Skeining

I finally got around to skeining that bobbin of re-twisted, re-re-plied yarn. (You know, the bobbin full that I spun once, wasn't happy with, ran it through again to take out some twist, ended up with very UNDER-twisted yarn, and then re-plied it AGAIN?)

Yes, that yarn. It's finally done. I wound it off its bobbin onto my skein winder last night . . .

On the plus side, it came out balanced this time

On the negative side, as you can see, that was more an exercise in frustration than a time-saving chore aid.

See? Here's what happens. As I wind more and more yarn onto the skeiner (which is, of course, the point), the pegs start bending inward, the yarn starts sliding toward the ends, and well, all hell breaks loose.

I had to stop so many times to coax various strands back onto the skeiner, which of course was lots of fun, since just as I'd edge one group of rowdy strands to the correct side of their peg, another group would fall off . . . all, naturally, while the entire wheel skeiner was rotating on my Little Gem . . . because the game wouldn't be any fun if gravity weren't playing its ever-changing tricks, right?

To make the whole thing more entertaining . . . and this really is pretty cute . . . Chappy wanted to help. Naturally, he hates to see his Mommy upset over anything, because that's the kind of sweet, caring boy he is. So, last night, each time I'd stop and heave a sigh and start trying to get everything to behave, he would heave himself out of his crate, come over, and climb up onto my shoulders to give me a hug. Which, don't get me wrong, I adore. I taught him to give me a good-morning hug when he was still a tiny puppy--two paws on either side of my neck, while I get to give him a nice, big hug. (Considering he's really not a snuggly dog for the most part, I think it was sheer genius of me to teach him this while he was still tiny . . . now it's Routine. He suffers the hug while I get a good whiff of that sleepy-puppy smell when he's just woken up. But I digress.)

Anyway, so each time I'd stop the skeiner last night, Chappy would come over to console me--which is incredibly nice of him, but not exactly conducive to getting yarn to behave, you know? Like, things can get kind of tangly . . . but I think it's sweet of him to be so concerned about my mental well-being. (Although, the flip-side of that, I suppose, could be that he's just afraid of what I might do if I get too upset and is trying to stave off catastrophe . . . but really, I don't get violently upset almost ever!)

Obviously, I got the skein finished eventually, but I'm a little unhappy with it right now. This isn't the first time we've had this problem. Maybe the yarn's coming too tightly off the bobbin, so that it's winding too tightly on the skeiner? But it's not like I had it tensioned on my lazy kate or anything--it was rotating freely . . . The pegs can't be made any tighter than they are--they're pegs in holes, it's not like there's a lot of engineering leeway.

Maybe I should revisit the skeiners I was looking at in August? I mean, I have been talking a lot lately about upgrading my cheap, plastic, umbrella swift . . . and a skeiner that doubles as a swift sure would be handy.... It's hard not to love the Goko swift, but I've also heard good things about the Will Taylor ones, which are cheaper. I wonder if they fold down for storage? Of course Knitting Notions makes handmade ones, although they're horizontal . . . finding horizontal, flat surfaces in my bedroom is not easy, unless you're happy with the floor . . . theirs, though, DOES come apart for storage. Or is there some way I could manage to wind onto the skeiner with less tension?

In other news? How's this for a weird technological problem? Remember the DVD recorder I bought in October? Well, starting about a month ago, it's been doing weird things with the clock. As in, once a day, the clock entirely resets itself to an hour earlier. I'll manually change it back, go about my day, and somewhere between 4:00 and 9:00 the next day . . . it changes back again. I've tried turning off the automatic clock-setting feature. I've tried changing the channel it looks to for the time. I've tried telling it I'm in a different time zone. Nothing helps. And not only is this awfully inconvenient because I keep glancing at the clock and thinking I've got 60 minutes more than I really do, but as you can imagine, it particularly makes setting the timer to record anything rather difficult! The people at Samsung's support number say they've never heard anything like it. So, the next step is to either mail or bring it to the repair facility in Riverdale NJ, which happens to be about 20 minutes away. It should take about 14 days . . . I guess I won't be watching any DVDs in my bedroom for a couple weeks, huh?

Well, I can catch up on some reading, I suppose, since this just arrived today...

And, before I forget....

---

Booking Through Thursday

So, in honor of Valentine's Day . . .

Love stories? Yes or No? If yes, "romances" as a genre? Or just, well, stories that have love stories? (Nobody's going to call "Pride & Prejudice" a "romance," right?)

