{"id":863,"date":"2011-11-21T20:54:13","date_gmt":"2011-11-22T04:54:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gknerd.com\/?p=863"},"modified":"2011-11-21T20:54:13","modified_gmt":"2011-11-22T04:54:13","slug":"macgyvering-saves-fiber-weekend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/?p=863","title":{"rendered":"MacGyvering Saves Fiber Weekend"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As I mentioned in my last post, I recently went to Fiber Weekend up at my Mother-in-Law&#8217;s house.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t know where she came up with the idea, but this was apparently the second annual iteration of it, and I gotta say&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;it was awesome.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been craving some spinning time for months, since <a href=\"http:\/\/gknerd.com\/index.php\/2010\/08\/05\/stitch-pitch-is-a-beautiful-thing\/\">last year&#8217;s Stitch &amp; Pitch<\/a>, actually.\u00a0 I apparently didn&#8217;t reveal this at the time, but when I was at the game I may have walked away from the <a href=\"http:\/\/serialknitters.com\/default.aspx\">Serial Knitters<\/a> booth with this:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/gknerd.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/P1030421.JPG\" alt=\"\" width=\"425\" height=\"318\" \/><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s been burning a hole in my stash since I got it, but I&#8217;ve been a good little knitter and worked on the Wedding Blankets rather than indulging.\u00a0 But, Fiber Weekend!\u00a0 What better time to indulge, really?\u00a0 If you can&#8217;t play with fiber during Fiber Weekend, something is very, very wrong with the world indeed.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, it&#8217;s been so long since I spun that I didn&#8217;t even think to check if I had all the parts to my wheel before I trucked the whole box I keep it in up to Canada, only to discover&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;that the screw to hold on the flyer was <em>not there<\/em>.\u00a0 In fact, as soon as I started to put it together I thought to myself, &#8220;Wait a minute, there was something about this that I was supposed to remember next time I spun, something about being in the Office&#8230;on my desk&#8230;<em>oh crap.<\/em>&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But I was not going to be deterred by so simple a piece of hardware.\u00a0 After scouring my Mother-in-Law&#8217;s garage for the right screw (she didn&#8217;t have it, of course), I decided to embrace Fiber Weekend a little more completely and solved the problem in the most appropriate manner possible&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"..\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/P1030416.JPG\" alt=\"\" width=\"318\" height=\"425\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&#8230;with fiber.\u00a0 I used some kitchen twine to weave through the two pieces and then around them both a bunch of times, tying at each crossing for stability.\u00a0 It took a few tries, but once I had it up it lasted all weekend, which is saying something because I spun <em>a lot<\/em> that weekend.<\/p>\n<p>I split the 4 oz of fiber into three roughly equal sections along the length, then split each into smaller, mostly random sections and started each bobbin at a different point in the color repeat.\u00a0 The goal was to have a fully marled yarn with lots of color shifts, similar to Trekking XXL.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/gknerd.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/P1030423.JPG\" alt=\"\" width=\"318\" height=\"425\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The plies were gorgeous, the colors perfectly suited for each other.\u00a0 I had the first bobbin filled by the end of the first night (I might have stayed up late to make that happen, but it was totally worth it).<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/gknerd.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/P1030435.JPG\" alt=\"\" width=\"318\" height=\"425\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The second day saw the completion of the second bobbin, which I also might have stayed up late for, but which was also totally, completely worth it.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/gknerd.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/P1030448.JPG\" alt=\"\" width=\"425\" height=\"318\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The third bobbin took a bit more time, so it wasn&#8217;t until I was back home on my own couch that I managed to get to the plying stage &#8211; but I was so excited to see what the yarn would actually look like that the bobbins didn&#8217;t stay like that for long, and soon:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/gknerd.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/P1030451.JPG\" alt=\"\" width=\"425\" height=\"318\" \/><\/p>\n<p>They were totally empty.\u00a0 The best part was that there was almost zero waste &#8211; two bobbins were done within a foot of each other, and the third only had enough to create a few yards of two ply yarn:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"..\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/P1030463.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"425\" height=\"318\" \/><\/p>\n<p>And the actual yarn?\u00a0 It&#8217;s some amazing amount of marled three-ply goodness.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/gknerd.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/P1030452.JPG\" alt=\"\" width=\"318\" height=\"425\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I haven&#8217;t wound it off to set it and figure out how many yards I have yet, but I&#8217;m already dreaming of what this is going to end up being.\u00a0 I&#8217;m thinking maybe a scarf, some pattern that would use up every last drop of this gorgeousness I have created.\u00a0 Any ideas?<\/p>\n<p>Also, in related news, I apparently seem to have slipped on the whole keeping-yarn-away-from-Monkey-Kitty thing.\u00a0 I looked away from the leftover mini-bobbin of yarn on the table for about 2 minutes, and next thing I know&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/gknerd.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/P1030466.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"318\" height=\"425\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&#8230;Monkey Kitty has dragged it into the corner and is pretending to be ready to defend his kill.\u00a0 Luckily, he&#8217;s actually a complete pansy, so he ran when I went after him and left the yarn behind for me to return to its high shelf safely out of reach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As I mentioned in my last post, I recently went to Fiber Weekend up at my Mother-in-Law&#8217;s house.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t know where she came up with the idea, but this was apparently the second annual iteration of it, and I gotta say&#8230; &#8230;it was awesome. I&#8217;ve been craving some spinning time for months, since last [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[17,28,34],"class_list":["post-863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-fiber-weekend","tag-monkey-kitty","tag-spinning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=863"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/863\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}