I'm not doing too well with this "blog every day". I feel more like I am following the spirit of the law (make an effort to blog more), rather than the letter of it (blog everyday in October).


This last weekend I spent in the local big city, where my mother lives. I was able to visit a few yarn stores, where I found one was starting a three weekend spinning class. I asked them on Saturday at 4:00, and they told me there were probably 2 or 3 spots left, and they closed at 5. I wasn't sure if I wanted to pay that much money right now, or to drive the hour every week. I thought about it and decided to do it. Sunday at 12:10, 10 minutes after they opened, to find out that not only was the class full, but there were 5 people on the wait-list. I was very disappointed. There aren't any yarn stores in my area, and none of them offer reasonable spinning lesson. AND this one has wheels to take home over the week!

This is what I don't understand. If spinning classes always fill up, why don't more places have them, and more often. The closest LYS to me has them twice a year, but you have to buy carders on top of the $50+ class. Another one SAYS they have them, but they only schedule them as people ask. Of course, as someone who would have to drive 45 minutes, this is just not the way I need it scheduled. Tell me when the class is about a month/2 weeks before hand and I'll make arrangements. I am not comfortable with someone planning a class based on my interest. What if it is not a good time for me? Or I change my mind about the expense for that month? I feel better knowing that it is already planned, weather or not I can attend.

On the good side, that LYS has another spinning planned in November.

The tiniest of scarves

I couldn't just let my handspun sit there. I had to do something with it. It is VERY scratchy, and is making my hand eczema flare like nobody's business. (Did I never mention the eczema? Had it for years, went into remission for as long, then came back with a lovely friend for my knitting hand. I suspect I don't react well to cotton (?) and lanolin.) So this made the option of fingerless mitts a torture devise. Home items, such as a satchel were possible, however partially due to the eczema, I am not a fan of scenting anything. *

So a scarf it was. Being the math master that I am (sarcasm is one of my favorite flavors of humor to employ. As is mixing metaphors.) I tried to figure out how long I could conceivably make it. Watch as logic slowly gets twisted to my reality of how things should be. The longest I could make it would be 97 yards, meaning a string of yarn wrapped about my neck. If I divided it in half, it would be two strings wide, and 48.5 yards long. Now if I turned it on it's side, making it 48.5 yards WIDE, I could begin to fold the yarn upon itself making it narrower and narrower,, but longer and longer. SO, if I wanted a 5 foot long scarf, (97 yards x 3 ft/yd= 220 ft; 220ft/5ft= 4.4ft) I would need to use 4 feet a repeat.

Do you see the problems?

First off, dividing a piece of yarn in half does reduce the length, and make it twice as wide, but the width is increased by the width of A SINGLE PLY! Did I measure that? No, so all of my math was completely arbitrary. Second, notice the last math step? 220ft/5ft=4.4ft. I obviously didn't write any of this down before hand, because as any fourth grader can tell you, when you are dividing with lengths, the length is canceled out. ft/ft= no ft! And it's wrong!! I didn't hit the 0 on my computer calculator. (Twice I might add, because I do always check my numbers. But apparently never the logic.)

So how did I find out my 97 yards was becoming a 20 inch scarf? I started knitting, noticed how slowly it was growing, measured it, frogged it to see how much yarn I had used and did some GOOD calculations. In the end, what did I do? I swatched. All that math, All the fiddling with the concrete laws of mass conservation and what did I learn?

Swatching is there for a reason.

* As an aside to this, the husband visits friends once a week and when he returns I immediately make him take off his shirt. Am I just so filled with longing from his absence I am reduced to a frantic animal? No. He smells like the detergent they use, and I can't stand it! Detergent was the original trigger for my eczema and I didn't find out until I left for college. I now have a gut reaction to detergent smells. I almost always hug him when he gets home (if I'm knitting then he has to wait until I finish the row), and every Wednesday I hug him, then forcefully push him away. Mixed message sent, I make a disguised face and demand the removal of the offending shirt before it sinks into his skin. I have a more sensitive nose than he, so he never notices.

Adventures in spinning

A week ago Saturday I want to Dixon's Lambtown. It is a fairly small festival, but I wanted the opportunity to take a spinning class. The only spinning class given in my area requires owning a spindle and a set of carders on top of the fee for the class. So, after two hours with my small spindle I had a tiny ball that I plyed on itself.

Two spindlefuls later I tried plying. I got this:
I still had quite a bit of the first ball of roving, but I was tired of poorly spinning plain colored, ugly yarn. I decided to try dyeing the roving, hoping color would detract from the poor spinning. After WAY too much research, I started to dye.

I set out the saran wrap on my table, while my roving soaked. I prepared two colors. The first was two packages of Ice Blue Raspeberry Lemonaide in a lot of water. I added a sprinkling of Grape, and another half package of Ice Blue. I made a batch of dark red (two packaged Black Cherry), with only 7 tablespoons of water. I was afraid the blue was too thin, so I boiled it a bit to get some water out. Of course I then had to let it cool. I layed the roving out, folding it four times. (unfortunately I did not do this with the ends at the ends of the bends, and this caused some potential problems later, which never came up since I didn't ply it.)

I dyed the red first in patches. I worked the dye into the roving. It took a lot more dye than I thought, but didn't realize that the dye would spread later. I did the blue and lightly worked them together. I rolled it up and started to steam it. Here came the unexpected complications.

The water was too high and leaked into my steamer, and in turn into the roving. This caused the dye to blend more. I had to empty out some of the water and I turned the roving sausage over. It continued to steam, and the dye continued to leak. I didn't need to use so much. The steaming process would have spread out the dye to the undyed fibers. Or, maybe if I had wrapped the sausage tighter to prevent water/steam from getting in.

After 30~40 minutes I put the sausage into a glass brownie pan (8X8 Pyrex) and microwaved it for about 1 minute to make sure the dye was set. (I didn't do the whole 2 minutes recommended because the sausage was puffing up to the point I was afraid it would burst.) I set the whole thing into the sink to cool. It expedite the process I filled the bottom with water until the touched just the bottom of the pan. I added some ice to help out too.

After it cooled I rinsed it, and set it out to dry. I was happy to see that almost no dye came out from the roving. The whole process made the house smell fruity. It reminded me of getting snowcones with my family in the summer. The only flavor I could remember was "Tiger's blood", so that was what I named it.
I spun it, but figured out I would only get 35 yards if I plyed. So I decided to make it a one ply. Of course, it was terribly over spun.I washed the yarn, set the twist, then "blocked it" out. I dry it with a 4 pound bag of sugar hanging from the bottom. The finished skein, dyed, spun and set by me:
97 yards of somewhere between a fingering and a lace weight. And I have no idea what to do with it.