I can enjoy a good love story as much as the next person, but "romance," per se? No. When you say "Romance novel" to me, I immediately think of Harlequins--any cheesy, bodice-ripper with Fabio on the cover. Those, no, I don't read. I tried one once and felt myself losing IQ points as I went and never even finished it. There are borderline kinds of books, like Elizabeth Peters, that I enjoy. And authors like Sharon Shinn and Anne McCaffrey almost always have a love interest going on. (But, heck, so does Dick Francis, and nobody would say that he writes romances.) And, yeah, there are plenty of classics like Jane Austen's that center around love stories. To me, though, that doesn't make them a "romance." It's not the point of the story. Not to mention that they don't include explicit scenes in them, which frankly, I don't need in my reading any more than I need gratuitous violence or bad language. (But that's just me!)

 

Comments

[Sheila]

Glad to hear your re-twisted re-re-plied yarn finally made it's way into a skein. I hate when yarn misbehaves! You will have to give a review of the Fitted Knits. I haven't see that book yet.

[Minnie]

maybe you should use a niddy noddy to skein this one up? sounds like a terrible exercise in frustration.

mark is actually talking about making a skeiner for me!

there is a series that i enjoy that COULD be construed as romance, however there's a ton more going on with them. It's the dark hunter series, by Sherrilyn Kenyon. however, they're pretty . . . ummm. . . racy, let's say. i love them for an escape (i can read one in one sitting, at 350 pages, lol) they're strictly for fun. however, feel free to ignore those. i made a recommendation to a friend once for a series i absolutely adore, and she posted that she wanted to throw the book across the room. oops!

[Laura]

Oooh. Frustrating. That's just a nasty thing. Yarn slippage. Shudder. It's amazing to me all the different configurations a swift comes in. I have a wood umbrella swift, and you'd have trouble prying it out of my cold dead hands. Such is our love. LOL

Bummer about the DVD player.

Ooh, that Fitted Knits book looks intersting!

Those Harlequins... I don't even consider them books. LOL

[Carole]

The niddy noddy is a pain in the ass, too.

[Lizzy B]

Well, the method I use to avoid tight skeining is the same I use for swifting existing skeins. I make the yarn go through my fingers and adjust tension that way. When skeining from a bobbin on a wheel I take the tension brake off to get rid of some of the pull on the yarn, but I find that running it through my fingers helps keep it pretty even and not too tight.

[Kim]

Oh the frustration! The yarn looks great though. Years ago, I picked up a romance novel (bodice ripper with bared chested Fabio) out of curisoity and randomly opened and started reading. About a paragraph later, I read, "He resurrected his glass in a toast." Ridiculous. I put it back on the shelf.

[Risa]

The instructions that came with my majacraft skein winder told me to glue the pegs in place with a wood glue. I haven't had any problem with mine, except the little knobby peg for turning the thing broke off the first time I used it. Like Lizzy, I used my fingers to provide tension and let the bobbin run freely.

[Beth S.]

I adore Elizabeth Peters! The Peabody books, anyway. I gave Vicky Bliss a try once, and it just wasn't the same.

I admire your persistence with that skein of yarn. If only the skeiner would behave! How frustrating to get the results you want (finally!) only to be thwarted by equipment failure. ;-)

[Mary]

Re: swift. Try rubberbands, or perhaps a rubber washer if you can find one that would fit, on the underside of the pegs. From the pic it looks as if there might be room under there. You could try rubberbands around the pegs twisted to go around the underside tips as well. None of these solutions will help if you really tug on the fiber while winding, but they just might stabilize the pegs enough to hold them steady.
=M=

[Kristi aka Fiber Fool]

I have a friend with the same set up - Little Gem and Skeiner and I don't think she has had any trouble. I'll ask her about it and if there were any tricks.

I'd love to get a skeiner. I had been using my swift when dyeing and with the handspun I just suck it up and use the niddy noddy, but that gets rough on my shoulders and the swift really doesn't work as a skeiner.

[Teyani]

ah yes... I know this drill too.... skeining off can be a pain in the arse at times. Usually when this happens to me, I have forgotten to remove ALL tension from my wheel (as in zero, zippo, nil, nadda.) The bobbin on the wheel must spin freely, with zero tension in order to properly wind on the skein.... THEn, it requires that we move slowly (think zen-like) to wind it on. Too fast = disaster, bobbins twirling mid air, fiber spinning off into whirly-gigs of mess onto the floor... but slow and steady wins.
I've done this too, we all have I think.
Glad your yarn is much more pleasing :-)
and yeah - I'd love to find a great romance novel - a realistic one. Got any ideas?

[Carrie K]

Me too. Can't read romances, it's probably a terribly unfair prejudice I have, but there it is.

Aw, Chappy's such a sweet boy! Hugging his mom when she's skeining. Got his exercise that night, did he? lol.

I so did not need to see swifts! I want one. Waaaaannnt.

Those cream pups look delicious!