Catching up: anemone

Started off with this merino, the first painted top I ever bought:

It’s lovely stuff, and I hesitated to spin it until I got my Bosworth spindle. That spindle deserved a good fiber to get broken in.

I can fit quite a bit on the little Bossie before I have to remove the cop from the spindle. I happily have a set of chopsticks that are the same size as the tip of the spindle’s shaft, so I can just slide the cop directly onto a chopstick and then just keep spinning. But I try to get as much in place as I can before I do that. I think I actually spun quite a bit more after this picture was taken before I transferred the cop to the chopstick.

I made a plying ball and I’ve started plying it, but plying is kind of uninteresting to me, so it’s been exactly like this for at least a week…

This is absolutely fingering weight, though, so I will be making a pair of socks from this. And it’s so soft…

Catching up: allspunup

The seller (allspunup) doesn’t name her colorsmushes, so I’ll just have to go by ‘allspunup’ for this stuff, which is a 60/40 merino/bamboo blend.

I started with this:

This project went through quite a bit. I started off spinning it on my malachite spindle, which was just peachy:

Until I broke the whorl (as recounted earlier):

I finished it up, happily, when the seller of the spindle replaced the whorl for me (also recounted earlier):

I set out to make this a three-ply yarn, and I’d even split up the fiber as evenly as I could before spinning it up. I put each of the three singles onto their own bobbin and then wound from the bobbins into a plying ball. Of course, none of the singles were the same length as the others, leading to this picture:

I did figure out a way to waste only a couple feet of singles. Because I know you worried about it.

In any case, this was the final skein, shiny bamboo in it and all:

Now here comes the most exasperating part of this whole thing. I had targeted a 3-ply yarn, which I now had. Unfortunately, it wasn’t fingering-weight at all. It was more of a DK weight, or maybe a sport weight. So socks were out.

I tried making socks out of them anyway. Knit almost a whole sock, twice, but even with an ankle cuff instead of a leg on the sock, it was clear that I didn’t quite have enough to knit a pair of socks. So I finally settled on a pair of mittens. Of course, I’m not actually done with them yet, but I did want to get a picture showing how beautifully the colors knit up. In fact, it’s the whole reason for this post. So here we go:

I’m pretty confident that I’ll have enough for the second mitten, but it’s such an inexact science figuring that out… Cross your fingers for me.

Catching up: harvest

I started off with this ‘harvest’ oatmeal BFL:

Michelle (Bonnie’s sister) came to visit in July and showed some interest in my spinning, so I broke out this roving and spun up a bobbin’s worth in a couple of days. That’s this:

I like this stuff because the underlying oatmeal color brings a depth to the color that is sometimes lacking in some fiber. I like it enough that I’d like to get some undyed oatmeal fiber and spin it up all by itself. I’ve been thinking more and more about using the natural colors of the wool instead of messing around with these hand-dyed bits of top, but then I look at the colors currently on my Bossie and realize I can’t stay mad at the dye jobs. I’ll post some of that in the next few days.

Of course, I haven’t finished up the rest of the ‘harvest’ top because I’m becoming more and more project-polygamous. I used to only have one project in progress at any given time, but right now I have

* a pair of mittens
* two pairs of socks
* some superwash BFL I’m spinning into sock yarn (on the Bossie)
* the above BFL, which I really ought to finish
* some merino singles which are already in a plying ball, but not yet plied–although I did get a few yards onto my plying spindle

all in progress.

I’m not sure which is better. I used to get projects done because I focused on them. On the other hand, sometimes I just don’t feel like touching a given project and it’s nice to be able to take a break from endless stockinette. I’ll think about it.

Catching up: juniper

Some people have complained at me that I haven’t updated my blog forever, so here goes. I will try to post a few of the things I’ve been working on, but haven’t posted. We’ll start with the “juniper” BFL, which started out like this:

But now looks like this:

I’m thinking this would make some nice mittens for a little girl who loves purple. Like Cambria.

To be honest, this sat in a plying ball for weeks because I really haven’t caught the love of plying. I have another plying ball that I have sort of ignored for a while now, but I should really get it finished up. It is yarn for socks, after all, and I do love my socks.

Beginning Bookbinding

Ever since I read The Name of the Rose back in my early college days, I have been fascinated by the art of making books, especially handmade books.  The idea of making a painstaking copy of the text, in full calligraphy, through the careful illuminations and on to the final made-to-last binding hit the romantic streak in me.  I played around with calligraphy for a bit, and I still dabble in it from time to time.  I have kept a journal with pen and ink off and on.

Anyway, I mentioned that I wanted to learn bookbinding one day while with some friends and one of them pointed me to Hollander’s.  After some hemming and hawing about what to order from them, I finally bought this kit.  Last night, I started work on the kit.  And finished, too.  I didn’t expect to finish it all in one night, but here’s what I got.

