Daryl's Blog

Yesterday was one of those “jello” days.  (The kind where no matter hard you try, you feel like you are moving through Jello… It started out with great promise, I got to sleep in since my daughter had delayed openings at the High School for three days, something to do with the lower grades having standardized testing and the seniors being herded into the auditorium for the requisite lectures on drugs, drinking and driving, and date rape…  Prom season is upon us…

Anyway, my list seemed do-able, plus I had a lunch date with girlfriends, at the sushi place.  Always a treat.  I did accomplish a little off my list in the morning,  but not nearly as much as I had hoped, and suddenly it was noon.  So I dropped what I was doing and raced into town for sushi.

So far so good.

Still on my list in the afternoon was 1) Cleaning the rest of the kitchen, 2) working on the Jacket, 3) weaving a scarf, 4) playing around with images to start another small art piece on the Structo.

I managed to come up with a couple of ideas for the art piece, I went into the kitchen planning to scrub the floor, and turned around and went back to the studio.  A message appeared in my inbox on the computer, from one of the guild members inquiring about topics for the business meeting at tonight’s guild meeting.  Crap.  The guild meeting was that evening, and duh, I’m the program…  Held over from the cancelled meeting from last month, I was giving my new guild lecture on Warping the Loom from Front to Back.  There goes my to-do list.

OK, so I had about another hour before I had to leave for the meeting. So I looked at the to-do list, and thought to myself, I can knock out a scarf in an hour, no problem.  It was already started anyway, so this should be a piece of cake.

So I started to weave.

It wasn’t going well.

This is hard to explain.

Sidebar: I put these scarf warps on using the AVL warping mill (if you are not a weaver, this will more than likely make no sense, just know I had a mess, and skip to the next paragraph).  It works great, I love the tool, except there is the assumption that the sections of warp you are winding are more than likely all the same type/size of yarn.  In the case of my scarves, they are not.  I have five clearly different sections, with totally different yarns, plus supplemental ribbons, and the warp beam is very small, 1/3 yard per turn, and I’m putting 15 yards on the loom.  I’ve had problems with the sections building unevenly, the more yarn on the loom, the larger the circumference of the beam, and the more chance the sections won’t be exact.  I’ve managed to make it work more or less up until now, but this time, it was pretty clear, no matter how I viewed the situation, this wasn’t working.  The entire left side of the warp build up incrementally so the warp really sloped upward on the beam to a point where I had tight on the right side and soup on the left.

In a fit of total disgust, I removed 20 inches of weaving, hurled it on the floor, and started to unwind the entire 15 yard warp.  In a pool onto the front of the loom.  I had to stop and go to the guild meeting.  It haunted me all night.  And of course I was lecturing on Warping from Front to Back.  Obviously I didn’t do that on this warp, since I used a sectional method.

I came back from the meeting and stared at the loom.  It was 11:00pm at night.

There was nothing else to be done.

So I grabbed the warp, and continued to pull it all forward, into a large pile of yarn on the floor.  It was hellious to pull forward (that’s probably not a word, but in this case it is accurate).  Many of the yarns are fine and doubled.  They were switched around on purpose when I threaded.  They didn’t come off the loom without a fight…

I ended up with this. My daughter walked into the studio on the way to bed, and took one look and said, “Good luck with that one…”, and immediately exited the studio…

To re-beam the warp, I needed to create tension, just like I illustrate in my booklet Warping Front to Back.  This warp is mostly slippery rayon.  I needed a lot of tensioning sticks (they are really least sticks in disguise).  I went into my stick barrel, which is tucked into the corner behind my laser printer, which I had to move out of the way to get to, and rooted around for my two sets of lease sticks (total of four).  I found three.  Crap.  The barrel was so overstuffed with wrapping paper, brown kraft paper, and all sorts of stuff that just somehow ended up in there. I hurled everything that shouldn’t have been in the barrel across the studio floor.  I was on a roll…

This is what the barrel looked like after I hurled all the overstuffed debris from it across the studio floor.

I found my four lease sticks and set to work, carefully stepping over the carnage…

Once in place, I began to beam.

It was about 1 in the morning.

There was no way I was going to get through this task without some assistance, and no way I was leaving it to morning…  I went for the assistance…

The warp stretched out the door of the studio, down the stairs, all the way to my bedroom.

At 3:30am I went to bed.  I figured I’d work until I finished beaming, or I was too drunk to beam, and then I’d deal with the carnage either way in the morning.  This is what I woke up to.

