Last “Fondle This!” fiber club post for 2009.

Here are the remaining pictures owed to this year-long experience.

September shipment: Fiber Club		October shipment: Fiber Club

This year (2009) cost $215 for 10 shipments, making it $21.50 per month including a pattern and shipping. That is definitely a fair deal. But the lack of specificity in fiber percentages, the omitted information, the really unappealing patterns, and the lousy packaging make it seem less valuable. If I had bought these fibers individually once a month for 10 months, I would have spent about the same money, if it was even possible to buy them. It is extremely difficult to buy baby llama, for example. But every time I received a package, the pattern was crumpled, the fiber was crushed into a solid ball, and there was not a single fiber “label” that was entirely correct. I was left with the impression that the vendor would appreciate not having to do this next year. However, there is a $10 coupon included with the final shipment if I want to resubscribe, so maybe this is just a case of someone who thinks substance should trump over style. I would normally agree with that, just not in this case or not to this extent.

I subscribed because I wanted to buy myself an on-going present that would inspire my creativity in spinning and knitting throughout the year. I cannot find joy in something that was offered grudgingly. Presentation matters. Details matter, especially in terms of specifying what fibers are in the package. Perhaps the price should be increased so assistants can be hired? Or perhaps the patterns should be offered as download links instead of printouts to decrease costs.

I liked the fibers I received. Even the disgusting urine sample colorway turned out beautiful when overdyed. It was a good value, but it was not nearly as  fun to receive the packages as I had anticipated.

Penultimate Fiber Club Post

I got the last of the fiber club shipments today. It is baby camel+tussah (percentages not given) in a natural color of golden brown with white streaks. (Oct 26 2009)

That means I have two months of pictures to put up here, but the pictures will wait.

I have really enjoyed the fiber I received from this club. It has all been very nice fiber. Generally the dye jobs have been good (except that “urine sample” colorway that I overdyed and just posted about) or the fiber was left natural; the types of fiber have been, if not unique, often at least rare and difficult to order as an individual.

But the lack of interest or attention to detail in the packaging bothered me a lot. More than half the shipments were either mistakenly labeled or omitted important information. The included patterns always arrived crumpled and many of them were lacking important information because they had been tailored to this spinning group— so the pattern almost never says “fingering weight yarn”, it says “spin to get 22wpi singles and ply” or whatever. Why would that not be a separate issue?  There should have been spinning instructions to get the yarn the pattern wants, but the pattern itself should not have been altered to not be reusable with commercial yarn.

The malaise in the Ravelry group where the only people who post are people who should be in the beginning spinners group or having a lesson— that bothers me a lot. For example, no one posted pictures of the fiber. I did several months myself but no one noticed or cared. No one compliments people so no one posts any spun fiber or finished knitted projects. It was this void. Obviously someone could have stepped in and really led the group but there is a crux in popularity before which people do not participate. Leading where there are no followers makes a body feel foolish. Plus there was no real reason for me to care when the vendor clearly does not.

I have to say that the price was very good for the type and quantity of fibers provided, but the service quality really detracted from the value overall.

My overall impressions of the Susan’s Spinning Bunny “Fondle This!” Fiber Club: Fiber quality: A, Fiber colorways: B-, Packaging: D, Included patterns: C, Price: B+

So overall, it is worth what I paid for it, but I would have preferred to pay 10% more and get the fiber from a vendor who wants to be doing this. There are not vendors charging 10% more for similar luxury fibers though. They charge 10 or 20% more and send you smaller bumps of corriedale, as if their dyework is the important criterion.

Fiber Dyeing, accomplished!

Yesterday I made this:

I started with this:	And ended up with this:
From Fiber Club May 2009	From fiber dye

I changed it from “citrus” to what I think of as “almost fall foliage”. The only disappointing thing about this is that it is very green and I am not so fond of green. This was done with a packet of cherry Kool-Aid and food coloring dripper bottles. Cooked in a crock pot for about 25-30 minutes on high, at that point the dye bath was clear.

[As usual, click the pictures to go to the bigger version in the Picasa album.]

I am the metal band.

I did get the August fiber club shipment, um, Friday August 21. It is an unknown quantity of 100% cultured silk in a pinkish-orange semi-solid color. Luckily it looks more “tropical sunset” and less “vomit”. Orange is such a finicky color to do well.

