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Geeks and their toys

I wrote a few months back that I bought a new “spinning wheel”, the Ashford eSpinner3. Along with that, I bought a WooLee Winder, which, like an old bait-casting fishing reel, winds the yarn back-and-forth for a lovely, evenly-wound bobbin of yarn.

I need more bobbins, though. The WooLee Winder came with three, which really is the bare minimum. More bobbins from the WooLee Winder folks, though, cost $49 each! I have a dozen bobbins for my Kromski wheels. That’s another 9 bobbins – over $400. Nope. Not me. I looked around and found a company on line that 3D prints bobbins. Alas, they do not make the model of bobbin I need.

Only one solution to this problem, it seems. I waited until Black Friday and bought a 3D printer. Peggy said I’d save money. I didn’t believe her, but she was right. I saved enough money ($60!) to buy three more kilograms of “PLA” (poly-lactic acid), the plastic that is used for printing. I now have orange, red, green and blue plastic filament, and I’ve been printing bobbin parts. 

  • 3D Printing four bobbin shafts
  • 3D printed spool

I am SO glad I was able to finally justify the purchase of this machine. I’ve wanted one for a long time. I’m also maintaining that I can “make money” with the printer going forward into retirement, and this morning at breakfast, one of my ham radio (yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m too involved) cohort asked if I would rent out time on it. I’m going to have to crunch some numbers. One of my spinner friends wants to know if I can print bobbins for her wheel – replacement for her are $59! Jeepers.

For those interested, I purchased a JGAurora A5S printer at Amazon. It has massive print volume for a printer in this price range (just under $500) – 305mm x 305mm x 320mm, which a shade over a foot in each direction. Some of the bobbin parts are big enough where I can only print two of them at a time.

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And not so much…

Pair 2

These mittens, while the second completed pair, are actually the first and fourth mitten I’ve made, so they differ noticeably – I can use them when using  the snowblower. Another pair is underway. 

Note in particular the mismatched dye lots. I also neglected to use two sizes of needles. C’est la vie.  I get to use the rejects 😁

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And they look remarkably alike

My first mittens 

This is my very first pair of mittens. I’ve been knitting for perhaps ten years or so, but haven’t ventured too far. Scarves, of course, but hats, a few socks, and even a couple of small sweaters for little friends (plus I spun the yarn from Jacob fleece). I had never tried mittens, thinking they would be complex. But other than keeping track of a few increases and decreases, mostly between two stitch markers, it’s just knitting. The pattern came from Berroco, and was in a rip-off pad at our knitting Guild. I had a ball of Lion Brand Hometown USA bulky 4-ply, and pulled out two sets of double-pointed needles (DPNs). 

DPNs have always frustrated the hell out of me. I rarely had enough tension in the stitches to hold the needles, so they’d fall out, I’d lose stitches and everything would fall apart.

Practice makes perfect they say, so I figured I’d practice. And it worked! I no longer fear DPNs. 

It seems I never knit anything just once. The first mitten took about four stabs at it before it looked like a mitten without a thumb. Using the rest of the ball, I managed to get to (after two or three stabs) about three quarters of a mitten. I have to admit I felt betrayed! I took the label with me on a trip to my LYS (Walmart), and found another ball in that colorway. So I bought enough at $2.49/ball to make three more pairs to boot. These red mittens are really #2 & #3 in my mitten-knitting career. And Peggy loves them! Custom-made mittens!

Oh, and I kind of like the DPNs now. I’ve ordered two more sets – shorter 5” needles in “carbonized” bamboo. 

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I think I’m crazy, but..

I’m making mittens for the first time. Using Double Pointed Needles. I’ve asked a friend whether DPNs ever become less than infuriating. This is a two-fold project in that I learn how to make mittens AND I get to learn how to use DPNs.  
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Picker, take 2

A picker is a device (looks more like a torture device!) that separates wool fibers from one another after (or before!) washing. Washing tends to make the wool clump up, and it’s difficult to deal with in that state. Enter the picker. I’ve seen much larger pickers in factories, but this is fine for home use, once I get it laid out and working like I want.

