Etherknitter

Plying: Judith MacKenzie-McCuin #1

I practiced Judith's plying technique today.  Since a full JMM post has been an overwhelming task, breaking it down into parts might get the job done.

I transformed into one of those obnoxious people very early during my SOAR week.  They are the ones who start sentences with "Well, Judith says......".  But spinners understand the reason for the reference.  She has settled into representing a gold standard for technical information. 

If you will turn to chapter 6, page 101 of your handbook, Teach Yourself Visually: Handspinning, you will find a concise pictures of what the hands need to do for making a two-ply yarn.  (Did anyone else make the mistake of thinking her first book was too basic?  Ha.  I thought I was hearing advanced gems from her lips until I came home, looked at her book more closely, and saw that it was all in there.  I am humbled.)

If your yarn goal is a woolen spun yarn, use less twist in the single and more twist in the plying.  The idea of less twist is to make sure the single is not spun into wire in order to hold the fibers together in the single.  Use enough twist to keep the yarn together.  Plying will add strength, especially to downy fibers.  (Shorter staple fibers are what she recommends we choose for woolen spinning.)

If your goal is a worsted spun yarn, the singles should have more twist added during spinning.  She recommends choosing longer stapled fibers, with less crimp.  You can predict that socks and lace are well suited to worsted technique.

None of this is revelatory to more experienced spinners.  She extends the logic.  Everything you do to yarn will change it.  Some of the changes are more subtle.  English and Continental knitters change the twist of the yarn in different directions when they knit.  For throwers, tighter ply will make up for the untwisting that happens when the yarn is looped around the needle.  Pickers need tighter twist in the single to make up for the untwisting that happens when picking up the yarn with the tip of the needle.

Two ply yarns open outward and define stitches.  More definition is obtained.  Three ply yarns bloom inward, to fill in the stitch.  Less definition occurs, but less yarn is necessary to create the garment.  I wrote all this down faithfully, then found it on page 96. 

Judith's nonverbals in class communicated more than what she would write in a published book.   "A Woolee Winder is a fine tool, just not for spinning."  She thinks the wheel is made less responsive by this spinner's helper.  My Woolee Winder will only be pried from my cold, dead hands.  I like mine for plying, and for comfort spinning.  I suspect Judith thinks that a spinner who uses one takes less time and fewer interruptions to inspect the yarn as it is being formed.  That habit can be formed without relying on having to change hooks.  But it does take an extra level of discipline to make that decision and follow through with it.

She dismissed Navajo plying.  While acknowledging its utility in keeping color runs together, she does not call it plying.  It is "a crochet chain with ply twist in it".  I'm tending to agree with her on this one.  I don't like the way the yarn lies between the loops.  The plying twist (in my hands) varies.  I think it reflects light differently than a traditionally plyed yarn.  I'm getting less lazy, and splitting my bobbins by weight or yardage, and then doing a traditional two or three ply.

I purchased a rustic roving that is probably Rambouillet/alpaca.  I spun two bobbins (equal by weight) of slubby yarn, without picking out nepps or VM.  Short backward draw, woolen spun, now in two-ply process on the Golding.  It is being transformed into a soft, open yarn.  I'm liking it.

Poll results and random musings

I assembled the available talent on Saturday (One-Handed-Manise and Killer Connie).  We drove out to Shelburne to Springdelle Farm's Open Farm day.  The Berkshire's trees revealed starkly beautiful bones.  The woods were strewn with brown, dessicated remains of fall glories.  Leaves swirled after our passage; the sky darkened. 

The weather held.  A few stray snowflakes hurried by, too much in a rush to be joined by others.  The official Google-o-meter notes Shelburne at 560 feet above sea level.  Foxfire rests in a higher microclimate.  It was brisk and cold.

I handed the skeins to Barb Parry.  She knew of my dominant/nondominant handed spinning experiment.  Her brow furrowed and she appeared to be lost in thought.  I don't think words were forming in her mind.  I saw impressions, tactile information being processed, hands gathering data that words would not serve.

