Happy 2022 everyone!

For the second year in a row, I think most of us were pretty happy to see the back end of the past year.  It was a challenging year here.

I do like these year in review posts – even if they don’t tend to be that popular.  They help me to see that I wasn’t idle after all.  It seems like the winter can be a hard time to change years.  It’s dark and cold (up here anyway!) and what the heck did I even accomplish anyway?

What indeed.

There were more blog posts than usual – 4 posts not including last year’s wrap up.  That’s not really impressive but looking back, I’ve been slowing down on posts every year.  I think it’s because I tend to make these long epic posts and they can be a little tough to motivate myself to write.  And also, sometimes I feel like I don’t have anything important to say.  So, I’m going to try to take on smaller topics this year.  (Er, after this one anyway.) We’ll see if that does any better than my promise every year to “take on fewer projects”.

I managed to get on top of my to do list.  Most of what’s outstanding is projects – both long term and smaller. The added bonus of that is that I tend to be a little more responsive to things like email and social media than I was.   Though I’m also more easily distracted so sometimes I simply forget to reply.  :-/

When last we talked about non-sewing machine things, I had  started treatment for hyperthyroid issues.  I didn’t do well with the meds.  The beta blockers they start you on to support the heart were making me feel awful but the anti-thyroid meds were worse still for me.  I was so sick but kept being told to keep taking the meds, that things would settle out.

One of the things they tell you to watch for is lower back pain and “changes in output”.  My kidneys had gone on strike.  I needed to discontinue treatment and give my kidneys some time to recover.  At the same time, we waited to see what would happen with the thyroid levels. In the meantime though, we rode a bit of a roller coaster.  A biopsy in February said it wasn’t cancerous.  Yay! Labwork said it wasn’t Graves disease or Hashimoto’s.  Also, yay!

A thyroid scan in September told a different story though.  Sub-clinical Graves. September also saw me without a GP or an endocrinologist.  All this time, the labwork said that something wasn’t quite right but not wrong enough to warrant restarting treatment. (T4 and T3 OK, TSH super low).  The final bloodwork for 2021 showed 100% normal thyroid levels and I suspect I know why but without a GP or endocrinologist, I have no way of confirming.

So, I spent the year with pretty low energy and feeling more than a little sick.  As a result – in a way, I practised being semi-retired.

Energy levels did affect some of my/our decisions this year though.

We bought the staff lease out on the car we got in 2018 – partly because I had no interest or energy to go on test drives (especially in the middle of on and off again restrictions) but it’s not a bad thing because we like the car.

Being constantly wiped out didn’t stop me from taking on some smaller projects and naturally a couple that turned out bigger than I thought they would. I like to think I was more careful than in previous years though!

No seriously interesting sewing machine projects this year – though I have sworn off ever servicing another Singer 20U.  Good grief that machine has some serious design issues – and the one that hit my bench had been refused by “every other tech in the Edmonton area”! While I love the confidence people have in me, that’s a thing I’d have liked to been told before it was in the basement awaiting my attention! Yes, I got it back into running shape.  Changed some gears in a Pfaff 1222 this year too.  That’s always fun. I checked the motor brushes at the same time because apparently I like pain?

So let’s see:  other than sewing machine repair, what happened?

I began the year by picking up a parts spinning wheel.  That’s not as ludicrous a concept as it seems when I write this.  The wheel is a CPW (Canadian Production Wheel, sometimes known as a “Quebec wheel”).  I figured that it may be able to help other CPWs.  Somewhere along the line it became a “I wonder if I could fix it…” project instead.  Well, it was in worse shape than I’d thought (OK, it looked a little like someone had thrown it off the back of a truck…) and so I put it on the back burner until late spring until I could disassemble, clean and evaluate it outside.  At that point, I  took the whole thing apart and made some decisions.

There were so many parts on the wheel that would need rehab that it wouldn’t be a simple job.  I do like a challenge though.  Naturally, the flyer was broken.  They often are.  I had (and still have!) intentions of making a new wood one but in the meantime, I fired up CAD and designed and printed an interim one. It took me 5 tries to get a nearly perfect fit.