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I started a Serpentine sock from Wendy Johnson’s book. The book gives the pattern in sport weight. I checked my gauge and did my own math, but it feels a little worrisome as yet. Socks usually do until I get to about the arch of the foot and can really tell how it is going to fit.

I have not worked on the sweater instructions. I need to refer back to the book and annotate the wire frame diagram. I am planning to spell out the instructions as well because I know myself well enough to know I will be antsy about it otherwise.

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I am on a fiber diet. I am not buying much of anything. I looked around and realized I have not been spinning. I have several tubs of fiber that want spinning, and I want to spin those more than I want to buy new stuff. I am sometimes tempted by sock yarn, but I need to actually finish at least one more pair first.

I am planning to make an excursion to Dharma Trading and buy dye. If/When I do that, I will probably order some fiber and maybe a couple skeins of sock yarn.

However, there is one thing that is tempting me. RH Lindsay is doing pre-orders for musk-ox down top for $12.50 per ounce. That would be Qivuit/Quiviut, which normally sells for $45-75 per ounce. They charge $5 in handling for small orders (less than 10lbs) and there is unspecified additional shipping. I know I would like this. I just have not convinced myself to spend the money. If I was sharing with someone else, which would optimize the shipping and handling, I would talk myself into it.   Non-shrinking, non-felting super-warm all-natural fiber? I really want to try that.

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I did find another local Rav group, maybe there will be regular people when they get together. It does not sound like they are regular people to me from their posts. Everyone is squealing about drinking lots and lots of alcohol. Since these things are area-wide, most people are driving a long ways to be there and it just seems like the activity should include something less intoxicating.  I think we know why I do not get along well with most groups. I hate children and hate alcohol-parties. The only way to exclude children at an event is to have it be alcohol-centered, so I am never going to be happy.  I am absolutely sure there are people who love knitting and fibery things but who are not 23 and single nor too sproggy.

There is a line in “Walk Like an Egyptian” which I always heard, “like the punk and the middleman”. [It is really, "They like the punk and the metal band." ] But knitters seem to be punk or moo, there is no middleman.

Picture update and projects in progress.

I should probably take the pictures and then post, but I will write it all now. Then I will know what pictures I have promised. But, considering this has sat here for 6 days with the window open, perhaps not. (August 18, another 12 days later… I closed the window and sort of forgot about this. So I started it, according to the editing details, August 2, 2009… it only took me 16 days to actually take the pictures.)

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SeedlessGrape was here visiting. We had a terrific time (not always the case with meeting virtual friends). She gave me a skein of Madelinetosh. I can see why she loves it. The colorway is really pretty (akin to the Raven colorways from Blue Moon Fiber Arts) and the yarn is sproingy. However my skein looks like a fingering weight yarn, like for socks, but the label claims it is “worsted” and 225 yards. If that is “worsted”, their sock yarn must be like thread.

[Later... Apparently it is actually Tosh Sock, 395 yards, and the label is wrong. The colorway really is "Georgia O' Keefe" but the yarn isn't single-ply, and looks about fingering weight. So it is the sock. It was a lovely gift and I do not wish to disparage it in any way, but I admit I am much happier with there being almost twice the yardage.]

Any suggestions on what that wants to be? I had originally thought it would make a nice shawl-lette, but most of the patterns specify the yardage of the skein without specifying if there is leftover. Maybe that is because there is no leftover yarn, but sometimes it seems ridiculous…. like the sock yarn used for a lace beret pattern. The pattern says it uses 400 yards and the hat is itty bitty and lace as well. I think I could do that in under 100 yards. So I do not trust the pattern yardage.

I want to make Jared Flood’s Girasole out of this yarn. Except for three things: 1) I do not want a Girasole and no one else would dare ask me for something like that. 2) I would need about 10 more skeins of yarn. 3) I would have to buy the pattern (with all the issues I have described before).   I just know I would love a “sunflower” lace pattern done in black yarn.  I know me.  I like irony.

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I got the July installment of the fiber club on the 27th. It is purple merino+silk. No percentages given. The pattern was interesting.  Not with that fiber, of course.  So far I have spun 3 of the months. I am now behind by 4 months. I have attempted one pattern (with commercial yarn) and gave up. I started using one of the fiber club handspun yarns, that I overdyed, for socks, but the first sock is not yet completed (I started it in March.)  So, although it has been fun getting all the new stuff. I do not think I should join fiber clubs in the future. It is not a waste of money, but there has not been any sense of “belonging” in this group. So there is no incentive to participate actively. Half the time I dislike the colorways. Half the time I dislike the suggested pattern. It got easy to just stash the stuff and continue on with what I was doing.  I had hoped I would spin more and knit more with “assigned” projects. That did not happen.

