Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to CA we go!

We're moving. We're really, really moving. We're moving via FedEx (and USPS media mail for the books). This is actually the cheapest way to move, if you don't have really expensive furniture (or can just ship the few pieces you care about some other way) and are willing to sell/give away on one end and scrounge/buy on the other. Tips about FedEx:

• They will pick up from your house. You'll need a commercial account (be sure to get one in advance), but then you can print out labels on your home printer, stick em on, and get someone to pick up the boxes.
  
• Their online system can crash. You can then end up with 500 boxes entered instead of 92 and have to poke their system into being a little more reasonable.
  
• If you try to ship that much stuff, FedEx may very well send someone out really early. They won't be there to pick up your stuff. They're there to check that you're not playing some weird data-entry-based practical joke on them. Then they'll see this:
  
  Then they'll claim to send out a real truck. (I can't vouch for the real truck showing up yet, unfortunately.)
  

In fiber-related news, I finished spinning up virtually all of 8oz of Colonial Wool top. Please, keep in mind that this is the 5th yarn I've ever created and be gentle.

It's a bit underspun, so I treated it a bit roughly so it would full a little bit and help with the structure. I'm feeling ready to tackle a few pounds of BFL fiber for a cabled sweater for myself... once my spinning wheel comes out of a box. (Perhaps once I get a WooLee winder as well. I fear the Joy is probably not the best production wheel out there. I really want something with some higher ratios and a bit more oomph for big projects and to stop changing hooks all the time!)

I've pulled out the hemp from last summer to try to make an honest yarn of it. I've swatched and tweaked a bog jacket into a light summery cardigan.

Unfortunately, sitting in a box all winter has not improved this yarn. It's giving me chemical burns again. I'm not going to be smart and quit while I'm ahead; I'm going to be smart and get myself some latex gloves. Let no one say I'm not determined in pursuit of my art!

To give my hand a break, I'm trading off with socks made from Ellen's Half Pint Farm wool/nylon sock yarn. Aren't they wild? Socks with nylon are often too hard on my feet, besides Mountain Colours and Lorna's Laces, so I'm hoping these work out better than certain other socks.



Just a warning for those of you who are planning to move: moving brings out the evil in your pets!

You spin me right round, baby, right round

I promise, not too many more terrible spinning references, if for no other reason than I'll run out of them soon. Here are a few things I've spun and dried lately: teal/white hand-dyed (my hands, no less) wool/tencel top and purple merino roving.

I was just playing around with these and trying to discover the many secrets involved in spinning yarn that doesn't suck. One lesson from the purple: pre-drafting results in far more even yarn. One lesson from the teal: I rampantly undertwist, so I can't spin a balanced yarn without rampantly underplying.

My current spinning seems to suffer from this problem as well (far more than it has to, as I'm trying to keep it consistently underspun), so I plan to make a cabled DK-weight yarn from it. Once I've spun that up, however, I'm pretty much out of fiber. New Hampshire Sheep&Wool to the rescue! I think that I might just have a little BFL fleece and some bits and pieces of other wools follow me home, wagging their fluffy little tails behind them.

Tagalong spinnity

Something followed me home from knitting group last night. Let's all blame Lucy, ok?

I promise details later, but I spent over 11 hours at work yesterday before knitting group and need to run back over there now. I'm going to assume it's a good thing that work keeps on wanting me to come back, but it's cutting into my toy time!

Called to the dark side

Why, hello there!

The dark side came calling this weekend. Oddly enough, it sounded a lot like Lucy. (Incidentally, she's not kidding about "full service". How many yarn stores will let you walk in dripping wet and offer you a towel?) Lucy's smart about teaching people how to spin. Firstly, she realizes really quickly if her students can't distinguish left and right.

Secondly, after she teaches you how to use the spindle, she lets you have a go at the wheel. Hot damn, is that thing addictive. Thirdly, she has incredibly cool relatives who would distract you if you thought that spinning was hard.

I'm sure that spinning is a lot harder if you're trying to make non-crappy yarn. This is my first yarn, a fluffy worsted-ish weight wool.

A fair bit of the crappiness of that yarn comes from my desire to have a spinning wheel. See, the spinning wheel lets you make the fiber go round and round at the same time you're drawing out bits of it to turn into yarn. As I have an incredibly poor sense of my own limitations, I started trying to do this about five minutes into spinning on the spindle. (I'm pretty sure that Lucy didn't see my poor attempts at this, because I didn't hear her thump on the floor laughing.) My tentative conclusion is that this spindle is not designed for this, because if you spun the spindle with one hand and drew the wool with the other, you'd end up stretched out at arm's length incredibly quickly. As hard as I tried, there's no good way to spin from there. Perhaps if the spindle were heavy enough to spin on its own after you got it started, you could spin standing up... or buy a spinning wheel.

So, I've come full circle (har har). I want a wheel. In particular, I want a wheel that will actually fit in our apartment and that I won't want to get rid of in a few years. I'm looking around for one, but in the meantime I'm spinning away.