I hemped the uprights (similar to what they do with bagpipes but I didn’t need an air/water tight seal) which tightened things up enough that they stayed in place while spinning and they can’t just fall out anymore. Those two things alone made the wheel functional – albeit still pretty finicky.   The wheel though is disassembled and stored in the wheel room for the time being because I need someone to remake the table (the part that most of the parts attach to) for me.  That’s beyond my current woodworking skills.

V2.0 of the Elna Supermatic accessories tray finally happened.  I borrowed one and took measurements off it. It’s really close – it’s a tiny bit tight when you put it around the arm but is otherwise quite faithful to the original.

The hand-spun hand-knit socks started as a spin and knit along at the beginning of 2020 were finally on my feet on Jan 31!  They’re slouchy and so comfortable!!

In the meantime, I warped the loom with some Sugar and Creme cotton that I was tired of looking at.  I started this project Jan 27th and finished Feb 11 – including the hemming!  This is a serious record for me and it was not to be repeated.

The next project is still on the loom.  Started in March and it’s still on the loom today.

There’s a small chance that at least part of that is because of what happened at the beginning of April.

April 2 started out as a wonderful day.  We got up and drove south to meet a dear friend who was bringing some weaving equipment up from Calgary for me.

We had a lovely lunch with Cynthia and then Ryan and I took a scenic route home.  A few hours later, there was a deafening crack from the kitchen.  Further investigation showed that the kitchen window was broken and there was a golf ball on the lawn below the window.

No, we don’t live near a golf course.   The neighbour behind us has been problematic since they moved in – loud hollering drinking parties and when we went over to ask them to turn it down in the wee hours, they threatened violence.  We spoke with RCMP and long story short, it was our bill to pay because they didn’t admit to breaking the window.  Upon further investigation the following day, we saw lots of damage to the back of the garage too – so this isn’t an isolated incident, it was just the first time they’d popped the ball up over the garage and sent it into the window instead of destroying the siding.

A month later the new window arrived and as that was being put in, I noticed that the front windows we’d replaced in December 2019 were letting in an absurd amount of heat.  It was 14C (57F) outside and a temperature reading on the table on the inside of the windows was over 40C  (104F).  This was at 9:30am in early May.

Suddenly, I understood how it was that we simply couldn’t keep the house cool in the summer of 2020 and why Bandit had had dehydration issues in the heatwave.  This brought on serious stress at the thought of this summer – which turned out to be obscenely hot!  I spent a not insignificant amount of time in talks with All Weather Windows trying to find out if these windows were performing as expected. In the end, they’d installed what the salesman had recommended to us (Low E only and not sunstop because they “fight” – which I was later told wasn’t true and the customer service person wasn’t sure why I was told that.) and so it was our dime to replace the windows with something that would be more suitable to the tune of $1600.  I balked. Ryan balked.  Neither of us could see our way to paying this company more to fix a poor recommendation they’d made. That’s more than 1/3 of the way to central air conditioning.  Something neither of us ever thought we’d be looking at installing in a house in Central Alberta – but it would mean that we could keep kitties cool, us cool and lower the stress of not knowing if the house was overheating while we were away for the day and making the cats sick.   Summer and fall were spent getting quotes and we will be having central air installed in the spring.  In the meantime, we installed ugly outdoor roll up blinds outside the windows and while they were an eyesore – and limited the natural light – suddenly the house was almost manageable heat-wise.

In the meantime, I lost all momentum on the loom.  There was a single dyeing session in April – both fibre and yarn – even a dyed warp for my next weaving project. These are Dylon fibre reactive dyes for cotton, etc.  I had 4 packages of “Jeans” and used 3 for what you see.  Most of the fibre in the photos is cotton other than the locks and small skeins which are various protein fibres which the package said it would dye, just to a lighter shade.  When I finished dyeing what was in the bowl (bottom photo), I dyed the rest of the large cotton skeins to match (upper right photo).  Those skeins started out as a “desert” colour and over-dyeing with the jeans colour resulted in the colours below.

