PatsyZ's Thoughts

YARNING, or Teaching a News Reporter How to Operate a Wool Spinner

2013-01-06T19:24:00.001-08:00

November 2012, Live interview, with Aly Bockler and
WCIU

YARNING, or Teaching a News Reporter How to Operate a Wool Spinner

November 2012: Would you like to teach me how to spin? This was email request for an interview by Aly Bockler a roving reporter for WCIU a local TV station.

After agreeing, the next email contained a simple but odd question that caught my attention? Could she use my wool spinner? Could she? Or could I, I wondered, teach someone who wasn’t clear on the term spinning wheel, how to spin? Why not, I’m a good teacher. Besides, it’s just semantics.

A further email showed there would be 4 minutes live on the air, plus a few moments of set up time for her to practice. Then it really hit me. Two phrases stuck out, “in your home” and “6:45 am” the time and place that I and my home were to be camera ready.

Not only didn’t she know anything about spinning, but she didn’t know anything about me. Nobody ever accused me of being neat much less a morning person. I can probably count on my fingers the number of sunrises I have actually seen. Even my babies slept until nine, since I always put them back into their cribs if they woke in the 6 o’clock hour. But I digress.

Of course I accepted the challenge. All I have to do is clean the house and be awake; the spinning is the easy part. I had my plan.

Plan A:

Part 1: Start Aly, my reporter, on a spindle with a bit of horizontal style, spin, park, and draft. In fact she could practice treadling while working her hands. Then I move her to a wheel and continue the spin, park and draft.

Part 2: Put her on the slowest ratio wheel that I have. My Pocket Wheel has a lovely feel and a slow, direct drive with a ratio of 3.5:1. That could put her on the newest wheel I own and I could use my oldest. Ah, nice TV touch! I sent off a quick confident email.

The date approached. My son and his wife came to visit. My son (a half hour before I drove him and his lovely wife back to the airport) on the Sunday, before the Tuesday, of the appointed hour, suddenly said, “Hey Mom, why don’t you teach me to spin in four minutes!”. So I tried and threw out Plan A, parts 1 and 2.

Since he watched me spin from the age of 2, I started him with the Pocket Wheel, which I forgot to note or mention is a double treadle. Even at a slow ratio, anxiety caused a very coordinated young engineer to flip the flyer left and right. It also has a small orifice and a gentle take up, so anxiety drafting caused slub jams while the flyer continued to flip left and right. And my four minutes were gone in a flash!

Okay, this calls for Plan B:

No time for the spindle, I had better just start with the wheel. The new wheel of choice would have to be my trusty Ashford Joy with only one treadle. I would cue in the musical tap, “Ahh 1-2-3 1-2-3” with a strong downbeat toe and then push up with the heel.

I would also use the new jumbo Freedom flyer with the non-jam-able pigtail style orifice and yarn guide, and large bobbin for stronger take-up. I’d keep the spin, park and draft, but teach it on the wheel. Perfectly rolled rolags, the easiest part of all, should seal the deal.

Next, I made a quick call to a trusted friend, to thoroughly clean dust and vacuum, while I removed everything possible and set up a perfect little studio. I used my triangle loom stand as a hat and scarf rack, my bird’s nest distaff as a shawl stand, my two dolled up dress forms for full outfits, a nice array of wheels around us, and a stack of shawls for my talent to choose from. I thought I was ready.

I didn’t count on them arriving 5 minutes early, but fortunately, Aly looked around and declared she was going to wear my green alpaca hat. Great, I’d wear a hat too, and that took care of my unfinished hair style. I got us both into shawls then proceed to the “lesson”. Her 1-2-3 1-2-3 was encouraging. I stopped the wheel and showed her the draft and the movement of the twist into yarn. Then we both watched the yarn draw into to the wheel as she treadled again, ahh “1-2-3 1-2-3”. This should work!

For my part, all I had to do was spin and explain all about spinning and wool and making projects in my few minutes, after she introduced me. Then, suddenly, we were “live and on the air”.

