Earlier, I mentioned some soon-to-be-mine new handspindles. One is a laceweight spindle in a somewhat unusual shape, sporting a bulbish whorl that is meant more for speed than spin time. I asked on a couple of lists if anyone had experience with this kind of spindle, and a number of people wrote in to tell me they loved their smaller Bosworth spindles for spinning lace yarn.

Now I have owned a Bosworth mini for several years. Although I recently used it for spinning some Optim fiber, I will admit that I never quite understood that spindle. It always felt too lightweight and lacked momentum for a long spin time, despite the weighted outer rim. It would often stop before I had hit the ground, would reverse itself and start untwisting, and wobbled when I spun it off my thigh. However, with so many people swearing up and down that these spindles were the thing for spindling fine singles, I went back to it.

I am spinning silk thread on it, finer than I ever thought I was capable of spinning. The spindle functions perfectly, and with this grist, it never seems to slow down or backspin. I still can’t get a good wobble-free thigh spin, but a quick snap of the fingers is more than enough for this fiber. I understand where I was screwing up before, my singles were always too thick for this spindle. Now I get it.

The “patriotic silk” from the other day is the stuff on the spindle. It’s blending the colors as I spin, and the overall effect (from a distance) is sort of a medium purple. I’ve been taking very short lengths of sliver and spinning from the fold. It is catching here and there on my work- and winter-roughened skin, but I’m enjoying it.

I’ve been wanting to spin silk. I’ve spun it before (in the pre-blog era), made a 2 ply sport weight, singles spun from bleached tussah top folded over a finger. It was a bitch to ply, as I recall, because I used an Andean plying bracelet. (Never try this at home, kiddies. Since silk grabs and doesn’t let go, the bracelet effectively became a wrist noose that resulted in a cold, purple hand, and I had to cut -*sob*- the last bit of silk to save my hand from certain death.)

For the past few weeks, I’ve been obsessing about spinning silk. I find myself clicking too often on Carol’s handpainted silk top, as well as other offerings on ebay, Copper Moth, and various other places. However, this is where my greed comes in direct conflict with my pennypinching ways. (I swear, too many years in graduate school made me a bargain hunter of mammoth proportions.) It is cheaper to buy the materials and dye it yourself. Plus, painting fibers hearkens back to the pleasant days of grade school where one mixed up plastic cups of color and happily splashed with paintbrushes. So why not?

Why not indeed?

Directions in essence: soak silk, squeeze silk, lay silk on plastic wrap, mix dyes, paint silk, steam silk, wash silk, spin silk. How hard could this be? I pull out some 100 g packets of A1 Bombyx silk sliver that I had in the stash and got started.

Soaking silk is more complicated than it sounds. It needs to soak for a long time (at least an hour, preferably overnight), or else the dyes only color the outside and leave embarrassing patches of white on the innermost reaches of the top. There’s this element of going crazy waiting for the silk to soak long enough because you want to dye and you want to DYE RIGHT NOW but you can’t. Poo. (I got smart when I dyed the second batch – I put it in to soak before I went to work!)

Let me tell you, this stencil brush sucks. Deb Menz recommends this style of brush for handpainting roving, and I bought the cheapest large stencil brush I could find at an art store. Mind you, when I say it was the cheapest one, do not confuse it with the idea that the brush was cheap. It was not. And it VOMITED bristles all over the silk.

Anyway, I picked colors (thinking jewel tones – emerald, rubies, sapphires, amythest, diamonds), painted, I smooshed colors with gloved fingers, and let it set overnight. I flipped it over the next day and discovered hardly any color had even gotten to the bottom of the top (heh, get it?), let alone soaked through it, and I decided to repaint the underside. Steaming and washing went without a hitch, and I ended up with this:

And wow, does this look almost nothing like what I had wanted or anticipated. Bummer. Plus, the inside of the roving didn’t pick up enough color. It’s a very pale pastel, despite being quite saturated on the outside. I’ll show you what happens during the spinning later. Now if you think these colors look strangely familiar, you’re right – they’re the same dyestocks used for the Barefoot Blend sock roving.

I did a little better with the second batch. I soaked it for 10 hours, stuck to only two colors, and aimed for varying intensities. Not sure if I achieved the last bit, but here you go:

Can I tell you, dyeing this sliver was actually stressful. I’m not sure if it was the waiting, not knowing how it would look in the end, picking colorways, or what, but I’m starting to think that it might be easier on my brain to let someone else do all of this hard work and just give me the spinning pleasure.

First things first – if you haven’t yet, head on over to Stitchy McYarnpants hilarious blog and read about her cat Dot. No, go ahead – I’ll wait.

*Chuckle* All righty then, let’s move on.

