From: MAHE@YaleVM.YCC.Yale.Edu
Subject: Re: More projects
Organization: Yale University
Date: Mon, 09 Nov 92 10:48:29 EST

I haven't finished anything really amazing lately :-) (although
the warm pants are really appreciated...) but I did something
FUN yesterday.
 
My old roomate and good friend Nancy, who got me back into knitting
several years ago, called me up to tell me about going to the Spin-Off
workshop in Wyoming, and to tell me that 1) they do take beginners,
and I must go next year to Noth Carolina and 2) she met a wonderful
woman from Connecticut who was both very talented and willing to
teach me.  So what could I do?  Even though my house is currently
littered with urgent, unfinished projects, and since the weather was too
cold for the house painting I should have done, I got myself and my wheel
(Nancy's old Ashford) on the freeway and went for a lesson.
 
I had a sample ball of the ...stuff that came out last time I tried
to spin (Nancy had attempted a crash course before I left California
3 years ago), and it was not pretty.  But this time, somehow, things
went marvelously well.  I have a whole bobbin of quite usable yarn,
it's going to go straight into one of those funny hats in the latest
Vogue Knitting, the one with fat ridges and a little blip.  And Selma is
both wonderful and talented, so now I have a new fiber friend close
to home, and when I visit California for Christmas I'll have
something to show Nancy, and I can try her new wheel!
 
I attribute the improvement to 2 things, possibly equally.  Even though
spinning hasn't been someting I've been doing (the 4 years spent knitting
my last sweater may have something to do with that...), I've been reading
about it, discussing it, thinking about the nature of wool, you name it.
I do think a good library is helpful in the long run, I absorbed some
of all the good advice I've been getting on some level.  Then I remember
being dismayed by what was coming out of my hands, and trying to
improve it, not letting go soon enough and getting those miserable
thin twisted sections.  This time, I decided not to pay any attention
to the result at all, and kept my eyes firmly on the drafting triangle
(the place between your hands where the yarn is actually forming),
not even glancing at the yarn.  This attention to the process rather
than the result left my hands much looser, kept me from hanging on
too long, and on the whole allowed me to get much better results.
it's the Zen of Wool, or something :-).
 
It was also fun that I visited Selma at her restaurant, and we
got setup toward the end of brunch while people were still eating.
The entire audience's eyes bugged out, and we got half a dozen
serious enquirers.  Selma says she loves to teach there, not just
because that's where she spends most of her time, but because any
student trained in public usually results in 2 or 3 more eager ones.
 
And my 4-year sweater got a lot of admiration :-).
 
Marie-Christine
mahe-marie-christine@yale.edu
 
>--------------------------------------------------------------------
>...nothing is so fatal to maidenly delicacy of speech as the run of
>a good library.
>				Robertson Davies, _Tempest Tost_
 
That's great, can I have that as my motto?