosophy, though.

In which I prove my mastery of junior high geometry

I was contemplating the Elizabeth Zimmerman Pi Shawl, of which I've knit about a million, and I always forget the basic formula. So the thing I do know thanks to six years of university-level math is the formula for the circumference of a circle, which is:

C = Π2r

Where r = the radius, which is the distance from the center to the edge of a circle.

Now, when knitting a circular bit of knitting, each row increases the area of the circle in all directions, threfore, the radius isn't as applicable as the diameter, which is the distance from one edge of of the circle to the edge directly on its opposite.

The diameter of a circle is:

d=2r

So the circumference of a circle can be expressed as:

C=Πd

Thanks to the beautiful mathematical mystery that is the Algebraic Distributive Property, the every time the diameter of a circle doubles, so does the circumference! Check it out:

2(C) = 2(Π) x 2(d)

So what does this mean for my knitting? It means that to knit a perfect circle, you need to increase to twice the number of stitches every time you double the number of rows since your last increase round. For example:

Cast on 8 stitches in the round.
Knit three rounds.
K1, yo to end of round, 16 stitches.
Knit six rounds.
K1, yo to end of round, 32 stitches.
Knit twelve rounds.
K1, yo to end of round, 64 stitches.

...and so on, and so on, until you run out of yarn or your hands fall off, whichever comes first.

Writing this down before I forget

Technique to counter biasing when knitting with energized singles:

Knit with two balls/colors, one on each end of the work. The twist will balance it out!

Score!

I'm weak

Yesterday saw the purchase of two KnitKits from Morehouse Merino: the ChocolateMint Scarf and the Waves Shawl. You have to admit, they're fabulous.

Also, I transcended the boundaries of distance and language to buy a couple of shawl patterns from Dorthea Fischer, the lady who (along with some friends) wrote the Danish tie-shawl article in this month's Spin-Off (a copy of which the divine Ms Kristine picked up for me).

You absolutely have to love these shawls. I mean, just look at them.

Especially this one. I have a fantasy of tying on my shawl, putting on my hat and mitts and going out in the cold morning to feed the spinner's flock. This is why my sisters call me The Goat Lady.

I have a fascination with "working shawls". Due to my tendency to travel long distances in very short periods of time, I've developed a "nomad" mentality, where if I'm going to be carrying something around, I want it to be as portable, useful, and yes, pretty as possible. Shawls can be cover-ups, mufflers, blankets, pillows, coat substitutes, and in a pinch, picnic blankets and bedrolls. Therefore, give me something I can wear as a jacket and sleep under when I'm stranded in Chicago Midway airport.

Internet community drama

Apparently, the woman who owned the LiveJournal communities "spinningfiber", "dyeingfiber", "sellingfiber", and "weavingfiber" deleted them all yesterday afternoon for reasons that are not entirely clear but most likely have to do with her personal issues. The real tragedy of this is the collective wisdom of the 1500 spinners who were active there, many of whom are a pretty big deal in the spinning realm, has gone up in a puff of bytes.

However, in happier news, I finally got another 3.5 ounces of the "Rose Garden" wool, silk, and angora batt I bought from Crystal Creek Fibers spun and plied up and the top-down v-neckish, shawl-collar-y cardigan I'm making with it is back in process, just in time for summer when it will be way to warm to wear. One of the mysteries of the Schacht Matchless - the bobbins hold way more when they're full of singles than they do when they're full of plied yarn, which means I generally have about half an ounce of orphan single left on my bobbin. That is annoying, but I'm not counting out user error.

I think I have also figured out how to maybe get away with knitting at work. Needless to say, public knitting at my office would be frowned upon - not because they have any issues with knitting per se, but it would raise the question as to why I have so much spare time to knit. That's a conversation I'd never want to get into. So I've taken a very small project (the spindle shawl) and put it into a brightly-colored cosmetic pouch. When I need a knitting break, I just leave my desk and walk in the direction of the bathroom with this pouch, and nobody asks any questions. Then, I go out to the staircase and knit a few rows.

Lord help me I love this

The Morehouse Merino ChocolateMint Shawl KnitKit.

I know it's just a garter stitch bias square in two colors of yarn; it really couldn't be simpler to reverse-engineer.

But it's so pretty. I need to keep some perspective on this.

P.S. I forgot to mention I bought the Monet Scarves KnitKit in Blue Nympheas last week It seemed like a decent deal.