Then I cast on my first sweater from some of that yarn. That sweater is still on the needles (in fact, I just frogged 1.5″ because I joined the wrong ball of yarn and the colour transition was too abrupt).

By early May, it was also starting to get nicer outside.  Our local  Spinning/Knitting group was able to start meeting outside again and I even pulled the drumcarder out and began to learn to use it.  That’d been on my list of things to do for more years than I care to admit.  2021 was the year!  It started with some dyed mohair I had lying around.  Then I dyed the rest of the mohair with Pro-chem acid dyes and chose to do a colour study of sorts. Colour confidence isn’t a strength for me, so I wanted to stretch my wings a little.  The goal was to try to create all of the secondary and tertiary colours when starting with only the CMYK or RBYK basics.

All of this came from only these colours and some white (undyed) fibre:

In late May, I decided to close my Ravelry account and move my knitted/spun/weaving project logs to Airtable.  I spent more than a month doing it but I also went way further than I’d planned to – including a full inventory of all spinning/weaving/knitting equipment, books, videos, fibre, yarn (commercial & handspun).  Did I mention I’m an IT person by training and I seriously love data?  Data is beautiful to me and that’s before you consider that the subject of this data is gorgeous to begin with. 

There were the couple of versions of the DIY weaving bobbin winder.  It’s working well for weaving bobbins and for rewinding spinning bobbins.

While I didn’t spend a lot of time spinning on wheels this year, I did get some time in on the new Lendrum Saxony during the Tour de Fleece where the goal was to work on projects that have been languishing.  This is the end of a paper box full of alpaca that’s been with me since I started spinning.  Cotton (upper left corner) was a first this year as well.

There were a couple of things that needed to be warrantied on the Saxony and so I sent them back for that as well.  One wobbly DD whorl that was damaging the rear maiden, an issue with the assembly of the super fast flyer mother-of-all and a backwards scotch tension mother-of-all.  All were rectified.  Also, both of the drive bands it came with were too long.  Those I shortened myself.  Documenting this here because others have said the same about the bands and I’d like them to know they’re not crazy.  Or at least no crazier than I am.  That’s not going to make anyone feel better, is it? 😀

I’m thinking of a post in the future where I do a write up about the Lendrum Saxony and all of its spinning heads. There’s relatively little information out there about it – and Gord Lendrum’s site is not focused on advertising the wheel.  I have most of the photos taken already.

Somehow, 2021 became the year of the spindle for me.  Of my 4 unfinished objects from 2020, 2 were spindle projects and both were multi year carryovers – both started in 2019.  It was time to finish them – especially because between the 2 of them, they don’t add up to 80g.

Then, I started testing some 3d printed spindles.  This started with a file from Thingiverse then designing some from scratch.  Those first spindles were to be for a class the Morinville Library asked me to teach on drop spindles.  The class was going to run in September but is currently on hold indefinitely thanks to provincial restrictions.

Then August brought some CAD design time and beginner friendly 3d printed spindles.   This came about because Kim at Little Blue Fibre Studio was asking about 3d printed spindles and where to get them printed.  That required a license that allowed her to sell.   I had nearly every spinner I know testing these spindles out for me before they went to the shop.  Thanks to those testers, there were modifications and various iterations of the spindles until I was happy with the design.  The natural byproduct of that is that I have several spindles left over and so I’ve put them on special in the shop. The other byproduct of all of this testing is that I had more spindle projects than ever on the go. Typically, I have one portable project and one wheel project at a given time.  Nearly all of my spinning from August to December though was on spindles and mostly for testing. The next spindle I’m working on is more geared toward thinner, higher twist yarns.

Mid-September, I finally took the plunge and ordered some blending cloth and made a blending board.  That lead to a couple of blending projects that I’m just now getting to spin.