🙂

A dreary Monday, yes I’m getting letters.  Nice to know my fan club misses me when I am holed up in the studio incommunicado!  Truth is, there isn’t really anything to write about.  I am thoroughly enjoying the quiet days in the studio, with not much on the calendar.  I’m getting my fill of just being alone because in about four weeks, I’ll go back to nut case on the road, sitting in airports, knitting socks, and wishing I had done more with my five months of quiet in the studio.  And of course as I write the above sentence, the panic of OMG, not enough time, is already sinking in.  There are all kinds of deadlines for artwork and exhibits calling at me, and I’ve actually let a number of deadlines for shows come and go.  Truth is, I don’t have a lot of new work for exhibition purposes.  I have handwoven fabric, which remains unsewn, and I have warped looms for artwork and a commission that remain unwoven.  I have a committment to two exhibits for work due within the month, and they remain undone, unplanned, and certainly not ready for delivery. And I have a keynote address that needs to be written.

Yet I’ve done a lot over the last few months.  And I have no regrets.  My only regret is that there aren’t 48 hours in a day, and of course if there were, it still wouldn’t be enough.  This whole past week has sort of been like the weather we are experiencing today.  It is raining, heavily.  Our mounds of ice are dwindling fast and along with the rainwater, the rivers are ready to crest, and flooding is imminent.  The back yard is a swamp.  When I have to take the compost out to the back quarter, I have to slog through the muck that was once a beautiful lawn, kind of like wading through jello, but not nearly as pretty.  I felt like that in the studio this week.  I started over on my jacket and rewove the first two yards of trim.  And I’m not happy with the weft I picked on one of the scarves I started weaving today.  It is only one scarf, and I’ll try a different weft on the next, but the mid toned beige weft is diluting the vibrant warp.  That will definitely change when it is washed, more than likely it will be fine, but I’m not as thrilled with how it all looks as I thought I would be.  I spent the whole morning between online banking for three accounts, checkbook balancing, and Quicken Books, which I still deplore.  All the bills are paid for the month, and the paperwork caught up.  My inbox is about four inches lighter.  But that doesn’t make for a good blog post.

I’m tired, and working in slow motion, I stayed up too late watching the Academy Awards, for movies I’ve never seen.  They are all  “On the list…”  My list is so long of stuff I’d like to do with my life I’ll never get to it all, but that’s OK, no one ever died of having a too long list, people have died from boredom I’m sure.  (I’m probably making that up, but it makes me feel better.  Boredom is not a noun I can define from personal experience…)

Saturday I spent the afternoon at the Newark Museum, demonstrating garment construction for the Spring Arts Workshop Open House.  It was great to sit in an airy open court, surrounded by the other instructors and chatting with the public about what I’m passionate about.  I took the suit with me, now completely interfaced, and the redone braid, and sat happily sewing and chatting, and made some serious progress on the suit.  I’m now seeing how much fun the suit will be when it is finished.  The braid is striking.  At least I think so.  I’m glad I redid it.  And of course the public was really excited when I showed them the little loom that made the braid.  Lots of requests for an inkle loom class in the fall.  I’ll be teaching an eight week sewing class at the museum, starting on March 15, Tuesday afternoons, from 1-4.  It will be a feat each week to leave there on time, race across two counties, to my class at the college to be set up and ready to go there by 6pm.  I can only try…

So I can cross another thing off my to do list today, that would be “blog post”.   I still have

• print handouts for class tomorrow
• ship order
• Vacuum/dust den and dining room
• yoga class
• install second sleeve in jacket
• make a five inch sample of a flat braid in kumihimo for the class next week.
• make dinner

I sent my kids off to the grocery store.  We needed some basics, and they are good at scrounging for junk food.  I’m always amused at what they come home with.

Stay tuned…

I love that pair of keys on the keyboard.  CTRL+Z is the short cut for undo last action (on the PC).  I wish there was a CTRL+Z for life.  After trying hard not to listen to my instincts all week, I’ve finally decided that I do know what I’m talking about, and to actually listen to myself for a change, and completely undo a project, go all the way back to the beginning, and then I know I’ll be so much happier.