What I forgot, was to have Aly practice treadling, drafting, and winding on, while talking. The promise she showed before the camera started, quickly stalled as she described how we were sitting there “yarning”. Still she did make a yard of plied yarn beforehand. For my part, it was all so quick I had no clue what I actually said until I saw the clip about six hours later. Watch and see for yourself, not bad!.

More importantly, I also forgot to make sure the camera person knew which things were what. That would have avoided me and Aly looking at and describing the nearby little Pocket Wheel, while the camera focused in on my Joy wheel.

Oh well, it’s “yarning”, so today it won’t be confused with that sport cyclist call “spinning”.

knitting and light

2012-07-25T15:43:00.001-07:00

I recently found a photo, that I took on a much delayed flight. I had suddenly remembered how much I loved the clarity of sunlight. As I was knitting with the shade half down, the sunlight was coming in across my work, and I realized again how much easier it all is with good light.

I'm just about finished with my alpaca handspun shawl. This was the JCC Folkschool project that each member of the mid January class started.

For some it was a letting go of control and patterns and rules. We started spinning Sunday night and Monday we started knitting without much idea of an exact pattern or even what the rest of the yarn would look like. But a triangle top, center down, scarf or shawl can be liberating that way.

Each right-side row needed 4 YOs, 1 at each edge and 2 at the center back. Each wrong-side was to be worked even.

Mornings during the week we spun-loopy mohair boucle yarns, fanciful irregular yarns, colorful just dyed yarns, heirloom cashmere yarns, creating a reference notebook of yarns.
Afternoons and evenings were for spinning, dyeing, knitting as the creative spirit moved from person to person. Students could add any yarn to the scarf/shawl that they wished. Fanciful thin yarns worked just fine if they were carried along with a simple yarn. Amazingly we found that very short yarns could be divided in half and be carried part way on both sides.

Thinking about spring

2012-02-10T13:11:00.001-08:00

Feb. 10, 2012: This winter seems to be sliding by very kindly, thank you very much. Last year was an avalanche of snow and lots of cold wind, but today, already Feb 10th, with maybe only 6 weeks left of snow possibilities. It kinda of takes my breath away.

I am excited for my next trips.

Mar 2-4, 2012 I am off to Arcata, CA with the Humbolt Handweavers and Spinners. This is exciting besides on of my favorites

Silk the Queen of Fibers,

it will be a debut of a new class - Ta-Da -

Spinning the Yarn You Want

I am very excited to push the boundaries so spinners can succeed with the yarn they want not just the yarn the wheel or fiber wants to spin.

Then April 20-22, 2012 I will be at the Yellow Rose Fiber Fiesta in Seguin TX. There the plan is

Fri. Bouclés, a fun time class
Sat. Spin Your Lunch, here we work with Soy, Corn, Milk, and Banana Fibers
Sun. Old & New Rayons featuring Tencel, Sea-cel with seaweed, Bamboo and Viscose

And one week later, April 26-30, 2012I will be at Blowin Rock, NC, very close to where I was born in Jefferson, NC.
There at UnWind knitters Re-TREAT, with the emphasis on TREAT.
My two seminars are

Spinning Quick & Thick this time with Alpaca and a group fiber sandwich
Decoding Designer Yarns Where you'll learn how to unlock the secrets
of repeating a commercial yarn.

Then I get to give the Program this year,

High Tech Fiber & Yarns, a chance to understand more about the fibers and how content affects the yarn, which affect the projects we are working on.

Speaking of Spinning

2011-02-07T19:05:00.000-08:00

This photo shows three skeins spun from the same fleece, a dyed silver Gotland/Corriedale cross. It can be spun into a fine 2-ply worsted shown wound into a ball, or as a medium sized 2-ply semi-worsted shown as a butterfly hank, or even woolen spun into a thick singles as the loose skein.

Full details are in "The Spinner's Challenge - Three Yarns Sizes, One Fleece" found in the Fall 2008 Issue of Shuttle, Spindle & Dyepot.