Commercial Break

I just wanted to pop in and let you know that I have launched an exciting new project, and I could use your help.

I am developing a new web series about fibre and the people who raise it, process it, and work with it called Fibre Optic Television. I am very excited about this project, even though the size and scope of it seem a little overwhelming at times.

If you want some more information about what I'm up to, you can like my Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Fibre-Optic-Television/367460223365034

Or you can check out my Indiegogo fundraising campaign: http://igg.me/p/409743/x/224608 and maybe even throw a couple of bucks my way to get this thing up and running.

Hopefully, if a few people are willing to help cover the travel and production costs, I will have this series recorded and ready to air by early January, 2014.  I'm really excited and I hope I can get the rest of the fibre world excited, too.  Spread the word!

And stay tuned to a computer near you...

We will now return you to our regularly scheduled blog.

California Odyssey Part Two: Ventura and Points Beyond

When we last left the tale of my California Odyssey, I had packed my bags and trundled my new loom into my rented chariot and travelled down the mountain to Ventura.  I was, all of a sudden, in a new town without adult supervision.

Ventura is a lovely little city on the California coast, just north of the Malibu area. I had rented a cottage that turned out to be in a lovely little spot on top of a hill just above the Mission, walking distance from downtown and the beach. It was a quiet and extremely charming spot, with a huge garden that was constantly filled with the singing of birds and the buzzing of hummingbirds. I had a view of orange groves up the side of a mountain, and a wee glimpse of the ocean. But mostly, I had solitude.

You see, I am writing a book. THERE! I put it on the interwebs for all to see. I am writing a book about spinning. I do not have a publishing deal, I do not have an agent, and, frankly, I do not have a deadline. But, I am writing.

I had started chipping away at an outline and an early draft in January, but life being life, there were too many distractions.  I got the flu, we had medical appointments, there was laundry to be washed. Life. And a wee bit of procrastination. So we figured a change of scenery, a break in the routine, would be the answer.

Turns out it was. I wrote every morning until I ran out of words, or until my fingers started to cramp from the typing. Then I went on an adventure.

I would walk down to the Mission...

 
or out to Surfer's Point...

I walked on the State Beach...

...or out on the pier ...

And I had bigger adventures, too.

Through one of the women I met in my class in Ojai, I was introduced to Randy, a spinner from Santa Barbara, who invited me up to her community for a day. So, one drizzly morning, I set out for Santa Barbara, where I had a marvellous visit with Randy and a tour of that gorgeous city. The rain had lifted by the time I got to Santa Barbara, and we talked fibre and spinning before heading for lunch on the terrace of El Encanto. We continued to talk fibre and spinning through lunch, when we were not distracted by the incredible view. And we talked fibre and spinning as we drove around and explored Santa Barbara until it was time for me to head home. And, I TOOK NOT ONE PICTURE. No, not a one, so I have to rely on my already sketchy memory to remind me of the beautiful day. Or, maybe, I will just have to go back.

Then there was more writing and more meandering around Ventura. I discovered the whereabouts of the local Trader Joe's and stocked up on some of my favourite goodies there. I rambled through the shops downtown and treated myself to some new clothes. I even checked out the Local Yarn Shop--Anacapa Fine Yarns, (which leads to another story that I will tell later, because it is not a story about Ventura or the lovely folks at Anacapa). Did I mention there was writing? I know I have a lot to say about yarn, but...WOW. I have a LOT to say about yarn.

After a couple of days of just hanging out, I set out on another adventure, this time with one of my classmates from the weaving class. We went to Solvang to visit Village Spinning and Weaving. Solvang is a stunning drive north from Ventura along the Pacific Coast and a quick turn inland, where you suddenly find yourself in a totally different world. Solvang's architecture and layout is based on a Danish village, so you see things like...

...windmills on the main drag...

...and Hamlet square.

The downtown area is filled with lovely little boutiques and quirky shops, and, of course, Village Spinning and Weaving, where no small amounts of time and money were spent. We had lunch, then meandered the non-spinning-and-weaving shops for a while, then discovered that it was farmer's market day.