I got one of those forwards today in my inbox, you know the kind, pages of one liners, and I usually just delete, or give a quick glance, and then delete.  Unless it comes from my friend Dawn.  She is quite discerning.  She only sends the best, most wicked types of internet humor.  She hasn’t let me down yet.  The latest forward featured 24 adult truths.  There were a couple worth repeating, like #10: Bad decisions make good stories.  Sort of goes along with my philosophy that nothing bad ever happens to an artist, it is all fuel for their work.  My favorite for this week anyway, was #11: You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work or at home, when you know that you just aren’t going to do anything productive for the rest of the day, and in my case, it was the rest of the week.

See, it all started with the jacket I’m sewing, and the trim I’m weaving to go with it.  I thought all was going well, though the voice in the back of my head kept interrupting my days, telling me that all was not well.  My husband, who is just now back in Saudi Arabia for another three weeks, reminded me that I haven’t blogged in 10 days.  That would probably be because I haven’t wanted to blog because the main project I’m working in isn’t going well if I were truly honest.

For starters, I got the body of the jacket sewn together.  The fabric is pretty light weight.  The pattern directions call for interfacing the fronts, which makes sense because they have to support a collar and heavy trim down the front.  But the rest of the jacket is looking and feeling pretty flimsy.  And honestly, I know I’m not going to be happy even with a full lining.  What I really need to do is completely take the jacket apart, and fuse a poly tricot interfacing on the back of all the pattern pieces.  So I avoided this by finding all kinds of other things to do.

Like Wednesday, I took a ride down to AT&T Headquarters in Bedminster, NJ, where our guild president Caroline works.  Apparently they have in their possession a vintage Sheila O’Hara tapestry from the 1980’s, I believe I understood it was woven for a communications exposition in San Francisco originally, and no one is quite sure how it ended up in NJ.  So a couple of us arranged to meet Caroline and take a tour.  The piece is lovely, Sheila had lost touch with the tapestry, and was thrilled to find out it was accounted for and in a beautiful setting in a telecommunications company.  In addition, there is a very very large graphic tapestry that spans the side wall of the cafeteria, made by someone initialed PC.  It is an amazing piece of corporate textile installation, and I’m thrilled it seems to be holding up and is well cared for.

Yesterday, our guild sponsored a winter February Freebie, a day of kumimimo braiding with Marsha Atkinson.  I’ve known Marsha for years, she was a former member of the guild, and moved from the loom to the braiding stand and never looked back.  She did a great job with the class, and I was thrilled to learn what to do with the Maru-dai, the traditional equipment for Japanese Braiding, instead of my usual foam disk.  And I was thrilled to learn something other than the standard 16 strand braid I always do, we did an eight strand round cord, square cord, and a flat braid.  As always, more possibilities.  That’s me in the back right hand corner of the group shot.  And that’s my daughter in the photo on the upper left working on a Maru-dai on the floor.

Still thinking about the jacket that wasn’t really going well, and having no loom with anything fun on it, I pulled another batch of my dyed yarns and laid them out in a palette spread.  I didn’t base this grouping on any previous inspiration, just what looked good to me on the shelf and then on the table.  That part was really fun, now I just need to get winding…

And I finished the small piece I had on the Structo loom, so I looked around for something else to weave on it.  I had been working on personal images, and I have a few in mind, but I wanted something colorful and fun, and decided to follow through on some advice I got from a member of one of the surface design organizations I belong to, just take a piece of one of your fabrics and frame it and stick it on the wall and call it art…

When this member first suggested it, I tossed it off as uninspired and lazy.  But I love these scarves I’m weaving, the color palettes are fun and refreshing, and I thought, for a fun exercise, I’d scan a portion of it, print it on silk, and then cut it apart and weave the woven fabric back together into a new fabric.  Anyway, that’s all set up and ready to go.

So what does that leave me with?  Back to the jacket that isn’t cooperating…  Meanwhile, I did finish about 60 inches of trim for the jacket, which was great since the next step was to attach the braid at the shoulders and the flap pocket trim.  When the braid came off the loom, I did what any well trained garment constructor would do, I preshrunk it by soaking it in hot water for 20 minutes.  NOTE:  Rattail bleeds…  Duh…

So the hot water turned pink, and the white part of the finished dried braid has a definitely pink cast.  Not good.  I even tried rewashing the braid with Synthrapol.  Still not good.  I kept looking at the dressform with the braid draped around it, tried all kinds of lighting, and there was nothing to be done.  The braid turned pink, and wasn’t usable.  I thought I could turn under the edges, and I actually liked the size of the braid better, and briefly thought about just using the existing braid with the edges turned under, which would render it too bulky I think.  I had already set up the inkle loom for another couple yards of braid.