I’ve purchased two spindles recently, and while neither one has arrived yet, I find myself preparing fibers for them in happy anticipation. I found about 4 ounces of “plain vanilla” wool roving, medium handle (probably a Brown Sheep product?) in the stash. The roving soaked in a citrate ‘n Synthrapol bath for 45 minutes. After squeezing out the excess liquid, I laid the roving out on plastic wrap and poured on a few dyes (Sabraset and Country Classic), mooshing the wool with my fingers to get the dyes to penetrate. I rolled it up in a coil and steamed it for 30 minutes. The wool was then rinsed in hot water and left to dry overnight.

The dye migrated to the bottom of the roving, and some parts are a light to medium shade on top but supersaturated dark on the underside. I deliberately left some parts of the roving undyed, as I figured some dye would migrate from nearby regions. I also liked the idea of shooting in a little bit of white once in a while for contrast. My goal was to create a so-called “complex” roving by having different colors at different levels of saturation, and I’m fairly satisfied with the product.

If you follow the news, you might have heard about how the Northeast was whomped with snow this weekend. (One of the ladies I work with told me her husband decided to climb out a second floor window and shimmy his way down to the ground instead of trying to force the door open through 38 inches of white stuff!)

Although we only had about 24-26 inches, blowing winds built up waist-deep snow drifts.

I used the down time to bake yummy yummy gingersnap cookies. Recipe is here, and thanks to Mariko for the link. I used mini loaf pans to shape the cookies, omitted the black pepper, and tried a couple of baking times and cookie thicknesses to make either soft, chewy cookies or shatteringly crisp cookies.

So good

I also tried the “oven-fried” chicken recipe from the Cook’s Illustrated cookbook that I mentioned before. The bird parts are soaked in a buttermilk garlic brine, flavored with mustard and herbs, and coated in melba toast crumbs! I really like how it turned out. Matt ate a few pieces but grumbled about “finding veins.” (He still thinks meat comes from sterile rectangles of styrofoam.) Of course, the crunchy coating goes to hell after a night in the refrigerator, but it still tastes fine.

Lastly, I just wanted to thank the people who left comments or emailed me in response to my last post. Warms the cockles of my heart, it does.

ETA (2/07): The original link for the cookies seems to be dead. Here is the recipe, from the Web Archive (link):

Chez Panisse Gingersnaps

8 ounces unsalted butter
1 1/4 cup + 2 Tbsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 small eggs or 1 1/2 large eggs
1/3 cup molasses
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
2 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
2 1/2 tsp. ground ginger
1/8 tsp. ground black pepper

Cream butter until soft.  Add sugar, and beat until light and fluffy.  Add vanilla and eggs, and beat until fluffy.  Add molasses and beat until well-incorporated.  Sift the dry ingredients, and add to the mixture.  On low speed, mix until it all just comes together.  Line a 9″ x 5″ loaf pan with plastic wrap, so that some hangs over the outsides.  Press the dough into the bottom of the pan.  Pack it tightly, and try to make the top as level as possible.  Cover the dough with the plastic overhangs.  Freeze until very firm, preferably overnight.  Unwrap and remove dough from the pan.  Slice brick into thin slices, no more than 1/8″.  Place on a parchment-lined sheetpan and bake at 350 degrees until the edges turn dark brown, about 12 minutes.

Notes:
-The dough gets soft quickly, so work fast.
-Because the cookies are so thin, there’s a fine line between underbaked and burned.  Keep an eye on them.  And actually I think they taste best when they’re very slightly burned on the edges.

*Edited on 12/6/04 to add:  Thanks to a comment left by brian w, I realized that I failed to mention a helpful tip.  Regarding the smoothing of the dough in the loaf pan:  Once the dough is covered with plastic wrap,  take another loaf pan, of the same size, and use it to press the dough flat.  You’ll have to move it around a bit to really get into the corners and sides, but it’s really easy.

(The blog takes a brief detour today to explain some changes that will be taking place over the next few months.)

I am pleased to finally tell you that Matt and I have decided to move from the Boston area to slightly south of Minneapolis. I have accepted a position at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. This means I am leaving molecular biology research to begin a new life as an editor (of medical journal articles and texts authored by Mayo physicians). Matt has carved out a remarkable niche for himself doing IT work in higher education and will be continuing his career at Carleton College in Northfield.

Matt’s start date is March 1st (mine is not yet decided – probably sometime in April). We are beginning the process of looking for our first home, winding down our positions at Harvard, packing our stuff, and preparing to move. I don’t have words to describe how happy and excited we are about all of this.

For me, deciding to change careers has been a painful and difficult process. I have been training in biology research for twelve years and have earned a Bachelors (Univ. of Chicago), Masters (Rutgers Univ.), and Doctorate (Rutgers Univ./UMDNJ) in various kinds of biology. In addition, most of you know I have been doing postdoctoral research in yeast genomics at Harvard for the last year and a half. To finally admit that research (even in my beloved yeast transcription processes) is not the right career for me has been wrenching. But there it is – I’ve said it – my actual experience in basic research has, for the most part, sucked. It is time to go.