That is why this was an unfair poll.  You did not get to feel the yarn.  Both were spun worsted.  No twist entered the web.  The skein spun with my left hand forward was relaxed and soft.  The skein spun with my right hand had more twist.  It read to the inquiring hand as less soft.  Wiry is too strong a word, but firm would be a fair descriptor.

She pegged it.  Skein #2, softer, was spun with my left hand forward.  Skein #1 was spun with my right hand forward.

I realized after I plyed and fulled the skeinlets, that it was an unfair experiment.   I drafted more slowly with my right hand forward.  I was more deliberate.  I consciously tried to slow down my feet when I saw corkscrews developing in the single.  You know how hard it is to keep the hands going at one speed, and try to keep the feet going slower than usual.  Inevitably, the feet speed up again.  So my drafting speed relative to twist introduction was much slower with my right hand.  The left hand knew how to keep up.  I could see that I draft a bit more carelessly with my left hand, which keeps up perfectly with my foot speed.  So of course, the left hand skein is more relaxed. 

I don't know how long it would take to create a fair experiment.  Six months of right handed spinning?  A year?  After two weeks, the right hand did not feel peculiar.  What DID feel odd was having my fiber supply on the left side of my chair.

In retrospect, I believe that is why so many of us gravitate to left hand forward.  It has nothing to do with what the left or right hand is doing.  Fiber accessible on the right hand of my chair felt correct.  Fiber sitting on the left hand side of the chair is bizarre.  If you are left hand dominant, I'm guessing that this bothers you less than it bothered me.

My traveling companions voted that I should spin ambidextrous.  Some projects should be right handed, some left.  However, I'm not sure that right handed spinning meets criteria for comfort spinning, or the consistency needed to spin a whole fleece, or spinning yarn for a particular project.  I could see it being useful for spinning lace.  Then, the disadvantages of slowness would be offset by the advantages of more careful drafting, and more twist allowed to develop in the single.

I wrote this post before receiving the comments yesterday and today.  There was a whack of wisdom and good sense in many observations.  Anne and Lynn asked how the yarn would be purposed.  I smacked my rhetorical forehead.  Yeah.  Those little skeinlets were spun without use-intention.  Only technique-intention is incorporated in them.  So judging them catapults you, the viewer, into a similar vacuum.  Caroline addressed this more directly in suggesting that evaluation can't happen without swatching. 

Despite my fervent intentions, the experiment isn't over.

Votes for skein #1 (right hand):  72%    Votes for skein #2 (left hand): 17%    No preference:  11%

An experienced spinner commented recently (Judith?  Carol Rhoades?) that spinners like the look of tighter twist, but like using and wearing yarns that are softer.  The voting points to that.

I had the pleasure of meeting the sheep who produced my Cummington blue ribbon Cormo/Border Leicester X fleece.  Her name is Lovey.  She was friendly, but aloof.  Holly lured her with hay.

Your vote counts!

The last blog post of NaBloPoMo couldn't get better than spinner's show and tell, followed by audience participation.  I've worked furiously all month to reach this point.  (It is happy coincidence that everything came together today.)

I have two skeinlets to show you.  Each was spun using a short forward worsted draw.  The two skeins were spun from the last part of the Border Leicester roving.  That means that the example given is the most practiced portion of my right handed spinning. 

Each skein was sized by the same number of ballwinder turns off the bobbin.  They were each double plyed from a centerpull ball.

Our contestants are being called Skein #1 and Skein #2 to disguise their identities.  You will see a close shot of each, then a skein view in the poll that follows. 

Tomorrow, I will reveal the identities of our contestants, unblind the results of the polls, and discuss why this is probably the least fair election in recent blog history.

So here is the poll.  Which skein do you like best?

GlowDay.com

Right hand, left hand

Seventeen days!  I'm stunned that I haven't run out of blogfodder.  (A small list sits by the computer, and I'm crossing off items, adding possibilities.  For one month, this is fun.)

