What I've Learned

So far, as mentioned in previous posts, I've read Spin Control (speedily) and just over half of The Intentional Spinner. I promised a bit of an update about what I've learned so far and I think that's overdue at this point....
The Intentional Spinner has a very detailed explanation of each of the popular methods of spinning including worsted/short draw, woolen/long draw, semi-worsted, and semi-woolen.  From Judith's (the author) descriptions, I've determined that I'm a very confused spinner. I tend to jump from one method to another at random as I spin. I think I stick to worsted most often, but Judith's explanations also include fiber requirements for a yarn to be true worsted or true woolen. I don't know enough about the fiber I've used so far to know what I was doing there. Hence the confused spinner.
I think since my past results have fallen closest to worsted, I would like to figure out how to do woolen, but I'm unsure if any of the fiber I currently have would do well spun woolen (assuming I can figure out how to spin woolen consistently).

I was hoping to go to my local Holiday Fiber Festival to pick up some more roving to start practicing spinning and possibly spin some gift yarn for my knitting buddies, but alas, apparently they don't sell roving or top at the Holiday Fiber Festival - only finished items made out of it. Disappointing. I did pick up way more yarn than I can technically afford right now, so I've got a lot of knitting to do and not much spinning.

So what did I really learn? I re-learned what I already know: That I can't stick to one thing without getting distracted to save my life. But this time, I'm blaming it on the lack of spinning fiber. Since I don't exactly have much to spin, I don't want to waste what I have, so I'm allowing myself to focus on knitting for awhile instead of spinning. Which means that I've been posting on my other blog instead of this one about knitting since this blog is intended mainly for spinning. *looks at posted content* ... I said mainly, I'm not perfect.

And just to spin off topic a bit more... Along the writing vein of my last post I also learned something from my friend, Magz: Apparently keyboards were originally in alphabetical order, but were changed to the seemingly random order that they are in today when typist became too proficient and actually typed faster than the machines of the day could handle. It was someone's bright idea that mixing the letters up would result in people typing slower. Obviously, that only worked for so long before people once again got used to the order that the letters were in and began typing just as fast. That did get me thinking about just how someone chose the order that we're so familiar with today on all keyboards... makes me wonder if it really is completely random. If anyone reads this and knows or has an interesting guess as to how someone came up with the order of our keyboards, please share!

Reading and Writing

So, I've been working on reading through The Intentional Spinner: a holistic approach to spinning yarn, which is a very slow read. I've so far made it about halfway through the book and I just reached the first bit of explanation about actual spinning. The first half is about fiber - its characteristics and origin. Interesting and potentially useful in the future, but still not something that draws me in and makes me read faster in anticipation... Though I did laugh out loud when I found out that there is actually illegal fiber in the US. That's right - there is fiber that is actually illegal to own. At first glance that's completely ridiculous and hilarious (makes you wonder what kind of people run the fiber black market).  But then, it goes on to explain that it's illegal because people kill the endangered animals in order to get the fiber. Not so funny.  In fact, the very opposite of funny.
Also very stupid.  I never have understood poachers and the like and their lack of logic. "This animal has something of value on it. Let's kill them all and take that something of value right now regardless of the fact that the valuable something will no longer be available after that." Does it not at least make more sense to start breeding this valuable animal and increasing their numbers by a higher amount than you kill so that you always have a supply of this valuable thing?  (or just not kill them at all and find something else valuable...)
Regardless, I am learning quite a bit about fiber from the first book. However, my deadline is fast approaching - in other words: the books are due back at the library. I managed to renew The Intentional Spinner (Yippee.) but someone else has Spin Control on hold, so I have to return that today. :-(  So, last night, I decided that I would quickly thumb through Spin Control to try to get an idea of how useful it might be... The dang book sucked me right in! I finished reading it almost completely in just about an hour. Of course, most of that was speed reading and skipping small sections after ascertaining what they were about, but the point is: That book does draw me in and it is an easy read - and it's going to be damn useful while I learn to spin.
I already learned from it that my spinning wheel is an Irish tension single-drive wheel - which I had no clue about before. Also, I've decided that I'm going to get some scrap fiber (is there such a thing?) and test my wheel's tension settings and pull in ratios - which I also had no clue about before... well, technically I did know there was this thing called tension and it affected something and you changed it by twisting the little knob by the orifice with quarter turns... but I didn't really understand why or how and I definitely didn't listen to the silly "quarter turns only" advice. *recalls twisting the little knob 15 or so times or just popping the strap off completely*
My new objective is to get to know my wheel by testing it through all of its tension and ratio settings. I'm still not sure what I'll do about the scrap fiber... If I can figure that out I might be able to get started this weekend.
In other news: My brother is doing NaNoWriMo which to me is very exciting! I've been hoping he'd stop being lazy and procrastinating and get a story out already. He's a great writer, but (similar to me) has a hard time finishing anything longer than a short story.  I'm hoping he sticks with it and has at least a 50,000 word start to a longer novel to show for it by December. Also, I'm really hoping that he asks me to help him edit it come December... I like editing good writing and also that means I get a sneak peek at what he could be trying to get published!
My brother's goal to complete NaNoWriMo got me thinking... and I have been considering writing something to be published (and hopefully make a decent amount of royalties...  I only laughed at myself a little there...). So, for about a nano-second, I thought "I could do NaNoWriMo!" then I hit myself on the head and said "Don't even try!!!!!" I think trying to master my spinning wheel while working a full time job while getting distracted by knitting and still having a bit of a life on the side is bad enough. However, I'm still tossing the idea around in my head about doing my own version of NaNoWriMo... or more like NaRaStWriMo which translates to National Random Stuff Writing Month (so constructive, I know) which would allow me to just work on the 5 or 6 story ideas I have already going (some of which are fan fiction) and count blog posts as word count as well... That I might actually have a chance at completing. It's not some fantastic accomplishment and I could never even make any money in the future with about 80 percent of it, but it would be a start, right? And I might get something written in one of the original story ideas that I've had floating around forever...
I don't know and this isn't meant to be some sort of declaration of "I'm going to write 50,000 words in one month if it kills me!" because I've discovered that declarations like that just kill my self-esteem before I even try to meet my insane goal. Perhaps I'll just stick to my current goal-ish objectives and "Hey that sounds like it could be fun" ideas for now and leave the crazy grandstanding goals to people who actually thought about it before Nov. 1st... or 2nd at this point (though I did write around 4000 words yesterday by chance before I even was reminded of NaNoWriMo). No! I keep trying to convince myself that I have a chance...