Now, I am a bit of a farmer's market junkie. I cannot walk away from one empty-handed. I went to the farmer's market in Ojai, I had been to the one in Ventura just days before, but we had to poke along through this one, too. So I managed to toddle on home from Solvang with plenty of yarn and a big sack of strawberries and veggies.

More writing and beach strolling, with a bit of weaving in the sunshine...

...filled up my week, and before I knew it, it was time to move on again.

I was actually a little sad to leave Ventura and my little nest, but that didn't last too long because my next stop was Disneyland!

Stay tuned...

California Odyssey Part One: Navajo Weaving

Hey!

I'm back.

You may recall that when I last checked in, I was in a bit of a funk. Not so much a funk as a period of distraction. I was not interested in spinning or knitting, I couldn't write a coherent sentence to save my soul, and I was flitting about, keeping busy doing nothing.

I will freely admit that I did plan a period of nothing in my life after the stress overdose of the past few years, but I had no idea it would be so...well...boring and crazy-making.

Fortunately for me, though, the brilliant man that I married saw this coming and sort of forced and adventure on my restless spirit. He was getting a little tired of me saying that I would write a book someday and then spending my days baking bread and folding laundry into shapes that would make an origami master green with envy. He wanted me to focus, and I couldn't focus when there were distractions like trying to find a way out of walking the dog when it's 30 below. And he knew that it would take an adventure to snap me out of my funk. So he gave me a budget and set me loose on Expedia.

I looked at The Tropics and Europe and Asia. I pondered a snowy cabin in the woods, and a spa in the desert. And I finally decided that I would go to Arizona. ("Wait!", you say, "Isn't this about a CALIFORNIA odyssey?" Yes. Yes it is. Hang in there, I'm getting to it.)

I hunted for plane tickets and vacation rentals and museums and libraries and all the things to do in Arizona. And one of the things that drifted through my searching was a Navajo weaving workshop in Canyon de Chelly. This one little thing piqued my interest in all things string that had been laying dormant for so long, and I started to hunt around for information about the tour and the instructors. This led to the discovery that the same instructors were leading a workshop in Ojai, California the week prior to the Canyon de Chelly class. A longer class, for a lower cost. A search for Ojai led to some interesting points of interest, some fibery, some not. And I found a great deal on a vacation rental in Ventura, not far from Ojai. And it all clicked. A seat sale came along, then a deal on a hotel room in Ojai. There was room in the workshop for me, and I even had that stroke of inspiration that started the book.

So, off I set for Ojai. I knew Ojai was north of Los Angeles, so I flew into LAX and hopped into a rental car and set off for Ojai. The GPS told me it would be about an hour and a half, but what it didn't tell me is that the first 45 minutes was on the busiest freeway in the known universe at rush hour. Eight lanes of traffic, all changing lanes and zinging past at light speed, and me not knowing where I was going...EEP. However, I managed to survive and get to the relatively quieter 101 and to Ventura without incident and up the now dark, windy road to Ojai.

The next morning was day one of five, and I was introduced to the basics of Navajo weaving. And I was instantly in love. I had been told once that maybe I should just accept that weaving was not my thing (and by a fairly famous weaving teacher, too!), but I had clearly just not found the right kind of weaving yet.  I was waiting for Navajo weaving.

I worked away on my little rug, loving the flow of the yarn in my hands and the rhythm of the beating of my comb...

I made mistakes and learned to correct them. I concentrated on keeping my edges straight. I made a little rug. Not a perfect rug, but MY rug...

The instructors, Lynda Pete and Barbara Ornelas, are sisters who are fifth-generation Navajo weavers in the Two Grey Hills tradition. They shared traditions and stories of their lives growing up as weavers and taught fumbling newbies like me to weave with great patience and humour. Linda was the patient soul who taught the beginners, like me and Rene....

...while Barbara worked with those in the group who had taken classes before and had an idea of what they were doing, like Steve....

...and Leslie...

...who seem to have grasped a little more than the basics.

One of the high points of my week came when Barbara was spinning warps on her mother's Navajo spindle for our warping workshop...

Well, technically, she was respinning commercially spun singles, driving more twist in to make a sturdy warp. Knowing I was a spinner, she explained the techniques and showed me the right amount of twist, then let me try...

