I'm not spinning today, for a change - the yarn is still in transit, and once it has arrived (the two-ply to be woven together with some variants of the yarn for the next batch), we can discuss what I spin next, and how exactly regarding thickness and twist.

So instead, today there was finally time to sort out some paperwork, pay bills, make some space on the desk and now I will have to do the beloved (hah!) book-keeping and tax stuff. One day I will be rich enough to have somebody do that for me. (Maybe. Probably, by then, I'll have come to terms with it and have become so efficient at dealing with that stuff that I won't need somebody to do it for me anymore...)

Anyway, while I am doing stuff that is not spinning and not knitting, here's a picture of the current state of the knitting (which I'd rather be doing):

I have a Pirate Roberts on the needles, and I'm halfway through the pattern bit, so almost finished. Here it is only a few rows into the pattern part:


Also, the Vignette cardigan is almost finished. It needs blocking now - though I have discovered that one of the sleeves, due to Weird Yarn Shenanigans, looks much more pink than the rest of the pieces, so I'm considering knitting it again (from a different skein, obviously):


Aaaaand that being blogged, now I'm finally out of excuses not to get started with the bookkeeping stuff!

This, my dear readers, is eighthundredandseventy metres of Coburg Fuchsschaf two-ply:


weighing in at 1630 grams. It is a honking big chunk of yarn, and it will travel off now to be woven into a fabric of the kind once used for packing up stuff.

Yay.

There are days, sometimes, when things are just... not as usual. Today turned out to be one of them, partly due to my parents stopping by, and me trying to cram the usual amount of work into the day despite having coffee and a chat with them. The severe lateness of this blog post is thus due to my routine being thrown off plus the computer doing some shenanigans in the late afternoon, when I actually fired it up and would have had the chance to see, on my virtual to-do list, that blogging has not happened yet.

But, on the plus side, I did manage to get things done. So... the spinning of the next batch of yarn is finished, and I'm sitting on a heap (a true heap!) of really thick two-ply yarns. Tomorrow will see the yarn sent off after taking a few photos of the skeins, and the yarn, for documentation purposes.

Because, you see... I recently found out that there can be a quite remarkable difference between how yarn looks in the skein and how it looks in the fabric. Which is... interesting. In the Firefly oh-god-oh-god-interesting way, kind of:
Well... it looks like I will have to take care not to add too much twist (I cannot believe I'm really writing this), or the cloth will not look as it's supposed to look. I'm also developing a few more thoughts and hypotheses about twist angle and its reliability, all of which are interesting but not helpful at the moment - though they should be good, juicy stuff to talk about at NESAT in May...

I'm home again from my TV thingie - and as expected, it was great fun! Everybody was really nice, and it did go very well. We did the three little scenes that were planned over and over again to get shots from all directions, so now I can almost repeat the dialogue in my sleep... maybe I'll mumble it tonight.

Apart from the "yay TV!" thing, I vastly enjoyed the afternoon for another reason as well: I'm always fascinated by stuff happening behind the scenes. For a few minutes of screen time*, there's a lot of logistics and work happening beforehand (such as scenes being done several times). There's lights and audio stuff involved (fancy microphones!), there's huge cameras and gear and many other things, of course, though none of that can be seen later on. It's a little like textile work, really - a lot of time, effort, and know-how goes into the finished product, though it all stays hidden to most people.

But the best of all the TV work, at least for me, are the people. All the TV folks I've yet had the pleasure to work with were not only totally nice, but also really happy with their job. They were also really, really good at said job, and very professional and efficient... which made it an utter joy to work with them. Today's audio technician, when I chatted with him, told me that it feels more like working among family than just colleagues - which is very much of how it feels to work in Living History. (I'm also really happy I didn't kill him by accidentally hitting the microphone, hidden inside my dress, with something making lots of noise!)

The scene will be part of the children's quiz show 1,2 oder 3 (which has been running since forever - I used to watch it when I was small), and it's planned for being aired on May 27, ZDF, at 8:10 in the morning. So if you can receive that programme and want to have a look at my part - you can!

 
 
*To give you an idea: the whole thing today took a bit more than three and a half hours, including setup time. (Fortunately, my Great Wheel wasn't as fiddly to get to run smoothly as it has already been - setup wasn't perfect, but it did spin well enough for the purpose. (I've also done much, much better yarn on it; it really makes a difference whether you can get into the flow or not.)) Screen time resulting from this work will be... drumroll... two minutes.

Really, really full. As in "no more yarn shall wind onto it" full:


And it took a fraction of the time to fill a bobbin with the thicker yarn (of course). Soon I'll find out how many metres of yarn we are looking at here - and then I will have a rough estimate of how much more of that rope I need to spin for the fabric sample!

Happy New Year to all of you - may it bring joy and wonderful adventures and many successful, happy projects!

I'm back home from a wonderful time off. There was time spent with family, and time spent with friends; there was roast goose and cookies and cake, gingerbread and chocolate; coffee and tea were consumed in no little quantity, and we had walks in the snow and the now-traditional mousse au chocolat to toast the new year at midnight on the 31st.

Now it's back to work - the usual gazillion of emails to sort out, and of course the spinning. The first batch of yarns for the first piece of fabric was done just before the holidays, and now I will spin up about 2 km of really thick yarn from Coburg Fox wool for the reproduction of a packaging fabric.

The workplace is already all set up, and I've started off:


The thread for this fabric is a two-ply (it is one of the quite rare medieval fabrics where plied yarn was used for weaving), and it's about 3-5 mm thick - so I'm spinning singles that feel really, really chunky to me. This is quite a challenge, as I'm very used to spinning fine and very fine yarns, but not yarns this size (or, as I usually call them, ropes).

Because the thread is so thick, I have mounted an "aim for this"-sample card on the left side of the spinner. On the plus side for spinning bulky yarns: Checking the twist angle does not require a magnifying glass for this thread. Also, the spool fills up much, much faster with this kind of yarn!

You've seen enough pictures of bobbins now - time to see more spinning pictures, but with actual spinning in them:

[caption id="attachment_2827" align="alignnone" width="451"] Spinning happily along - now working on the weft thread for one of the fabrics.


It is coming along nicely, the spinning work. Not every day is like every other one, but today felt like a really good one - which is nice, as I want to have a good batch done and ready to go into the post by the end of this week.

[caption id="attachment_2824" align="alignnone" width="640"] Drafting from the Romney top. You can see the difference between the fluffed-up loosened (pre-drafted) fibres beneath my hands and the original top hanging down beside my leg.


There is, of course, also the periodical checking of thread thickness and spinning angle:

[caption id="attachment_2826" align="alignnone" width="640"] First the thickness... which should be around 0.5 mm for this one...


[caption id="attachment_2825" align="alignnone" width="640"] ...and then the angle with help of my thread counter.


For today, though, I'm done spinning. More thread will be made tomorrow!