The comments from the switching hands post intrigued me.   This will be the first Judith post.  She was the instigator for investigating handedness.

Judith MacKenzie stated without equivocation that spinners should have their dominant hand as the hand nearest the orifice.  The nondominant hand should be controlling the fiber supply. 

Lots of people offer opinions on many issues.  If you are attentive to their nonverbals, they really are just running an idea up a flagpole, and expecting it to be shot down.  Not Judith.  All her communication modes (face, hands, expressions, posture and words) were consistent with absolute belief in what she was saying.  A spinner's dominant hand will produce better yarn.  The muscles have more dexterity and finer control.  That side of the brain is already trained in dominance for multiples of tasks.  She fell short of saying that no amount of retraining would ever bring the nondominant side up to speed, but that belief oozed from all her pores.

She acknowledged how difficult it was to switch hands midway through a spinning career.  She did it.  Her yarn became better yarn.

Can you picture the firestorm of discussion at Rhinebeck about this?  Switching hands makes spinning feel like WORK.

Margene captured the arguments best.  Why am I spinning?  Is making technically perfect yarn one of the goals?  Isn't the point of spinning to be enjoying the process involved in making yarn?  Most of us are making pretty reasonable, useable yarn at this point.  Is going back to the beginning worth the illusory goal of better yarn?  Most of us wondered if this might be something Judith believes as spinner's myth rather than based in fact. 

Science has yet to definitively identify what genetic and developmental factors create left handed or right handed people.  A gene (LRRTM1) has been linked with handedness.  Many factors are involved, and discussed in Right Hand, Left Hand, by Chris McManus.  (It's actually a far-ranging, informative, and interesting read, if you are into this sort of musing.) 

He offers that 80% of people are born with the right handed gene.  Unless something unfortunate happens to their right arm or hand (in utero or early in life), they emerge as right handed people.  The other 20% do not have the gene for right handedness.  In the absence of genetic programming, these folks end up choosing a dominant side.  Half choose the right, half choose the left, which accounts for the ~10% of left handed people.  McManus does not satisfactorily explain why many left handed people are more comfortably ambidextrous than most right handers.  This article presents a quick summary of these ideas.

I am unequivocally right handed.  My job, however, has forced my left hand to be smart.  By convention, it is the hand that holds the mask that administers oxygen and anesthesia gases.  Given different face shapes, presence or absence of teeth, excess weight, jawbone differences, this is a skill that takes years to develop into fine competence.  The tool used to insert breathing tubes is also held in the left hand.  That requires dexterity and strength, as well as accuracy.  (Patients expect teeth to be left intact, so it is another skill that takes months and years to perfect.)

I have a pretty smart left hand.  However, the hand is only part of the story.  What needs to happen in the brain, the nondominant side?

In June, I wrote about stranded knitting skills, left hand, right hand:

"Neural pathways involved in learning seem to need two steps.  The first, short-term step of engaging brain cell connections already present, makes the beginning parts of new skills possible.  The part that takes time is making new proteins and new connections between brain cells.  That involves making new molecules, very much like bulking up muscle.  It doesn't happen in one weight-lifting session, or one session with the needles. 

One long ... session is less effective than multiple short sessions..."

The question is, can the nondominant side of the brain ever match the dominant side in a given, practiced task?

I suspect not.  That's why I'm giving this a try.  Judith doesn't know the neuroscience, but she probably is absolutely right.  I am trying this to see if it is possible to switch my spinning to the side of the brain with better, stronger, denser nerve cell connections.  If it is too annoying, I will concede to my left hand.  I will continue to educate my nondominant side as well as I can.  But I will always wonder if I'm okay with not making my best yarn possible.

That's why I have to complete this right handed experiment.

And in irony of ironies, our strongest advocate for left handed spinning is now spinning right handed.

Right handed spinning

The experiment continues.  This week was all about "I owe, I owe, it's off to work I go....", and less about the spinning.