I had nowhere near the speed and skill that Barbara has, but I have a far better understanding of the Navajo spindle now and have ordered one to practice on from Lynda's husband, Belvin, who also built the looms we used.

I finished my rug, along with a few others in the class, and Barbara said a traditional Navajo blessing over the rugs. We cut the selvedges, and I brought my ends home to plant in my garden so my rug will always know where it's home is.

I took the warping class, too. Which didn't go quite so smoothly. I made a really dumb mistake, crossing my warps at some place, which led to Barbara having to unwarp and rethread a good third of the warp by hand...

My job was to keep tension on the warp yarn as she worked it back into the selvedges, which meant I spent a lot of time with this view...

I was terribly upset by the inconvenience that I was putting the teachers to, but I learned a great lesson about patience--using it when I work, having it with myself, and the gift of the patience of others for the mistakes learners make. And in the end, I had a warp for my next rug...

..which I began weaving the next day when I moved to Ventura and Part Two of the California Odyssey.

Stuck

I'm stuck. Jammed. In a rut. Unmoving. Between a rock and a hard place. Nowhere to go.

Yup, I have come up against our old friend, Creative Block.

I had great plans back in January. I had ideas for a dozen projects, all of them brilliant. I accumulated the necessary materials. I started spinning. I cast on. I threaded a loom. I made notes for articles. I was on a roll.

Then, I just stopped rolling. Nothing terrible happened. I'm fine. The family's fine. Life is good. I just don't want to make anything right now. I pick up my knitting and put it back down five minutes later. I sit down to write a blog post and stare at the blank screen for half an hour. I spin for fifteen minutes and I have to get up and rearrange the bookshelf because it's bugging me.

I still love the projects that I have started. I am, slowly, chipping away at them. But for right now, I need to be doing something else. I just don't know what.

I'll let you know when I get back on track.

Lessons from the Flu

So the media tells me that this year's flu season is off to an early and dramatic start. Sadly, this does not come as a news flash to me. You see, I am part of that early and dramatic start. (Insert sad-face emoticon of your choice here.)

Instead of plying yarn and spinning new yarn, instead of finishing up those two nagging UFO's left over from before Christmas, and instead of workshop prep, I have been laying on the couch. Moaning. Channel surfing and cruising the internet. Which was probably not wise. On the other hand, it was educational. Here is what I learned:

~Television is a mindless wasteland of Botoxed bimbos and plaid-shirted men with beards, all of whom speak in a language of bleeps and boops. They also yell a lot.

~Do not try to learn what is going on in the world from television news channels. All those are is outlets for "pundits" with "opinions", all of which seem to be about what is wrong with everyone else.

~Netflix is your friend.

~To go on Netflix you have to go on the internet.

~The internet is a series of tubes filled with cats. And people who have no basic spelling or grammar skills.

~If you are looking for angry, bigoted, uninformed, and paranoid people, go immediately to the internet. It's a virtual smorgasbord of rage.

~There is also yarn on the internet. Lots and lots of yarn.

~Sometimes it is a good thing to be too sick to get up off the couch and go across the room to where your purse containing your credit card is.

~There is also a lot of bad yarn on the internet. A. Lot. Some of it sold by those people with the bad spelling, or by the angry and paranoid. Really. You should see some of the crazy stuff people put on their Etsy pages. This is also a good reason to not get up to get your purse. Dudes, if you want to sell stuff, keep your politics and religion to yourselves.

~Do not look up your symptoms on the internet. I may or may not have actually been suffering from Anthrax.

~A cup of hot water with honey, lemon, and Jack Daniels will make you not care about television or the internet.

~You are better off not caring about television or the internet.

~Put on some soft music, knit something mindless, cuddle a kitty, and sleep. You will feel so much better.

~Most importantly, respect your body. Rest. Heal. The world will wait, and you're not missing anything.

~These lessons may also turn out to be useful when you are not sick.

And, on that note, I'm going to take a nap.

St. Distaff's Day

...or Another Excuse to Spend A Day Spinning.

