I have been reading her archives lately. I just got completely read through August of 2005. It was somewhere in 2005 that she began discussing long draw spinning, I believe. I was finally validated by discovering her secret. I mean, seriously. The woman would sit down (saying that she was not a proficient spinner) and say, "I turned this 20,000 grams of wool into 4km of yarn this afternoon." I mean, obviously that's a huge exaggeration. But that's how it felt. I kept thinking, "How in the world did she spin all of that? She's either lying or manipulating space time." Turns out it was long draw, which I theorize IS a method of manipulating space time. Let me demonstrate.
This is four ounces of lovely Falkland wool that I got as a present from my lovely friend, Jodie. She was destashing. Lovely. I LOVE her.
Anyway, I split the entire length of fiber in half and began spinning a bit. (Okay, sorry, this is a flashback episode of the PaperSensei blog. Flash back to Sunday, when I went into TYF and Terry showed me how to spin long draw from the fold, a lot like this video on Youtube does. I love Terry. I love this lady in the video. I seriously am having amorous feelings for the video lady, too, because she did this with virtually no fiber prep. Yay! Now I am, too!)
So here, even including what minimal initial fiber prep I did (I'm breaking off small chunks, then splitting those in half, and then fanning them out a bit before beginning my spinning on the fold), after my first half hour, this is what I had on the spindle:
Give me another half hour. This is what I had:
Another half hour from today (WHILE dealing with the kids, breaking up arguments, and generally keeping peace in my house using only the sheer volume of my voice and the deadliness of my eyes... did I mention it was Mother Bootcamp, I mean, Spring Break?) made me firmly convinced that I did, indeed, learn how to manipulate space time. I was nervous about not finishing my fiber before the allotted half hour I had given myself. It was 12:26. I proceeded to spin through four, count 'em, FOUR of my fiber fluffs, and I looked at the clock, and it was still 12:26.
I almost fell over. Crying, laughing, whatever. I LOVE this. I love Yarn Harlot. I love Jodie. Terry. Video lady. I'm going through my stash at the speed of... well, I don't know. If I'm manipulating time somehow, speed would be completely irrelevant, wouldn't it?
And, last but not least, my brilliant 10 year old (who I'm trying to remember is a very intelligent and amazing child, despite his tendency to involve himself in inane arguments with his FOUR year old brother... It's Bootcamp, remember? It's just long enough to drive you totally freaking bonkers, but not so long that you actually pull yourself together and develop the rhythm you have by the end of summer that makes you almost, read, ALMOST sad to see school start again) made this jewelry set for my grandma's birthday. He picked out all of the beads himself, did the design, and even disagreed with me about part of it and did it his own way, and wouldn't you know, it's amazingly gorgeous. (It would have still been gorgeous my way, but I would never have done this myself, which is one of the primary reasons I so LOVE to make things with my children or anyone else's. I love their complete abandon in the creative process. I try to mimic it.)
All I did was attach all of the crimps and whatnot, to make sure that they were solid, and do what little wire work was involved, because we were on a time constraint. Child has done wire work on his own before, too. I think when he was about 8. He learned so well. I'm so proud of him. I'm so proud of him. I'm so proud of him.
Now to get rid of him for a while so I can watch what I want to watch on our only TV. We need to get the DVD drive on his laptop fixed, dangit.
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