Right hand forward started out feeling horrible.  Horrendous.  A rapid transition to dysphoric occurred.  When I thought about sitting at the wheel to relax, I knew comfort wasn't there in my right hand technique this week, so I didn't.

Now it just feels weird.  I'm not even through one of the four Border Leicester ounces.  This is a small plyback from this morning.  It's not shabby.  The experiment continues.

Comfort spinning

This is yarn I spun before I knew how to spin.

In typical Etherknitter fashion, I'm overstating the point to make the point.  These yarns were lovely comfort spins.  I didn't plan a drafting technique, a yarn grist or an end purpose before I sat down at the wheel.  My internal goal was to create a yarn with enough twist in the singles to give me a two or three-ply yarn.  I want all my handspun to be seductive objects of desire that will make a knitter weep with joy and envy.  Then I sit down, and something else entirely different often materializes on my bobbins.

Blue is Colonial wool.  It was spun in 2007, plyed in 2008.  A center pull ball was doubled around a felt ball, then twist was added by running the doubled singles through the wheel.  It is 228 yards of 2-ply.

The green is Ashland Bay merino 80%/mohair 20%, repackaged by Carolina Homespun.  I have struggled with mohair blends in the past.  The mo does not draft evenly, so I produce rustic yarn.  After deciding that this roving would be whatever it would be, the drafting was effortless, and the yarn was smooth.  (I know there is nothing wrong with rustic yarn, but I like smooth better.)  It was another lesson that Ashland Bay products are of excellent quality.   Mohair prep comes in various consistencies.  I've been blaming my drafting technique for problems created by poor preparation of roving blends.  This was Navajo plyed (3ply).  My records have failed me, so I cannot discuss yardage.  It is probably in the 200+ yard range, also.  (Ten centimes Euro coin in photo for scale.  It is similar in size to a US nickel.)  It was spun and plyed summer, 2008.

I'm working on the JMM post.  I've also committed to spinning with my dominant hand as my orifice hand for one week. 

At the Gathering this weekend just past, I took 9 hours of classes with Carol Rhoades.  She is an excellent spinner and teacher.  The classes covered blending with wool and exotic fibers, and spinning for Arans and FairIsles.  That, too, will be a separate post.

SOAR 2008 #1

This is exactly as impossible as Charlene said it would be.  She shook her head when I asked her how people blog this, and smiled ruefully.  Maybe she smiled sadly.

I understand now.

I was in the three day workshop on Spinning and Knitting Estonian Lace, taught by Judith MacKenzie-McCuin, and Nancy Bush.  Judith handed us a skein of 850 yards of laceweight rambouillet from her flock.  Nancy had us wind it into a centerpull ball, by hand, on our thumb.  We alternated knitting Estonian patterns with spinning bootcamp for lace for the next three days.

I came in prepared to scoff at worsted spinning.  I had always thought it was too slow, too unrewarding, too limited a technique to think about seriously.  After three days, I understand the technique, the uses, how to do it, why to do it.  I can evaluate whether worsted or woolen will suit a given fiber and project.  Spinning with intention has deeper meaning.

She deconstructed the techniques I have been using.  It is certainly possible to literally spin backwards.  I did that while plying lace, and had a fix on my hands.  She taught us to master such dilemmas easily.  I made backwards progress because now I know what I am doing poorly (wrong?) and what I need to do to fix it.  I need some relearning.  This makes me very happy.

SOAR is like summer camp for spinners.  Intense immersion really rewires the neural pathways, and digs that learning deep into your soul.

I knew few other than my group of intrepid travelers.  By the end of the first day, that mattered not at all.  Words are worthless.  I suppose I will have to do this in visuals.

Knitting tools are whatever you happen to have at hand.  Cheryl is using her thumb and knees as ballwinder and swift.

Nancy Bush is teaching us the finer points of nupps in the second frame.  Judith and Nancy are modeling Haapsalu Estonian shawls at the conclusion of the workshop.  She had a copy of her new book on Estonian lace knitting for us to preview.  It is excellent.