Back when spinning was a "real job", St. Distaff day was the traditional day that spinners went back to work, the day after Twelfth Night. Naturally, they were thrilled to be back at their spinning wheel, and made excuses to celebrate.  There is no St. Distaff, but in those days, every holiday was in honour of one saint or another, so the spinners (clever girls that they were) made a new saint to celebrate. And we celebrate to this day.

(For you non-spinny types, a distaff is a spinning tool. It is a rod or board used to hold unspun fibre, especially flax, and keep it organized and tidy for the spinner to draft from. The actual patron saint of spinners is St. Serafina, who also happens to be the patron saint of the suffering and deformed. St. Catherine is also a patron saint to those who craft with wheels, such as spinners and potters. They have their own feast days, but not today!)

My celebration will consist of a day of plying. To be honest, I have not taken the Twelve Days of Christmas off from spinning. I have, in fact, done pretty much the opposite. I have done little else. Oh, a little cooking here and there, and ridiculous amounts of bread have been baked, but mostly, spinning.  I am running out of empty bobbins, though, so plying is becoming a must.  I have this...

 ...about 300g of Wensleydale top, handpainted by Spunky Eclectic in the November Spunky Club colour way "Not So Seaworthy" (inspired by a photo of a shipwreck, presumably a flaming shipwreck). Three singles with random colour placement for a 3-ply sock yarn.

And this...

...the rest of the NZ Crossbred roving, also from Spunky Eclectic, that I had spun before Christmas. Once this is plied, I should have enough for a vest.

St. Distaff will be well celebrated around here!

And what is a celebration without a feast?  January 7 also happens to be Ukrainian Christmas, which, being of Ukrainian descent, I observe with a massive feed of the family's favourite Ukrainian foods. There are holopchi (cabbage rolls)...

...and a massive number of hand-made peroghies...

Along with a big pot of borscht, some poppy seed roll, and a roast, this will be an epic feast.

I will admit that we are a day late this year with this feast. Tradition dictates that the Christmas meal is eaten on Christmas Eve on the Gregorian calendar, but family scheduling made tonight a better night to do this. And it works out just right for me. I have to hang around the house as all of the food that I prepared over the weekend slowly cooks to perfection in the oven. I have plying to do. And it's St. Distaff day, a day to celebrate spinning.

So whatever this day brings, remember to take a moment to make a little string in honour of a non-existent saint and celebrate the magic of what it is that we do when we take a fistful of fluff and turn it into something wonderful to knit or weave with. And if you don't know how to spin, hug someone who does--and maybe they'll offer you a lesson or two! And if you don't have a spinner around to hug, celebrate anyway.

Because life is good.

The Truth About "True Woolen"

I've been laying low and spinning for the past few weeks, with sporadic bursts of baking and holiday gatherings thrown in to keep things interesting. I've been pondering the projects I am taking on, preparing for my 2013 workshops, and writing. And all of this means I have been thinking way to much about the minutiae of our craft.

So I was deep in this place of over-thinking when the dreaded phrase that never fails to raise my blood pressure came up again. This phrase is one commonly used in technical spinning circles, but it's definition varies from expert to expert. It is a phrase that strikes terror in the hearts of spinners everywhere. And it is a lie. This phrase is "TRUE WOOLEN".

Spot the "true" woollen. C'mon, I dare ya!

 As spinners, we all want to do it "right". We want to make our yarns in the best traditional manner we can. But few of us actually understand the physics and mechanics of making the yarn, even the most experienced of us. We rely on the experts and gurus who have taught us for the correct language, the proper terminology, and the correct definition of the terms. As a teacher, I have seen dozens of people who have spun, successfully, for years suddenly throw everything they know out the window because a famous teacher told them that they were doing it "wrong".

Now, I am not a fan of the "there is no right or wrong" school of spinning, either. I do believe that some techniques are more effective than others, and that learning these techniques and refining them will make you a better spinner.  And, sometimes, you have to learn the less-effective techniques, too. Learning the "wrong" thing will often help you understand the "right" thing. There are several very effective ways to make yarn, each with its own virtues and shortcomings, each with a very specific outcome. It is learning which techniques works best for the result you want that sets you free to be a great spinner.

As I see it, the problem does not lie in the "right" and "wrong" techniques. It lies in the language we use to describe these techniques. And some of the most misleading and inaccurate language exists in the phrase "true woolen".

