All Your Fiber Are Belong To Us.

A small alien came home early because she couldn't breathe.
However, Maman the Rocket Scientist knows how to administer inhalers.
Suddenly, we know no limits and we are very hungry for knitwear....

Twinkletoes is back. I don't want to talk about the crisis that led her to be back a day early, because I might explode. So, to alleviate a little stress, she and I decided to go through my projects and see what was what. Yep, I'm still slogging away on the back of the 2 x 2 Black Rib Sweater That, So Far, Looks Like Everything Else He Wears. No photos necessary there. But the Frankentank has also made a bit of progress. It has passed the rack separation, and I'm thinking I need to rip back and raise the V. Because I may like things that are "too scoopy," but I do have my standards. See, my philosophy is this: It's perfectly fine to ask if I've "got milk," but if you can see the cookies too, I've gone way too far. Friends don't let friends show cookies. Please don't ask me where I got this lovely way to describe a nipple. You don't want to know.

Anyway...odd breast-part metaphors aside, I've been gathering up my courage to ply. Because the stuff I spun out of Stephanie's gorgeous white fluffy some-kinda-wool (mostly merino and some Corriedale thrown in to keep me on my toes) was laceweight. String, almost. Utterly pliable into something smaller than polar-bear-on-steroids weight. Holy moly, who knew I could spin that kind of thing. Well, it turns out I can't, or at least not evenly, because once you ply, you realise how uneven your spinning actually is. But I'm getting ahead of myself....

I decided that because I am a lazy ass and because I only have three spindles and because it just looked cool, I would ply on the spindle using an Andean bracelet technique. Oh. My. WhateverTheHellMakesStarsTwinkle. It's freaking magic. Except for one minor problem:

I'm a little...heu...uptight, shall we say. Mayyybe I pulled the singles
a bit too tightly in making the bracelet. (Duh, ya think?)
So, instead of the Andean Way, I give you the Fuck You Plying Technique.

Which just goes to show you: you can be rude as hell and still create complete magic. It practically plied itself. Took no time at all. I briefly considered having a cigarette afterward, and then remembered I'm not supposed to smoke anymore....

You can also nearly cut off your circulation of your very crucial middle finger and still be able to Andean ply...should you be able to pry the sucker off your finger, that is. I managed it, and it worked like the proverbial charm. Man, physics is so sexy:

It's all in the pinch. Curly bits are completely controlled.
The Ss turn into Zs. The spindle needs but a gentle nudge.
It almost makes me forget I don't have a wheel. Oh, shut up....

I made real yarn. I can't f**ing believe it. And I can't f**ing believe I just said fuck earlier on this supposedly family-friendly blog, with no stars or hypens in the middle, to signify that I know I'm being completely rude. (This restraint does not always apply at home, however.) Blame the spindle. Blame the wool. Blame Stephanie. On second thought, don't blame Stephanie. She's still turning her cups back the right way and reorienting the children to their filial duties, not the least of which includes actually acting on the knowledge that the cat has upchucked on the carpet. Just don't blame me because, I swear, this spinning addiction is absolutely not my fault. (The cat thing is also not my fault. They do that. It's just a law of cat nature.) So. Spindle-plying is utterly magical and I'm hooked.

By the way, see that little tied thingy holding the mini-skein together?
Twinkletoes informed me that she made that because I forgot it.
Child labour is underrated. Damn, my singles
are really uneven, aren't they....

And now we come to the subject of the wheel. I'm holding out. Mostly because I know exactly what I want. I am nothing if not an obsessive researcher, and although no one has been near enough to me to allow me to even touch a wheel, I know exactly which one trips my trigger. And I know how much it costs. It costs one server.

By the time I go to Vermont Sheep and Wool, I will have money in pocket for this thing. (Look, I know. I'm sad about Rhinebeck, too. But I can't afford Rhinebeck with a kid on a weekend stay. And Norma is meeting me at Vermont. And I'm going to try to convince a very pregnant Kate to come with me. So...People, you are feeling sheeeeepyyyyy...you are unexplicably making an obnoxiously long drive to a small, yet wonderful sheep and wool festival and you are meeting up on Saturday, October 1, with little me, to help me decide on something I'm not supposed to be buying...). I can't afford the wheel right now, but I'm working my ass off toward that goal. We are not even mentioning the fact that if network cards and video cards and games and other various and sundry computer accessories were all tallied up, well...I would be thoroughly justified in rewarding my hard work with a wheel, come October.

Don't you think so? Thank you. I knew I could count on you.

August 17, 2005 11:26 PM  | Permalink  | Comments (24)  | Print