Abby is spinning on her new Lendrum.  It came equipped with a special flyer.  Gord Lendrum said it provides a ratio of 60:1.  The only brake on the bobbin is the friction of air.

Stop and think about that for a moment.

There are about 20 in existence.  Abby is spinning cotton.

This is Gord Lendrum and Jan Louet looking at a pocket wheel from Washington state.  They took it apart, put it back together, becoming boys again figuring out how the wheel maker did what he did, and why.  The building could have burned down around them and they would not have noticed.

Kim was wearing an Orenburg shawl.  I stuck my foot in it: 

Etherknitter:  Did you BUY that from Galina??  WOW.

Kim:  No.  I knit it.

Etherknitter:  *pulling foot out of mouth*  What yarn did you use?

Kim:  I spun the cashmere, and used a second ply of reeled silk from Treenway.

Etherknitter (after an uncharacteristic moment of stunned silence):  How long did it take?

Kim:  A year. 

I don't remember what I said next.  I left a burnt offering in worship at her door early the next morning.  I plan on appeasing this goddess in whatever manner she wishes so that she does not smite me for my knitting transgressions and stupidities.

The shawl in the picture is handspun mohair and reeled silk.  Another Orenburg.  *yawn*  (Go ahead, Kim, smack me good.)

I met a remarkable group of talented people.  I learned bottom whorl spindling (Abby), how to spin mohair without needing carpal tunnel surgery afterwards (Robin Russ0).  I spun my first cashmere (Robin again).  I learned dyeing techniques and algorithms (Sara Lamb).  I learned blending with silk (Judith MacKenzie).  I spent enough continuous time so that I FINALLY got lace.  I finished the center of my shawlet at dinner, at breakfast, yes, in public.   (The nupps were a mere speed bump on that path.) 

Nancy Bush told us that we could not have dinner and we were not allowed to sleep until the shawlet and edging were done.  We would sew them together during the last day of the workshop.  (She was barely kidding.)  The other SOARites pitied us.  All that homework.  The first night it was spinning.  But all that knitting??  I'm sure many wiped their foreheads in relief that they did not take THAT workshop.

When Deb Menz assigned a large bump of merino on Thursday to all her retreat participants, there was an equal amount of plaintive whining.  Homework had gotten a miserable reputation.  But one DID need something to ply, so the labours began.

Marcy approached this task differently.

She baited the gathering room with wine.  She lured in various spinners.  Then she set up her Alden Amos wheel. 

Can you picture this?  Every spinner on the planet wants to try an Alden Amos wheel.  She had her bump of merino set up, and spinner after spinner sat down and did her homework for her.  Deb Menz watched all this, and laughed at the Tom Sawyerly twist that events had taken.

Until she, too, wanted to try the Alden Amos.  And ended up helping Marcy finish her homework.  Someone has a picture of this.  PLEASE leave a link in the comments.

Everything I had dreamed about SOAR came to life.  And more.

Handspun

Mr. Etherknitter thanks you for your encouragement, warnings, and advice.  He had an excellent postop visit last week.  His incision is healing as expected.  He doubts he will take up knitting any time soon.  I, frankly, am relieved.  If he had ventured into the fibery ocean, I suspect he would have headed straight for my qivuit.  I'm not sure our relationship would have survived that.

In the category of "Why?  Because we can!"  I have spun a Very Large skein of sock yarn.  I had a big hank of Blue Moon Fiber Arts Sheep to Shoe, colorway Lapis. 

The instructions are clear.  Divide the 8.5 ounce braid into three equal pieces.  I whipped out my drug dealer's scale, and had three long ponytails that differed by 8 grams at worst.  I dithered.  Is this exact enough?  When I took a less critical, more dispassionate look at the fiber, I could see that no matter how I spun the roving, it was dyed in such a way as to barberpole at random. 

I relaxed.  The Lendrum Saxony loved this fiber.  It hummed.  I sang.  Months later (okay, maybe only weeks), I had three bobbins of laceweight singles.  I wound them onto separate storage bobbins to restore the singles to the beginning of the colorway progression so that the colors would march as closely as BMFA intended.