So, it all boils down to doing a grand CTRL+Z in my studio, taking the jacket completely apart, fusing all the pieces before reconstructing, adjusting the width on the loom of the braid I just warped up, and reweaving the first two yards of braid, narrower, and making sure I wash/preshrink the braid when finished, in COLD water.  It may be another ten days or so before I post again, I’m not happy when I have to go all the way back to the beginning.  But I am experienced enough to know I would never have been happy, and I want this piece to be successful for teaching purposes.

Stay tuned…

I glanced at the post count on the dashboard for my blog site, as I clicked the button to write a new post, and noticed I had hit the 350 mark.  I suppose that is cause for some celebration, I’ve been at this now for a couple of years, and I’ve found the blog to be one of the best journal exercises I’ve ever done.  The ability to go back and search and find images and data on specific projects, trips, events, and just plain musings is absolutely invaluable.  Before blogging, I’d fill journals, which are all over the book shelf, and not in any kind of order, and not nearly as colorful and no “links” other than the occasional business card stuck in for good measure.  Even if no one read my posts, I find them to be so helpful for keeping records of everything I care about, and sometimes things I didn’t think were terribly important but recorded them anyway, which of course turned out to be a pretty darned good thing…  You’ll see why when you read the End Notes column for the next issue for Handwoven Magazine.  It was because of a particular blog post I was able to find and recreate the images and details for the column.  Stay tuned.

Anyway, I’ve been semi productive this week, but largely I’ve spent the week doing that dreaded task everyone hates in the late winter, even ice removal is preferable to the dreaded bookkeeping…

And I’m still fuming over Microsoft dumping its money program, I loved Microsoft Money, and when they no longer supported it, we had to switch to Quicken, which I’ve used now for a couple of years, and I still hate it.  With a passion.  So I’ve printed reports, edited reports, reprinted reports, gathered data that wasn’t in the reports, and organized as best I can for the accountant next week.  We are about a month and a half ahead of tax preparation scheduling this year for two reasons, 1) my husband is leaving shortly to return to Saudi Arabia for another month, and 2) the FAFSA federal student aid required form must be submitted ASAP, which is calling for 2010 data which we haven’t compiled yet.  Since the seven schools that have accepted my daughter so far for college are requiring the form, we had to do a quick estimate for our taxable income which is virtually impossible for me to do.  Which is why I hire an accountant, which is why he is coming next week, which is why I spent most of the week ripping my hair out and throwing things at my computer.

Which could account for why my card reader no longer works?

Which is why I couldn’t post a new blog earlier in the day, I had to wait for my husband, who was skiing today, to return home and scrounge the electronics warehouse in the office for a new one.  Which he found in short order.  Which is why I am blogging now.  With pictures.

I finally got to teach class #2 at the community college (after numerous snow cancellations), which was all about spinning  yarn.  I try to run through all the demos and samples the week prior to each of the classes that I don’t teach on a regular basis.  Inkle weaving for instance, I teach all the time, I just pack and go.  (OK, I have to dig 10 inkle looms out of the attic, but you get the idea…)  Next week I’ll be teaching dyeing, and for safety reasons  and practicality I am going to use food grade dyestuffs, which I’m not use to using.  Obviously if you read my posts, you know I’ve spent the last couple of months dyeing every white cone of rayon in sight with MX dyes, but Kool-Aid isn’t on my immediate radar.  And I haven’t actually had much experience with PAAS Easter Egg dyes.  Two summers ago, I dyed a batch of wool every morning in the crock pot, but there I was using Cushing dyes.  So I wanted to run some basic formulas, and have printed no less than 100+ pages of web data for support.

Anyway, my Shoprite Grocery store had the most adorable crock pot, for $10. and I picked up a couple.  It doesn’t hold very much, maybe half an ounce of fiber, but it is great for sampling, and I tested a couple of things, like the Easter Egg Dyes.  It is so adorable.

I also played with Kool-Aid in the microwave, cutting some of the candy colors with Wilton Icing Dye complements.  I made a batch of granola while I watched yarn cook both on the stove and the microwave.

I love this granola recipe, it lasts for a month of breakfasts, since one serving is only a 1/4 cup, and it only has a half cup of maple syrup for the sweetener, and very little salt.  Pure seeds, nuts, and grains.  And a 1/4 cup lasts me till lunch.  The nice thing about working with food grade dyestuffs, is you can actually cook around the dyes, so I took advantage of a few minutes in my kitchen.

