Monday, February 18, 2008

Just a bit overspun.


I was doing all right - I think - until the bobbin filled up and I got a wild hair and decided to Navajo/chain ply it. Which I've never done before in my life. And I'm doing it with an overspun single. (My thought on that idea was something like "I want to try this before I know too much and decide it's hard.") I seem to be getting the hang of it, but damnation are the first couple dozen yards ugly.

Haven't knit a stitch in two days. I've been giggling with glee over the spinning wheel. The Goober, being Grandchild of Gadget Man, wants to take the whole thing apart and figure out how it works. She stuck her finger in the drive band earlier today. Good times.

Someone asked me a few days ago about my swift, which is visible in the background of many of the photos I take here in my office. It's a Becka swift. I looooove it. Love love love. To use it, you drop the yarn skein over it. That's it. No messing around, no fixing it to a table, no nothing. Just use it. Of course, it takes up quite a bit of space because it doesn't fold up like umbrella swifts do, but that's fine. I'll sacrifice the space for ease of use, every time.

The second round of hibiscus yarn is coming out of the dye pot soon, probably tomorrow. There's an idea in the back of my head for a complex but potentially cool random dye method, but I need the hibiscus pot before I can try it. And I'm gonna start doing painted superwash wool top for sale, too. Now that I've found somewhere affordable to get it.

I'll probably re-open my Etsy shop sometime this week. Yay?

There was also a question in the comments about the light blue table in my office, the one behind the futon.

The origin of this table is shrouded in family history, but the bottom line is, I suspect my father-in-law swiped it from somewhere. He's a bit vague on the details. I do know it was originally a 'library table', standing about chest high, to put books on. When he, ah, aquired it, he sawed the legs off to coffee table height, and the husbeast's family used it as such for many, many years (at the time it was a sage green). When we got married, I was encouraged to go through the basement at my in-laws' for any furniture that struck my fancy, and I fell in love with the table and claimed it as my own. That was, uh, like 1992. I painted it light blue and we used it as a coffee table. At one point while living in Hawaii, we bought new furniture, and the blue coffee table wound up in my office as a knitting table. And there it has remained. I suspect this thing is mahogany under the twenty layers of paint; sure looks like it on the underside. It's got dry rot or something not good, and the glue has come out of the joints and the whole thing is wobbly - that's why it's in the corner like it is. (When I took the photo, I had to stop and straighten the legs first.)

For those complaining about all the cool stuff I'm leaving out of the color articles (like how I totally forgot to discuss blue food colorings in the last one), rest assured, I'm probably going to wind up going through the spectrum again, adding everything I forgot this time, or learned after writing. (Didja know the word 'gurantee' comes from the Spanish word for madder, because at the time it was the only colorfast dye for fabric?) Then there are going to be a couple OTHER articles, about color in general. Because I am reading WAY. TOO. MUCH. The husbeast asked me a question tonight about lights shining through filters, and I said, "Oh, that's subtractive color mixing, not additive like paint." and he stared at me and said "You know way too much about this stuff."

Heeheehee.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

am i first? holy shit. awesome.

anyway, thx for the blue table info. i inherited my great-grandmother's black table (too narrow for dining, too wide for a console, just right for portraits) -- and it's covered in the original black paint with some reddish wood peeking through. It definitely has that rickety "i'm really old" feel, but i found a company that was able to ship it to me (1500 miles) without nary a problem.

the local delivery guy, now that's another story. i had to go all common on him to give up, er, deliver, my table. cuz you know he just looked at the box and figured, mmmm, i could make money selling whatever's in it.

anyway, thanks!

ps -- sometimes a knitting break is necessary to restore the love

pps -- i will buy something from the etsy shop!

roxie said...

Love the truncated gate-leg library table. And I smile and smile at the overspun singles. That's spinning with zest. Go, baby, go! There's no wrong way to do it as long as it works!

Amy Lane said...

Wow. You have been hella busy! I'm spending my days being a walking recliner for the phlem ridden, and you? You're an interactive fiber and dye encyclopedia! (But *sniff* for the Goober...I know that every time we go to our LYS I have to haul my kids away from the spinning wheel... It's just so pretty and interesting, mama!!!)

I can't wait until you knit up what you spin. Wheeeeeee!!!

Anonymous said...

I didn't mean to complain, honest! he he he.

I love the blue table, too. I'm glad it lives in your home now. My coffee table is a home-made thing that came from the University when the kids left for summer. It's awesome.

Trish