~Conspicuous in our absence? Since August 11 I’ve been “run ragged”! Vacation, new grand baby, out-of-town daughters home again, and wonderful grandkids here to visit. To quote the opening line of Charles Dicken’s A Tale of Two Cities, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” The excitement of a vacation, a new grandchild, and seeing my girls and grandkids was exhilarating. At the same time, I’m totally exhausted and just need to sit quietly for awhile. The Introverted Knitter said it best in today’s blog, “I sometimes joke that I have an introvert battery and after prolonged exposure to people it gets drained. It seems to be a fairly accurate description, and also helps others understand what I mean when I say I need alone time.”
Because of the all of the “excitement” in my life, I missed the first two spinning classes. Got all caught up on Wednesday. LOVE those women. It was so nice to see everyone again, forget about spinning let’s get caught up about who did what over the summer. Our teacher, Margaret, rings a bell when she needs to have us quiet down so the newbies in the circle around her can hear. That bell went off a heck of a lot during yesterday’s class.
This session we have a recommended text book – first time ever – The Spinner’s Book of Yarn Designs by Sarah Anderson
The Spinner’s Book Of Yarn Designs
Included are 64 help cards. From the titles of some of the cards you can see the topics covered. I have not torn the cards apart yet.
For those of us who do a lot of Andean Plying, Margaret pointed out an errata on page 79. If you do Andean Plying you’ll see the problem right away. As shown, the ply around the middle finger will bend the finger backwards which will hurt. The yarn needs to be looped around the front towards the palm. That way the tension on the finger will slightly bend it in the direction your finger normally bends, towards the palm.
Our lesson for the week is Hawser Plying, p. 92 which is used to make elastic yarn perfect for cuffs or hat brims. Method: 1. Ply two Z-spun singles together with a Z-twist. (This method uses groups of two). Be forewarned that this makes an extremely twisty yarn. 2. Ply two of the Step 1 Z-plyed together using a S-ply. This will nicely balance out the super twist giving a wonderfully elastic yarn.
Caroline (sp. I can’t remember the correct, but odd, spelling of her name, sorry) had just knit cuffs onto her sweater which were all stretched out. She spun and plyed more of the yarn using the Hawser Plying method, tore out and reknitted the cuffs. Showed us in class how wonderful the new cuffs are, nice and bounce-back stretchy. I don’t make sweaters, but I do make hats. Besides making a sample, I’ll have to spin and Haswer Ply my next hat brim.
Curls and Q 