That’s not to say that all projects were a success this year.  Focus was a definite issue as I can see as I read back on this post.  One thing that didn’t get done is a photo archive project I’ve been wanting to do for ages.  At the beginning of October, I pulled out all of my slides, 35mm negatives and medium format negatives, fully intending to make digital contact prints and scan them.  I got the light table out, the camera, got the old SCSI Minolta Dimage Scan Multi 2 and a SCSI card, got it working under Windows 10 and… lost interest.  It likely doesn’t help that one of the Windows “Feature Updates” killed the scanner and enforced some troubleshooting on me.

In early October, I also did my very best to anger the drill press.  The 3d printed spindles had me thinking – how much better would they look if I could “turn” wood shafts for it?  I experimented with shaping a couple of spindle shafts with them chucked in the drill press.  Considering the tools and the lack of experience, I was pretty happy with the results.  It didn’t take many spindle shafts though to introduce too much run out on the drill press.  It started drilling and turning out perfectly egg shaped work.  So, I stopped that but not before these sessions also let me know that I likely could handle the noise/pitch of a wood lathe.  That clinched it.  Come the new year, I’d be looking for a lathe and learning to turn.

Almost 2 weeks later to the day, I brought a lathe home.  Yeah, I don’t really know what happened to my “next year” timeline but I was suddenly obsessed.  Then started collecting chisels and other things I needed to turn.

One of the things that naturally happens when I get a new tool is I tend to revisit projects I either did with what I had at the time, or projects that are on hold.  One of those projects was a Roxton spinning wheel conversion project.  See, Roxton made these decorative non-functional spinning wheels back in the 70s? 80s? which can often be recognized by the violin shaped table up in the upper left photo below.  Many new spinners get these wheels thinking they’ll learn to spin on them but find out that they can’t spin in the condition they’re in. They have 5 fatal flaws and one nuisance.

1. The mandrel orifice is solid.  (Top right photo – note: this one is already drilled out.  Normally this would be solid on the end.) It needs to be able to transfer the yarn from one side to the other of the front maiden leather
2. The yarn hooks are staples. (Top right photo) These could be replaced with cup hooks though.
3. The bobbin and flyer whorl are one.  (Sometimes referred to as a flobbin – bottom right photo but this wheel already has them cut apart. They’re still not properly functional though – there’s not a big enough difference between the ratios.) These need to be separate and able to turn at different speeds
4. There’s no way to tension the drive band (Bottom left photo)
5. The flyer and its hooks are pretty dodgy too (upper right photo)
6. The treadle is pretty skinny and would be uncomfortable to use for any period of time (upper left photo)

I’ve had 2 Roxtons in the basement for about 6 months – a gift from someone who’d done exactly what I mentioned above – bought the wheels with the intention to learn and found out they weren’t working wheels.  She’d made modifications to make the one spin somewhat but knew it could be better.  When she got a better wheel, these had no home or purpose. With the arrival of the lathe, I had visions of being able to turn bobbins and whorls, but it came back to the major sticking point.  The orifice was the one thing I likely couldn’t do on my own.  Or could I?  One of the tools I’d acquired around the same time as the lathe was a drill press vice.  Suddenly, I had the tools I needed to drill out the mandrel.

The bobbins and whorls would be a matter of practice on the lathe – or I could design and 3d print them. The treadle is really just cutting and shaping a new one.  The flyer is not terribly complex and can be cut on a bandsaw.  And tension is the last to work out.  I’m thinking of something similar to an Ashford Traditional.   While the Roxton will never be as smooth as a Majacraft or a Lendrum, it can likely be a functional wheel with some effort.  I think it will be an interesting project to try.  I’ll post more about it as the project progresses.  If I can make these 2 wheels work reasonably well, I plan to put a tutorial out or a kit so people can convert theirs.

November saw a couple of afternoons where I could go out and practice with the lathe. The day after it came home, I managed to make a captive ring.  I’ve blown up every one since so it was likely a fluke that I had that sort of control at the beginning!  2 weeks after it came home, I turned my first (unplanned) supported spindle.  It’s got lots of flaws and it was an unfinished spindle when I accidentally parted it off the lathe.  I forgot I was turning between centres and not held by the chuck and parted off the one side.  Final shaping was done with a knife and if I hadn’t parted it off like that, the tip would have been a lot sharper. Still, for a couple of afternoons worth of experience, I was pretty happy with it – especially when it spun reasonably well.