The pictures:

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I am still looking for a hooded capelet pattern sized for adults and not pullover.

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This is what I spun most recently:

I have cast on for my mobius scarf from the birthday fiber:

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It is only “progress” if everyone else was standing still.

Well. I certainly lack in content.
I finished spinning the first batt. I started with a layered batt that was gray, grey, then red. I ended up with singles that were self-barber-poling. Plied together it just looks mottled. Not a big problem, but significantly less attractive than expected. Also the mystery wool felts like water was Crazy Glue™.

Overall my first experience with batts suggests that drum carders do a nice job pre-drafting but the batts themselves then require manipulation before spinning (pulling into strips, then tugging lengthwise) and uneven batts mean it is hard to get equal amounts on the singles’ bobbins. (My scale measures down to half grams, but it only claims a 2g accuracy. Variance in bobbin weight (unladen) is about 2g between manufacturer and leader differences. When the whole batt is about 40-50g, that is a huge inaccuracy level.) I just do not think it is worth hundreds of dollars to get a drum carder when it does not solve the problem of dense roving. So far nothing has solved that problem. Diz is a [cursing goes here, elided for politeness and so you can keep your illusions that I might be a lady.] waste of time. Hand cards are for people with more time than an unemployed apartment-dweller. I had really hoped that a drum carder would be the right tool to fix the really compressed combed top I keep getting from online sources. But it looks like the only cure is to predraft manually and laboriously. There ought to be a tool, but I have not yet found it.

Spun half the next batt into singles. It has three layers, white, grey, and one of those Ashland Bay heathery blends in a peachy color. It is a crap sandwich. Whatever that grey stuff is, it is nasty. This is not spinning up well. I get sections that are grey, sections of the mottled peach, and swaths of all white. The fibers draft very differently. I started spinning the second half into singles last night but it kept breaking and that is so frustrating that I get better results if I just stop for a while.

I went back to using the larger drive band on my Fricke and the larger diameter whorls, the overall spinning part goes slower, but I spin more often because there is a loose enough whorl that I can keep the band strung. I really can spin for 5 minutes then go on and do something else. It is not that stringing the band is hard, but the more stuff upfront so I can be situated, the fewer starts and stops I want to have.

My recently replaced screw is still not holding. So I still have to tighten it all the time. Not as often as Kromski owners have to oil, but often enough that I am annoyed. I keep the screw driver in the oil bottle clip because I use the screwdriver about 6-8 times more often than the oil. I think it is time to write to Fricke.

I bought a copy of Wendy Johnson’s sock book. There were 6 socks that I wanted to make and she collected all the various techniques I had found online and put them in one coherent book. Plus the book does not constantly refer you to other pages like Cat Bordhi’s book (which is more like a Choose Your Own Adventure than a book— it really is completely useless unless you have memorized all the heel and toe machinations on your own, and then you realize a sock is just heel and toe machinations with maybe a bit of stitch-motif thrown in for visual interest when you are not doing toe and heel parts.) I had borrowed the Johnson book from the library and was very pleased that each pattern is self-contained although there is a section in the book outlining all the toe and heel options.

Some knitting done on the Leuca sweater. I carry it around with me in my Lantern Moon “Molly” bag. So if distance makes a sweater knit itself, mine will be starting its own mittens soon enough.

fiber club received

June 22, 2009, June fiber club shipment arrived. It is a pretty blue, turquoise, brown hand dyed SW Merino+tencel.

From Fiber Club

Pattern included is for “Santa Clara” wrap which wants Size E beads (not included). Size E means “seed bead” in 5/0 or 6/0. It took a lot of effort to find that out.

I think I would like to make this and bead it. But I also know myself and I am really ridiculously over-committed knit-wise. This will not even make it onto my radar until next year.

I think I would like to work in parallel with another knitter. I could spin and have something on the needles, but there would be someone actually using the majority of the yarn on a more regular basis. If you know someone like that, or are someone like that, please contact me. We can work something out. I am not wanting all these things knit for me, I do not have recipients in mind most of the time, but yarn languishes around here after it is spun. Sometimes I know what that yarn wants to become and I would dearly love to see it happen. Sometimes it is just yarn and could use outside inspiration. I am in Oakland, CA it would need to be someone nearby, but I am completely serious.