When last I left you, I was planning to slink off and recover from the July from hell. I posted that on Wednesday August 2. The very next day – I kid you not! – I walked into the living room as a truck was pulling into our driveway. What? I had no appointments or machine drop offs scheduled. Then I noticed the decals on the truck. Continue reading Approaching Autumn
Rain Against My Window and also reviving some Sweet Memories
Rain Against My Window (And in the basement)
In the several months since I last posted, a few things have changed. I mentioned previously that I’d started to digitize my negatives. Well, OK, I’d made a false start in 2021. In February-ish, I started again and this time, I got through the entire 222 archival sheets of negatives. About a third of the way through, my ancient Minolta Dimage Scan Multi 2 film scanner started giving warnings that bulb failure was imminent. This is a (mostly) irreplaceable part. I did find a thread on photo.net that discussed building one and even provided the source for the CFL tube.
At that point, I wasn’t too comfortable with the idea of possibly shorting or frying something with my seriously rusty electronics soldering skills*. Nor did I love that the bulb site provided moneygram, western union or a Paypal transfer address options instead of a proper purchasing route. So I opted to hold off and see if the bulb survived the project. In retrospect though this may have been self-sabotage.
(*Skills I got to dust off soon afterwards when Continue reading Rain Against My Window and also reviving some Sweet Memories
CSM Sock Yarn Study PT1
Lately I’ve been finding that sock sizing on the CSM is a little variable. When I knit socks for a friend – who has the same size feet as I do – hers are too big by about 3 rows and mine are too short by about 4 rows. At first, I thought it was because I was throwing mine in the washer and hanging to dry and she was hand washing. She’s blocking her socks. I can’t be bothered.
This could definitely be a factor but then she threw me a curve ball: she tossed the last batch in the washer and hung them to dry. Result? No shrinkage. Well. What the heck?
So then I thought Continue reading CSM Sock Yarn Study PT1
A first and a last at the same time
I mentioned in my last post that the mods to the eSpinner were the second frenetic project of the year. This is the first one. The first spin of the year was a really unusual one for me.
Back in 2016 or 2017, a friend gave me a couple of shopping bags of llama clippings. This is literally clipped from the animals with scissors. I stored them for some time while I decided what I wanted to do with it. As you do. Continue reading A first and a last at the same time
Here I go again! eSpinner remote hack and a few improvements
A small update on the eSpinner and a tip for those who want a “remote” for their wheels.
When I built this wheel, I chose a 2.1mmx5.5mm plug. The input power is 12vdc and the tip of the connector is positive. This is a pretty standard setup and it allows me to use an off the shelf battery pack that’s pretty commonly used on many electric spinning wheels. Continue reading Here I go again! eSpinner remote hack and a few improvements
Future Starts Slow
My overarching goal has always been making useful things useful again. That’s whether I’m fixing sewing machines, doing woodwork/woodturning, refurbishing spinning equipment or creating something in CAD from scratch.
I talked about 3d printers in a previous post and how they’re maybe not what people think they are, yet. That’s not to say they’re not ready to bring new life to things.
Every once in a while when I’m knitting on my antique sock knitting machine, I pull the bum off a cylinder needle. They’re basically latch hooks but with a foot or protrusion that the cams in the machine push up or down. Continue reading Future Starts Slow
Brave and Crazy – Socks and Pens
Suddenly around the middle of December this year, I decided I needed to make presents because sometimes I’m a little crazy/stupid.
No, I couldn’t buy them, I had to make them this year. Pens and socks. That’s what I would do. It mattered not that I am a very new CSM sock knitter and I’d never turned a pen. This is what I was going to do. For Christmas. Less than 2 weeks away.
See, the last few years, we haven’t really been in the holiday mood. Last year was particularly tough when we almost lost Bandit to pancreatitis/severe infection/necrotic tissue at the beginning of December. All of my energy last Christmas was dedicated to getting him eating on his own and recover. A large part of this year was getting him back to normal and Grey to recognize him.
An easy touch – a final year end finish
As the year comes to a close, I had one last project to finish. Back in September, I prepared some rolags out of waste fibre when I was carding the Finn/Gotland locks. These were not the full of chaff and yuck parts. Just stuff that stuck in the cards but wasn’t short or full of neps.
I started spinning them on a cross-arm spindle shortly afterwards. It drafts beautifully and smooth despite being waste wool.
An accidentally epic finish
I thought I’d try something a little novel for this blog. A short post.
What? It could happen. Maybe a “shortish” post for now.
Back in July, I started a supported spindle spin that ended up being a far larger project than I imagined. See, I usually spin just to spin. Then the yarn gets put on the wall where it may take me years to use because I spin more than I knit or weave combined.
I talked about this project back in August and showed a bunch of in progress pics. Well, around late September I got it in my head that maybe I could finish it by November 10th and have it blocked and dry in time for the Edmonton Fibre Frolic. I do these things – putting unnecessary pressure on myself. Still it was only a couple of rows a day, as long as nothing went wrong and if I could keep up with the spinning. It also depended on how many repeats of the penultimate chart I decided to do. As written or one repeat, it was doable. The knitting alone though was a huge undertaking. True lace (no rest rows) and shaping I’ve never done before. Some days a row would take me 2 hours – especially if I had to go back and find an error or fix one in the row below. Continue reading An accidentally epic finish
Mechanical Heart – version 2 of the eSpinner
I mentioned back in August that one of the next projects on the list was the next version of the eSpinner. Well, September wasn’t the month for it. Mostly, I wasn’t really in the mood for CAD work and I knew there would be a lot of it.
The first week of December though – I was all over it. We had a brief cold spell and it seemed like a great time to take advantage of the time in.
I started the modifications on December 2nd and ended up doing the bulk of the CAD work over the next four days. At the same time, I began the printing. There were a couple of parts redesigned from scratch but most were modifications of the designs I’d created for the first version back in 2019 when I was learning CAD. This of course has its own pitfalls because how I design has changed a lot and what I did when I was learning was very inefficient. So in updating the files, I had a lot of things I needed to modify other than just dimensions of the drawings.
Here was the wish list for V2.0: Continue reading Mechanical Heart – version 2 of the eSpinner