Then December went for shi… crap.  On December 5th, we rushed Bandit to emergency.  He had a fever and wasn’t eating.  After lots of diagnostics, it was determined he had pancreatitis.   After antibiotics and fluids failed to do anything for his fever, I reached out to the rescue we got him and his sister Grey from and they recommended a vet they work with all the time.

By the afternoon of Dec 7th, he was in surgery.  They thought it was a blockage based on x-rays but what they found when they went in was worse.  There was necrotic tissue inside his abdomen. Tons of it. The worst the vets had ever seen.  They cleaned it all up and stitched him back together and he spent the next 3 days there recovering.  We have no idea what caused it or if it will happen again.  The thoughts are autoimmune related / stress but we’ll likely never know. The vets were wonderful and so accommodating.  I was there every day to cuddle with him and encourage him to eat.

On the 10th, he came home.  Grey didn’t recognize him. He looked funny (shaved arms and tummy and he was wearing clothes of all things!), smelled bad and didn’t move right.  This was the start of 4 seriously hard weeks of rehabbing him.  Getting him back on food, meds and fluids, healing up, getting him back together with Grey, trying to mitigate/reduce anything that could be causing him stress.  Getting him to eat meant I was assist feeding him every 2 hours at first.  Ryan says I didn’t sleep more than an hour at a time for weeks.  I was turning into a complete nutcase.  I cried most days.  If he didn’t eat well or seemed off, if he seemed to make a little progress, or Grey hissed at him or didn’t for a change. I’ve had so many flashbacks of Stormi’s last days and such dread in the middle of the night.

Right around this time, my thyroid lab work came back 100% normal.  Lab work that hasn’t been normal since at least 2018 and probably longer. Remember that theory I alluded to above? Stress.  I’ve seen stress make people start needing their anti-thyroid meds again after a long period of time not needing them.  I suspect stress managed to mess these numbers up too and that it’s going to be very temporary.

Grey has been the biggest challenge.  As  far as she’s concerned, she’s never met this cat before and Bandit just wants to cuddle and play with his sister.  We feared their bond might be broken.  It might be.  I feared making one of them sick or sicker with the stress of a “new” cat situation.  Once we recognized it as non-recognition aggression, we went back to the beginning and tried a full reintroduction but it’s really tough when both cats are the resident cats and one just wants to love on the other one.  In fact, 6+ weeks later, they’re still not back to normal but there’s almost no hissing, occasional playing and they’ll sleep on the same body pillow at the foot of the bed at night.  Not the cuddling that they used to do…yet.

Last week, Bandit got a clean bill of health.  The acute attack of pancreatitis is gone.  He’s slowly gaining weight (a couple of grams at a time but I’ll take it!). We now need to work on normalizing the house and getting him back to as healthy as possible physically and emotionally – which includes his sister needing to realize that poor kitty she’s been hissing at is her brother.

I suspect I’ll be hyper alert about Bandit’s health for a long time to come though because it’s extremely difficult to not know why it happened in the first place or if it will happen again.

As a result, I’ve set no goals for the new year.  I’ve committed to nothing.  All I’m doing is taking some small jobs as they come along and keeping the online shop open.  Between Bandit’s health scare and my own health up in the air, it seems the best course for now.

What I wouldn’t give for a boring life.

So in the end, this is the total fibre progress for the year and the UFOs I enter 2022 with – but I have no expectations on myself for when I’ll finish them and I’m not putting any pressure on to get them finished.  They’re artificial deadlines anyway.

Hmm,… it occurs to me – I don’t think I did this semi-retired thing quite right…

Today’s post title inspired by: Melissa Etheridge’s first single (and title track) off her 2021 album One Way Out 

“And when I woke up this morning
Had a fire in my brain
One good look at you, I’d say
You were just this side of sane”

I feel that.  Do I ever!

How was your year?