Thank You GLASG!

Last week I went to Los Angeles and taught the Greater Los Angeles Spinning Guild for three days. It was some of the most fun I've had teaching. What an adventurous and talented group of spinners!

 

 

We spun color and more color, they listened to me talk a lot about sampling and everyone, especially me, learned new things.

I got to dip my feet in the Pacific ocean (it's cold), watch the sun set at the beach and buy pens at Kinokuniya.

One of my favorite moments was during the last class, when Annie and Stephanie,  couldn't stand just looking at the pile of handdyed top anymore..........

Thank you spinners of GLASG, when can I come back?

First Official College Trip

Today Isobel and I leave for her first official college visit.

She'll meet with coaches, the team divers, academic advisors and other recruits while I stand by and watch her grown up a little more. 

This week we're going to the University of Buffalo and over the next couple of months we'll visit Rutgers, The University of Utah and James Madison. We may even squeeze in a few more.

By Thanksgiving she'll know where she's going to college. She is so ready and excited for everything that's next. I'll be the one smiling with the box of tissues.

Let me know if you have any opinions on the colleges we're visiting or have suggestions for food or fun! I've already found a place for fountain pens in Buffalo...

10 Things I Do With A New Spinning Wheel

After I unpacked and built my new wheel, I went through my process of working with a new or new to me wheel. Usually I just do all of these thing in more or less the same order. This time I wrote them down and I thought I'd share them.

  1.  First I read the manual, well at least skim the manual.
  2.  I dust the wheel, oil it where it needs to be oiled and check that all of the nuts and bolts are tight.
  3. I put on a new drive band.
  4. I sit and treadle for a while. Maybe through a TV show. I treadle both directions and practice stopping and starting with just my feet.
  5. I find the perfect chair or seat for the wheel. I have short legs and bad knees; I need a chair that fits me in relation to the treadles.
  6. I put new leaders on all of the bobbins.
  7. I spin 4 ounces of my current default yarn, learning to adjust the wheel a little.
  8. I spin 4 ounces of fiber moving from laceweight to bulky and back again, learning to make bigger adjustments.
  9. I ply yarn.
  10. I get my friends to spin on it. It's the spinners' version of passing around a new baby. I listen closely to what they have to say when they are spinning. Sometimes I don't believe myself when I think something is a little off. I watch them spin too, because sometime I can't see the wobbly wheel.

What do you do with a new wheel?

Flatiron Spinning Wheel - The Build

The other day my Schacht Flatiron spinning wheel arrived. "Ding-dong", said the Fed Ex man. I opened the door and squealed like a 5 year-old on Christmas morning. Mr. Fed Ex was startled; I grabbed the box and ran.

The Flatiron is a flat-packed wheel, completely flat in pieces, which makes me call it the Schacht-Ikea wheel and giggle like an idiot. When the wheel gets to you it is completely unassembled, you have to build it before you can spin.

I do not build things beyond Ikea furniture or an excellent cheese and nibbles pairing. I certainly don't build precision tools to spin on. But this box of parts was standing between me and my next spinning wheel. I was in. It took me four hours. It took Beth Smith, who builds wheels regularly, 90 minutes. I had issues with barrel nuts, bending wood, fiddly bits and there was also a fair amount of cussing. None of this was because of the wheel, it was because of my own stubborn.

There are a lot of pieces to this wheel, one of them looks like a cat, meow.

Right off the bat, I noticed a couple of things that are genius when you send people parts to build a precision tool. The instruction booklet comes divided in half AND color coded for either a right or left side orifice - you get to pick, depending on how you spin. The other is, each section of the build is numbered in the booklet and the nut and bolt-type parts needed for that section are in a correspondingly numbered sealed bag. I didn't get lost once.

I did have to bend wood, which gave me pause. The pieces of wood are flat, the wheel has parts that are curved. You have to screw parts together to make the wood curve. It gave me the wrong kind of hot flash. But I did it.

After displaying my wood -bending-while-menopausal prowess, I put my mostly assembled wheel up on a table. It was time to assemble the maiden, attach the treadles and true the wheel. If you have ever changed a bobbin on a Schacht, the maiden assembly will feel familiar. The treadle assembly on the other hand felt as familiar as juggling with my feet. But I got it done in one pass. There is a cool trick using spacers for aligning the wheel that takes five minutes. Very cool.

I can't stress how good the directions are, I never got lost. Also barrel nuts are simultaneously genius and hellish. 

So give or take four hours, which included breaks and lunch, I had a new wheel that I built myself. It was very satisfying to build this wheel, plus if she ever has any problems or weird squeaks I'll have an excellent idea of where to look to fix it.

What did I spin on her first? I spun a little Louet oatmeal BFL. Then I took her to her first playdate.

Conveniently, my neighbor Alice was hosting spinning that day. So I took my wheel to a room full of spinners to share the new wheel love.

Everyone spun on it.

In a room of four spinners, one had a Flatiron on order and hadn't received it yet and one ordered one after she went home.

 

I'll spin for a few weeks on the wheel then let you know how she spins.

Of course, days after I built my wheel, Schacht posted a video on how to assemble a Flatiron.

College Visits and Book Sightings

This girl is going to college in fall of 2017. We start visiting colleges and coaches in Setpember. NCAA offical visits, meeting with coaches.
By Thanksgiving we will likely know where she will be going to school and diving. Holy crap. That went fast. She is an amazing young woman, smart, funny, brave and talented.

Who has advice for me for college visits? Bonus points if you have a college athlete.

I've had news trickling in that my book has been sighted in the wild!
One of my local bookstores, Literati, put in a display. I've heard that several Barnes & Noble Bookstores have it too.
I can't wait to hear what you think of it. Well, I'm really nervous about what you think, so let me know.

My Book Is Here!

me & book 1st.jpg

My book is here! One copy showed up at my house unannounced. I even ignored it for a day since, by the packaging, I thought it was a book to review. But when I opened it, all the happy came flooding out. You can see in the picture just how much happy there is.

I am happy, excited, nervous for this book, but mostly am I grateful. Grateful to all of the people who helped or encouraged me along the way. My family who lived in piles of fiber for a long time. My friends who listened and answered questions and applied the often needed foot to butt. All of the folks at my publisher, my editor with her ceaseless kindness and patience, my photographer and book designer who made it so beautiful. The designers who contributed such wonderful designs to the work. My students who asked all the right questions at exactly the right time. Every person that I asked. "Hey, what do you think of....." or "What about this color......"

I might have teared up when I opened it. It's rare when a big project meets, much less exceeds expectation. I am so proud.

Now I carry it with me almost everywhere, in case I run into someone I know. It was in my bag at the grocery store and at my daughter's swim and dive team picnic. To be really honest, I am showing it to near strangers and complete strangers too, our UPS driver, one of the librarians at my favorite library branch. Everyone smiles.

But no one is smiling as much as I am!