Luckily, I developed some other skills while beating my fists against the bench. It is my tremendous good fortune that the folks at Mayo saw my heart was in the right place, and they believed I had enough “raw talent” that, with their 1 1/2 year training program, I could become a decent medical editor.

Ironically, Matt was also a biologist in a former life. He and I met in college, doing volunteer work, but it turned out we also shared the same major. He worked as a laboratory technician for several years after college and then started a Ph.D. in the same program that I eventually joined at Rutgers/UMDNJ. When he decided to leave graduate school to try finding work in IT, he struggled with the same issues wrt leaving the field. There really is a romantic notion about doing research. It’s hard to say goodbye to it, even as you grind your teeth down to dull nubs with the daily frustration of technical difficulties and the long term misery of failed hypotheses.

I recall saying when I was a master’s student that I wasn’t going to do a Ph.D., and when I was a Ph.D. student, I said I wasn’t going to do a postdoc. Now here I am, wrapping up my postdoc without a glimmer of hope for a paper to prove my time here was worthwhile. I’m thirty years old, married, highly educated, and finally ready to leave the shelter of my parents’ best-intentioned advice. I’m excited and scared to death about discovering what it will be like to have a job I look forward to doing every day. I hope I’m good at at it. Also, I hope I’ll love being a homeowner. I hope Matt and I will have children and love being parents. I hope we are on our way to happily ever after.

(And now, we return to normal blog business.)

I’ve cast on for a new sweater for me! Here I am on Sleeve Island:

The yarn is Reynolds Odyssey – looks just like the way I wish handpainted yarn would knit up. It’s a four ply yarn. Each strand sings its own song, but they blend together in a manner that just takes my breath away!

We’ve been rather cold here in our unforgivably uninsulated, Boston-area home. When the temps drop below 20 F outside, our heating system just does not cut it. This morning, I woke up to an indoor temp of 56 F (that’s about 13 C, for the metrically inclined). Don’t complain to me about how cold you are – you don’t know cold until you are wearing several layers of wool clothing *and* a down-stuffed coat indoors while you are cooking dinner!

Our landlord have provided an electric heater. The cats and I lounge around it on the worst days.

I had a major design flaw in a cardigan that I designed recently (discussed here). I made all of the pieces (two sleeves, two fronts, the back), discovered the problem, and buried the pieces in disgust about three months ago.

Time to EXHUME the body!

Each piece has 2×2 ribbing on the outer 10 stitches. All of the purl columns that made it to the shoulder bind off are being picked out with a crochet hook. Using a beat up knitting machine needle (like a latchook, but petite), I am laddering back up.

Tools of the trade

I’ve recovered almost an inch of width on each side by removing the ribbing. I don’t think it’ll be enough. Drastic measures to come!

If you’re the type who gets squeamish with cartoon blood, then kindly avert your eyes. Charlene asked about Gutsy Gus. He was a long ago Christmas gift from Matt’s sister Leslie.

Everyone, meet Gus!

Gus invites you to get to know him inside and out.

What the…?

Any aspiring med students want to identify his organs?

After many hours of playtime, we also realized he could swallow his own head!

He usually sits on the sofa in front of the tv. All he needs is a beer in one hand and a remote in the other!

I finished my uncle’s scarf a few days ago. Let’s all heave a huge exhale of liberation, shall we?

Gutsy Gus thinks it makes a great afghan

It does seem a little thick when wound twice about the neck – it’ll either feel exceedingly cozy or like a whiplash brace. I’ve offered to redo it in a finer yarn if he doesn’t like it. (Can you imagine – eighty inches in fingering weight? Ha ha ha…)

I’ve started dreaming about new projects but know also that one UFO needs some attention. At this point, sweaters for my father and for me are in progress, and one more is in the planning stages for Matt. Details to be revealed presently!

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned a conversation with my mom about peacock yarn for Dad’s Christmas sweater 2005. Well, I gave up on peacock millspun because a) I never made it to Webs due to a snowstorm, and b) I can’t find anything even remotely like it online. (Trust me, Mom, I looked a lot.)

Grafton Fibers to the rescue! I described what I wanted to Linda (shiny, predominantly greenish/bluish, with highlights of dark copper and dark gold) and included pics of the original yarn and peacock feathers. She designed a blend and mailed me a sample batt in a matter of hours. I liked it a lot and ordered a couple more pounds. It arrived today!

Here is one of nine batts. It looks maahvelous!

I can’t wait to start spinning a sample.

I also indulged in a little bit of electronic mayhem and bought this over the weekend:

Previously, I used my Clie with Audible, but the software didn’t quite work correctly (couldn’t transfer more than 14 files without crashing). It also was awkward to carry around during exercise or in the lab, even with a belt clip. This MuVo is the size of two fingers, runs on a single AAA battery, and holds over 40 hours of Format 3 Audible files. (I haven’t filled it to max capacity.) It’s amazing. Maybe now I have a shot at catching up with my backlog of NPR programs.