Here's what's wrong with that phrase: "true woolen" is far too often used to describe a drafting technique rather than the yarn. Woolen and worsted are words that describe YARNS, not techniques. I cringe every time I hear someone say, "I'm working on perfecting my worsted drafting." or some such other twaddle. (Though I will admit that I frequently joke that "that's some of the worsted drafting I've ever seen!") I reiterate: worsted is NOT a drafting technique. Nor is woollen. They are the resultant yarns.

Briefly, to clarify: A woolen yarn is one in which the fibres, after spinning, plying, and finishing, lie in a non-parallel arrangement. The fibres, when examined, will be jumbled in all directions, pushing outward and making a fuzzy, lofty yarn. A worsted yarn, on the other hand, is one in which the fibres, after spinning, plying, and finishing, lie parallel to each other. These fibres will be arranged in a smooth, linear manner, pulled close together and pushing up and down along the length of a smooth, compact yarn.

For the uninitiated, worsted is on the left, woolen is on the right.

What determines whether a yarn is woolen or worsted is NOT how long your drafting zone is, or how fast or slow you draft, or whether you double draft or not. It is how the twist enters the fibre and how it stays there. There are several steps to creating a woolen or a worsted yarn, which I will not go into in detail here today. Let it suffice to say that selection and preparation of fibres, spinning techniques (including spinning wheel set-up!), plying, and finishing techniques are all factors in making these different styles of yarns successfully. And the more of these steps that are appropriate to the style of the yarn, the closer to "true" woolen or worsted we get.

Woolen yarns are best spun from non-parallel arrangements of fibre, such as roving or rolags. However, there are ways of spinning parallel arrangements, such as sliver or top, to achieve a woolen result. It's just easier to start the way you intend to continue. Non-parallel arrangements will obviously be easier to turn into non-parallel yarns, and vice-versa for parallel arrangements. Drafting techniques that allow the fibres to stay non-parallel (i.e. by not pulling them out straight before allowing the twist in) will obviously keep those fibres in that configuration.

And it is at this point that I get a little testy. There is pretty much one way to draft a worsted yarn: by pulling the fibres straight and guiding twist in with your lead hand. There are several ways to draft a woolen yarn, all variations on a theme. We attenuate (pull the fibres into a thin line) and allow the twist to go where it will. We do not guide the twist in, we do not control or compact our fibres with our lead hand. We pull those fibres thin over a space of a few inches, or we can pull them out to the full extension of our arm. We can pinch fibres to control the rate at which the twist grabs them, or we can let the twist travel unimpeded. (We call the first "supported long draw" and the latter "unsupported long draw".) We can use a Scotch-tension wheel, or a bobbin-led, or a double-drive. Or a spindle. No matter how fast or slow we draft, no matter how long we pull back, these techniques all achieve the same result: a non-parallel yarn.

Adherents of the "true woolen" draft insist that we must draft quickly and with little control, relying on "double-drafting" (another bugaboo--don't get me started!) to smooth out our yarns. They sneer at slow, controlled drafting, or at "supported" drafting as being less than traditional and resulting in inferior yarns. They tell us that other methods make our yarns "too tight for woollen", or worse, the dreaded "semi-woolen".  They tell us that woolen yarns must be, by definition, uneven in the singles, lumpy and slubby. They tell us that we cannot make a lace-weight or thin woolen, that woolen must be thick to be lofty. They are wrong, or at least inaccurate, on all counts. The simple fact of the matter is, if you do not guide the twist into fully parallel fibres over a short, controlled space, you are making a woolen yarn. Tight, loose, even, uneven, thick, thin, semi-, hemi-, or demi-, WOOLEN.

 I think it is time to put a stop to this nonsense. We have got to stop labelling one drafting method as a "true woolen" technique, and we have to start looking at what the language of our craft means. Let's stop using the word "woolen" to talk about drafting and start using the proper words like long-draw and short-draw. Let's stop quibbling over "supported" and "unsupported". Let's make the yarn that we want to make, in the best way that works for us and stop putting false labels on the way we do it.

Lets make yarn that is true for us.