A Curious Statistical Anomaly

Well, the Tour de Fleece starts today. I signed up because you set your own goal to achieve between the start and end of the Tour de France (site is in French). So, you have from July 5th to 27th. Sometimes I need a challenge and/or a goal to get me going on things that I want or need to do. So, I contacted Katherine at the website and signed up. Notice the Tour de Fleece logo on the right — that means I’ve declared my goal and I’m going for it.

Goal: Spin a bit every day with the object being to spin up the one pound ball of variegated green roving that I purchased at Maryland Sheep& Wool a few years back. A secondary goal is to get used to my Schacht wheel again. The goal is to spin the entire one pound ball up into two-ply yarn by the end of the Tour de Fleece.

Now, to the actual start of my Tour de Fleece. I was off in a cloud of dust. I found the green ball of fiber in the basement basket. Got it out of storage and brought it up stairs. I then had to get the Schacht out. I found that the drive band had come off. I needed to change out the bobbin anyway so I thought that was no problem. Swapped the old bobbin (partially full of angora singles) and put in an empty one, reconnected the drive band and voila — ready to go.

Except, it wouldn’t draw the yarn into the orifice and up to the spool. Okay, I obviously forgot how to do something. Down to the basement to find a book on spinning wheels, found it, but no joy in the how-to department. I want a manual that has the answers to MY questions, which tend to be much more basic than even beginner books. But, aha, I remember I have a Schacht brochure with pictures of wheels ready to spin — found it, but no image showed the drive band or area behind the spool. Now, I’m starting to panic. I know this wheel works — nothing has changed since I last spun on it except the drive band was loosened. So, when in doubt, google. I found the Schact site and their manuals for wheels. Didn’t find the one for my wheel but did find one that had a photo where you could see the drive band and the drive band at the top of the wheel looked like it had one thread around the spool and another around the whorl. Quick change and the thread was being drawn into the orifice and onto the spool.

Okay, finally, now I’m ready to spin. I pulled off about 12 inches and then pulled off a strip, pre-drafted, and started. It took a while to find a rhythm but finally I was actually spinning and it was … well, as you can see my singles are really, really small. I let it double back on itself and I’ve got lace weight in the making here. Might be able to use it for socks if I three or four ply. The intended goal was two ply. But now I’m dreaming of a floaty shawl. Guess I’ll dream along with the singles and decide on ply later.

I’m fine with changing the ply goal because the real goal is to spin a bit every day. As you can see I didn’t get very far and that’s after an hour and a half which includes the panic of searching for the manuals and fixing the drive band, lots of broken thread as I played with tension and it’s still not at a point that makes me happy but I’m getting there.

You know what? In spite of everything, I feel like I really accomplished something tonight. I’m happy with what I did and I’m feeling like I’m beginning to get the hang of this again. I’ll, of course, post off and on during the Tour de Fleece time period and go and check out the Tour de Fleece blog to see how others are doing.