I made progress on the trim for my new jacket, and I actually started sewing the jacket last night.  It is all cut out, and all the lining, interfacing, and other notions are all stacked and ready to go.  The skirt on this suit has a high funnel waist, with boning.  Odd.  I can’t quite picture wearing a skirt waist with boning, but I want to try it for kicks and giggles.  This will be a first.  As a matter of fact, I ran out of boning making my Frosted Florals gown so I’m resorting to plan B.  Stay tuned for that adventure, another first.  I don’t see any reason why it won’t work…

And I finished up the run of six Night at the Arcade Scarves, so they are hanging to dry.  The colors are so fantastic.  I’m proud that I dyed most of the yarns for this group.  Gotta love those MX dyes!

So life chugs along, and yes, once again I haven’t bothered to get dressed today.  Pajamas are so comfortable crawling around in the studio.  My daughter brought home friends from school and there I was at the kitchen sink in my purple pajamas rinsing fleece.  🙂

So the drying rack is full of drying fleece, and colored yarn, (the golden yellow on the lower left is dyed with turmeric, the kitchen smelled great) and my bookkeeping is done, and I’m ready to pull yarn to start thinking about another scarf run.  I’m about to post number 351, thanks for reading along with me, it has been a grand adventure so far!

Stay tuned…

So the Super Bowl is playing on the downstairs TV, and there are a bunch of 20 somethings watching intently, lots of beer and wings and dips, and I’m happily sitting in my studio with my wine, doing what entertains me.  The whole weekend as a matter of fact, has been rather low keyed, and I kind of took a break from my to do list.

Friday I did spend the afternoon adding a page to my sister’s website.  If you were following this blog back in 2009, you might remember I built a website for my sister the architect.  It has been quite successful for her, and I’m thrilled I was able to get her vision up on the screen.  And every six months or so, she sends me the images, text, and blueprints for another project to add to her growing list of successful adventures.  She has a whole section on her site on Historic Structures, homes and buildings she has brought back to life, and this latest project that I spent the day Friday adding to her site, was a huge undertaking, the 1860 Proctor House, listed on the National Registry, with cooperation from the Maryland Historical Trust.  Anyway, as I assembled the Before/After photos for her webpage, I was blown away by the transformation.  I turn thread into something wonderful, but she can take a blighted falling down waste of a building and make it into something that just blows me out of the water.  Take a look… http://www.ebelingnoe.com/proctor.html

Friday night was sort of special.  We all met at a local bar, around 11:00pm, and waited until Midnight, much like one does New Year’s Eve, for the magic hour when my son turned 21, and could take his first “legal” drink.  I won’t elaborate here, just to say that a great time was had by all, everyone lived through the experience, and the cops only came to the house twice over the course of the night…  (in all fairness, it was because there were too many cars parked on the too narrow icy street, and emergency vehicles couldn’t get through…)  but he is now legal, and Saturday morning was pretty painful…  I think it was the Prairie Fire shot?  Something about Tequila and Tabasco…

My husband and daughter are in Maine at the moment, they will be looking at University of Maine Honors Program there for an open house tomorrow.  University of Maine was one of the six colleges that have accepted my daughter so far, for their animal science program.  I’m glad my husband could get home from Saudi and take her on this adventure, he so wanted to be involved in the college process.

So that leaves me.  Alone…  🙂

So what did I do with my weekend?

I did make a self fabric belt for the wool plaid dress.  And I did about 18″ of trim for the newest project, I blogged about that in my last post.  And then, I curled up in front of my computer and watched a download that I bought a couple weeks ago from Interweave Press, when they had their warehouse sale on all their books.  I bought Rita Buchanan’s How I Spin.  I was able to download the video, and then watch it on my computer.

Sidebar.  First of all, Rita Buchanan is one of my most favorite people.  Gentle of soul, I remember taking a workshop with her on drop spindle spinning, which I already knew how to do, but wanted to watch her teach.  She is really an amazing teacher, fiber artist, creative spirit, and I just wanted to hear what she had to say.  The fact that I will be teaching spinning at the college on Tuesday night also prompted me to make the effort this weekend to spend some time with Rita.  And I also think it is important for all of us, who make our living teaching, to watch the new media being produced, because this is the way of the future, there is nothing like the printed word, but there is also nothing like a video for explaining exactly how to do a technique.