Plying happened.  I cast on the sock last night.  It is coming to SOAR with me.

The yarn LOOKS good, but doesn't feel lush.  Overspun?  It is definitely not overplyed.  Inadequately fulled?  I will have a stunning array of spinning talent inspect its flaws next week.  And, I will come home a better spinner.  I'm taking the Judith McKenzie-McCuin/Nancy Bush class.  I'm hoping I can survive this group of people who never sleep, rarely pause to eat, drink endless swill, and spin nonstop.                                                    

Digging deep into bottomless spinning pits

This is the Year of Order.  I am decluttering, tossing, cleaning, organizing. 

No one told me that stash had many parts.  They snickered as my stash grew.   The yarn came first.  Then the needles were followed by patterns.  When the spinning came, the roving and fleeces stacked up like planes approaching O'Hare.  Without warning, yarn can now be subdivided into discrete categories.  Sock yarn became a colossus unto itself.

Organize. 

Julia led me down the bunnycrack path when she gave me a spinning lesson in 2005.  Cataloguing stash items brought two ounces of purple and lavender Kim merino/angora back into awareness.  (The exercise of cataloguing intends to do exactly that:  pinch the memory into remembering what lies beneath the first layers.)  The picture above is each ball spun separately, then two-plyed into 209 yards of softness.  Someday I will cease to be lazy, and document whorl, WPIs, and other technical information.  That day is not today. 

Another archival fiber is two ounces of fawn alpaca top.  I bought this at Cummington, 2005, in the full throes of wannabe spinner alpaca lust.   

Top is really a wonderful spin.  It was easy and sleek and soft. 

I am having lots of fun with Ten Minutes a Day spinning.

Sadly Blogless Manise has no soapbox on which to display her FOs.  When knitting, pattern, color, yarn and face all converge into perfection, the event MUST be blogged. 

Fickle Fingers scarf:  I'm relying on her to leave the yarn and pattern details in the comments.

Etherply

Gardens are a living river marking the flow of time.  One can sense the hurry, the frenetic pace of budding, flowering, fruiting, all before it is too cold and too late.  My lupine is hollering at the top of her lungs right now:  "ME!  Look at me!  Look at ALL of me!  Even just ONE of my flowers must tempt you!"

Twelve bobbins of Coopworth singles.  A different kind of abundance, spun over thirteen months.   I planned three ply, from three bobbins.  (I did not want the texture of Navajo plying.  The little knots where you loop the yarn change the yarn, as does trapping the twist in each section between knots.)

I measured and weighed the singles as I finished each bobbin.  Calculations loomed.  It wouldn't be hard, just boring, I thought.  Figure out yards per gram, and match groups of three so that the resulting yarn was as uniform as possible.  Who can knit to gauge if the skeins are variously worsted, DK weight, AND light aran?  I wanted worsted weight.

I started the calcs.  After about fifteen minutes, and a notepad full of numbers that I had to start organizing, I turned to home talent.  I asked Mr. Etherknitter to write me a quick calculator program that sorted the bobbins as I described.

Quick.  Ha.  He told me that the problem starts out as 12 factorial choices.  That means that the number of possibilities are 12 x 11 x 10 x 9 x 8 x 7 x 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = whatever.  There were 15,400 unique possibilities.   I ruefully laughed at the idea that I had started to calculate this by hand.  Two weeks later, he gave me a program that performs the math AND has a polished user interface for the application. 

I am sharing his work with the spinning world.  My fiber consultants think I am obsessing.  Can I really be the only person on the face of the spinning planet who has spun multiples of bobbins and wants to ply to make uniform skeins?  Even if you have only four bobbins, and plan two skeins of 2 ply yarn, this eliminates the math (you would have 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 possibilities, not all unique, but all tedious to calculate by hand).

The program is here.  Feedback to improve the interface is invited and welcome.