The nails are bright-finished 16d finish nails that I got at Home Depot, and I used a bench grinder to clean the nails to a nice sharp point so the fibers don’t snag. There are about 150 of these nails in the whole picker, 63 of them in the sled, and another 96 or so in the bed. I was too busy avoiding bloodshed to actually count the nails… These suckers are sharp.

A note to anybody who needs a sawhorse or something like it, I find the Black and Decker WorkMate to be quite handy. My in-laws bought it for me one Christmas, and it’s a great tool. I might need to buy another one. $25 at Amazon, with free shipping if you subscribe to Prime. Much the same pricing at Walmart.

  • 16d finish nails were ground to (very) sharp points
  • Approximately 36″ long (91cm), 9.5″ wide (24cm), and 9.5″ deep (24cm)
  • Approximately 150 nails form the “picking” bed and sled (for lack of a better term)
  • While it works, it doesn’t work like I want, so I’ll rebuild the nail bed and sled.

These are pictures of my picker – while I followed some information that was on the internet, and actually at one point purchased plans to make a picker, this is really my own design, and right now it’s substandard. It doesn’t work like I want it to.

Part of the problem, I suspect, is that the nails are not at the correct angle – I went for a 15° angle, which is way too shallow. Other pickers I’ve read about have the nails as low as 45°.

I have purchased more wood and nails to make another attempt at it. This time the nails will go in at about 45°, which is much steeper than I think they should be, but seems to be the commonly-used angle. Commonly used typically outweighs my own sensibilities, with good reason.

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I love this fiber community!

I recently purchased an Ashford e-Spinner 3, mostly because it looked like fun (and it IS!). I also purchased a WooLee Winder to go with it – I can in theory sit down, turn on the spinner, and spin nearly a half-pound of fiber with nothing more than adjusting tension. So, so sweet.

But I only have three bobbins, and the bobbins are $49 each. Looking around for an alternative, I encountered Akerworks, a company in Tennessee that 3D prints bobbins for a number of wheels, among a variety of other fiber arts-related devices. Alas, Akerworks doesn’t (yet) make bobbins for my particular combination of wheel and WooLee Winder.

But even better – when their customer service representative wrote back informing me of the bad news, it turns out that I knew her! I worked with her in the Navy in the mid-1970’s. You should have seen the look on Peg’s face when I told her I had gotten an email from Jill!

Jill – it was just delightful to run into you after all these (40+) years. You were then, and I’m sure you still are, an amazingly nice person. (And please let me know if Akerworks starts producing bobbins for my spinner.)

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James House Museum

One of the members of our weaving guild (North of Boston Handweavers) is also a docent at the James House Museum in Hampton NH. Benjamin James was a weaver at the turn of the 18th Century, arriving in Hampton to learn the weaving trade circa 1690. The house was initially built around 1723, after James learned his trade and accumulated some wealth.

Three generations of weavers plied their trade in that house. The Museum President, Skip Webb, gave a tour of the house and the (many!) ongoing renovations. The current project is reconstruction of the house’s facade, including period-appropriate exposure for the clapboards. All of the nails for the project were manufactured by hand to ensure period authenticity for all materials and methods.

The demise of the American Textile History Museum in Andover MA provided a collection of fiber processing tools for the James House Museum. Among the collection are a number of flax wheels, yarn winders, swifts, and other linen tools. The collection also contains a flax break and a (much larger) hemp break. Hemp was a very popular fiber in the early years of the United States. It’s falsely rumored that the Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper, but the real document is on parchment, not paper at all.