Much of what Rita taught I already knew and understood, but it was so good to hear it articulated by someone passionate and knowledgeable.  Rita’s philosophy on changing the size of the yarn is to just draft more or draft less, simple as that.  And I watched her make a number of samples of yarn of different grist by doing just that, without changing any settings on the spinning wheel.  I enjoyed watching the DVD until I got to the end, when she got to the part about preparing the fibers for spinning.  I’m not sure why that part was left to the end.  I almost didn’t watch the end, because I thought it would be more of the same philosophy and I was getting itchy to do something else.  Rita started the wool prep session with a number of dog grooming tools.  Huh?

I sat up and paid close attention to how she combed the wool.  Where were the carders?  They weren’t even on the table…

Then Rita brought out of traditional pair of wool carders and I relaxed a bit.  Until she said, ” These carders, nobody really uses them anymore…”  Huh?  Where have I been for the last 20 years?  I learned to spin in 1974, in college, and I bought my first and only wheel, an Ashford kit from New Zealand, and patiently waited for three months for it to be shipped over by boat.  It cost me $35. and there were 10 of us from the Fibers Class that all got together to order in bulk.  I assembled my wheel and it has been my spinning buddy since I was 19 years old.  This is a basic wheel, Scotch brake, no whorl diameter adjustments for the drive band, just basic spinning wheel.  I mostly used the wheel for demos, and over the years, I kept it going, and it happily sits in my bedroom.  I also have my first set of carders.  Others have been added, not exactly sure from where, but I have my first set, and whenever I demo, I bring them out.  I never knew there was any other way to get wool from the back of the sheep to the spinning wheel.

Rita showed English wool combs, and a drum carder, and I will say, I learned a lot from that little piece of the video tucked in at the end.  I felt like it was well worth the inexpensive download price, and I have something new to bring to the table when I go to teach my class Tuesday night.  And I went in search of the dog grooming tools in our house…

When my mother in law died in 2006, she left me her spinning wheel, carders, and all sorts of fleece and spinning fibers, and I just absorbed it all into my studio.  Most of the fleece was Romney, and I felted it all into a jacket just to use it up.  Her spinning wheel was a handmade wheel from Wes Blackburn in Canada, where she learned to spin.  It is an upright wheel, with the flyer on top, and a double drive band.  The wheel always intimidated me, since I was use to the Ashford, and I never quite knew what to do with the double drive band.  Last fall, on my trip to Boulder, I picked up a DVD by Judith McKenzie called Popular Wheel Mechanics.  I’ve never taken a workshop with Judith, but I understand from everyone who has ever mentioned her name that it is always reverential and that she is one of the goddesses of fiber world.

So today, probably inspired by what I learned from Rita’s video, I sat down in my bedroom with the DVD in the machine, and the Wes Blackburn Wheel in front of me, and I started to watch Judith’s video.  Like Rita’s most of the information was familiar, and interesting, and unlike Rita, Judith’s DVD focused more on wheel mechanics.  She had a number of wheels, all of them full of bells and whistles, and way more capabilities than my little Ashford.  It was interesting to watch Judith produce the same group of different grist yarns, slowly adding them across her thigh for comparison, but in Judith’s case, she adjusted her wheel tension ever so slightly for each change in yarn diameter, never changing the amount she drafted in.  All the while as I watched, I played with my double drive band Blackburn wheel, and slowly began to understand what was happening with the wheel.  But the time I got to almost the end of the second DVD in the set, I was humming along on it and had filled half a bobbin with a dyed wool from Spinner’s Hill.  I like this little wheel.

The last part of Judith’s DVD was on wheel maintenance.  I had only intended to give it half an ear, I know how to oil a wheel.  Sort of like a sewing machine.  But I sat up abruptly when the first thing she talked about was changing the drive band.  Often.  Like every couple of months?  Huh?  I looked at my poor Ashford, and I honestly don’t think I’ve ever changed the drive band…  Oops…

So I watched her cut the old one off, make a new one from Seine twine, and stitch it together to make it run smooth through the grooves.  No knot?  Who knew…

I watched her oil the wheel.  And then nearly fell off the spinning chair when she said to oil it every time you sit at the wheel.  Who knew…

So I am sufficiently humbled realizing how much I needed to learn about the most basic things.  There was a lot I did know, but somehow I missed that part in both videos that will help me be a better spinner and a better teacher.  I feel like one of my students who can’t remember when the last time they changed the needle in the sewing machine.  You mean you have to change the needle even before it breaks?  Who knew…