This is showing that when I built the textblock, I didn’t just glue it.  This is a sewn spine, reinforced with glue and a super (a sort of mesh glued into the back of the spine as a support).

Here you can see the tops of the signatures, six of them.  Each had four sheets of paper, which are then folded into 8 edges and sewn together, which makes 16 pages, front and back.  That’s a 96-page journal.

It’s not perfect, of course.  This is my most glaring mistake, where I cut the mitre too close to the top of the board.

And this one, where the pastedown on the right-hand side of the photo doesn’t get as close to the edge of the cover as I would have liked.

But, even with those mistakes (which I have seen on professionally-bound books, so I don’t feel too terrible about them), I am quite pleased with how my first attempt turned out.  I do believe I will be doing some more of this.

It’s Riding Time!

Yep, today was the first nice riding day I’ve had this year.

Notice that I didn’t say it was the first day I’ve ridden this year.  I had a goal to ride it at least once per month all through the winter.  I almost made it–but February was just too freakin’ cold.

I might have to schedule a vacation day for myself where I just ride it.  I could head down to Utah Lake and ride all the way around it easily enough.  Nice views and the goal would be simple enough.

Or maybe see about heading north somewhere.  I could take it out to the Spiral Jetty, for instance, and take some pictures out there.

The last time I drove all the way here was in my little Ford Escort.  I think the motorcycle would probably be able to handle the roads better than my tiny car did.

In any case, I’m ready for spring.  Enough with the snow, it’s riding time!

My First Rocket

…although it might be clear that I didn’t pick the colors.  We had some metallic green paint in the garage that I wanted to use, but Aurora said that it wouldn’t be her rocket if we did that.  Fine, I hmphed to myself.  And so we bought pale pink.

She launched it yesterday at school.  I didn’t make it there to watch, but when she came home, all of the fins were ripped off of the rocket.   Aurora said that they came off when they launched it with an ‘A’ motor, which disappointed me.  I spent some time wondering out loud if we should have used more glue, a different type of glue, additional struts of material and so forth.  I was trying to console myself with the idea that this was, after all, my first rocket, and I would probably get better in the future.

Then she admitted that she had dropped the rocket prior to launch and broken one of the fins off–but she had taped it back on!  With lots of tape!

I think I have some idea now of why this rocket had a bit of a failure…

Already thinking about my next project

… because I finally finished this one

Yep, this is the final result from the fiber I was spinning on the spindle that broke.  I plied it up over the past week or so, washed it to set the twist, and it’s finally dried today.

I had been shooting for a fingering-weight yarn, and this is more of a sport-weight, but I can’t really complain too much about how it turned out.  The bamboo is magical in how it adds sheen, and this stuff is really soft.  Now I just have to figure out what I’m going to do with 280 yards of sport-weight.  I may try to do some ankle socks for my wife–maybe she’ll like the feel of this better than the wool/nylon socks I’ve made for her in the past.  I would be sad not to wear this myself, though.  I think it’s purty.

More on the photo project

I did some testing today.  Here are some shots from Alaric’s paper route, the first of each pair at 18mm and the second at 50mm.

Interesting how the focus of the whole photo changes, isn’t it?  The first seems to be trying to include the clouds and the second seems to be a little more focused on the near house and the far mountains.

Same kind of thing here.  The 18mm photo shows a sweeping expanse of clouds, backlit by the sun.  The second shows a distant mountain/island in the Great Salt Lake.

These two don’t show nearly as much difference as the previous sets, except that the second one seems to have some trouble with white balance.    I’ll have to ponder on why this is.  Any ideas?

Also, I must admit that this is probably stuff that Mr Stauffer taught me back in 1987, but which the intervening years have somehow erased.  Still, it’s fun to learn, even if it’s relearning.

The photo project

I thought it would be a fun project to take a photo from the same place at least once per week for a year.  This spot is on my son’s paper route, which means I would be there on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  Of course, I missed last week due to my recovery from the surgery, so I’ve already blown it.  But I’m going to keep trying to get at least one per week anyway.

One thing that I’ve been wrestling with is that when I’m standing there on Cardiff Way, the steepness of the hill I’m standing on is evident, but it doesn’t translate very well to the photo.  I think it’s because I’m pulling the lens as wide as it will go (18mm) in order to try to get as much landscape in the photo as I can.  The twilight photo at the bottom was taken at around 50mm, and I think it shows a more true representation of what I see in person.

See the difference?

This has nearly convinced me that I need to buy a 50mm lens and ditch the zoom lens.  It makes me cheat a lot when I can zoom, and I think the laziness is starting to show in my photos.