  • Flax Wheels
  • Yarn winder & swift
  • Squirrel Cage swift

Additionally, a brace of “great wheels”, or “walking wheels”, along with more weasels (winders) and swifts, occupy the wool room. One of the wool wheels has a “Miner’s Accelerating Head“, a system of two pulleys that spins the yarn spindle much faster (4-5X) than a standard wheel, allowing yarn to be twisted, and therefore completed, much more quickly. The yarn winders present all seemed to have in-built counters, typically a worm screw on the winder axle driving a worm gear which in turn drives an indicator dial on one side of the winder. Often, there will also be an audible click or pop when a predetermined length of yarn had been wound. Believe it or not, this is one theory regarding the origin of “Pop Goes the Weasel”.

  • Great Wheels
  • Yarn winder (weasel)
  • Squirrel Cage swift

The centerpiece of the entire exhibit, however, is a rather large barn-frame loom. I didn’t measure the piece, but it’s at least 8 feet long, 5 feet wide, and nearly 6 feet tall. Our weaver, Diane, has to climb into the loom to weave.

The loom originally came with reeds made of rattan, not steel like modern reeds. The reed is that part of the loom that keeps the warp threads spaced evenly across the loom. Rattan reeds are much more delicate than steel (go figure!), so a temple (seen next to the beater in the right photo) is used to keep the fabric’s selvage edge straight to avoid stressing and breaking the reed.

Much thanks to Diane for arranging this tour.

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Fun with the eSpinner

I’ve had the Ashford eSpinner3 for about three weeks now and I have spun a little bit of yarn on it.

The first yarn that I spun was from old partially felted batts that I had laying around. I don’t even know what the fiber is, but I spun it up in a lumpy rope single, felted it, and I am now knitting a hat.  We’ll see how that goes. Here’s some of that yarn:

The Mystery Yarn 

The other yarn I took more care in making. It’s spun from Romney roving that I had processed last year, and it’s just lovely. Nancy from New Aim Farm in Waldoboro, Maine washed, picked, and carded it for me last December and did such a wonderful job. It spins like butter and made a really nice yarn.

Romney Yarn

I have ten pounds of this roving, so the eSpinner will be very busy. 

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NH Wool Arts Tour 2018

This is my third season of the New Hampshire Wool Arts Tour. I’m starting to recognize some of the dirt roads. NHWAT has been running for 35 years!

New Hampshire is getting gorgeous this time of year – we’re before the peak of fall color, but gaining on it.

New Hampshire is lovely this time of year.

The tour this year was hosted at these four farms within quick driving distance of Hillsborough, rather the center of the whole thing. (The directions all stem from the McDonald’s in Hillsboro, where I did get a cup of coffee.) I used Google Maps to plot a route starting (and ending) at home. Be mindful if you do this, sometimes Google Maps on the phone gets really confused if you are not within cell coverage to let Google talk to the home planet.

There was an interesting variety of vendors this year. From wooden items for working with fiber, beautifully crafted shawl pins, soaps and honey, there was a lot on display. Oh, and there was a fair amount of fiber! Fleeces, roving, dyed braids of top (I succumbed to one), and lots of other fun stuff.

  • Dyed Corriedale Top
  • Electric Eel Mini Spinner
  • Alpaca Socks

The Corriedale top had such gorgeous colors I had to pick it up. I think I’m going to spin it “fractally“. That will allow the colors to mix and “barber-pole” as the colors intertwine and play off of one another. I’ll post about that adventure when I get to it. (I would not hold my breath.)

That Electric Eel Mini Spinner is very cute, but it only holds an ounce of yarn on its bobbin. My regular wheel holds 4 ounces, and my new eSpinner holds about 8 ounces – half a pound of yarn. But it’s only $70 and it’s wicked, wicked, cute.

The socks were beautiful. I’d have taken them if they were in my size, but I passed. Peggy would have loved the colors, but she’s not a fan of Argyle. (She has subsequently admitted that because they were so pretty, she might have gotten past the Argyle bit…)

I strongly suggest a spin around the circuit next fall.