Sweater for a Ghost

My dear sweet Spouse was watching me crochet something out of yarn that I had spun.  This yarn was teal with black and when it spun it kind of made a candy cane pattern in a distinctly gothic way.  This color combo apparently appealed to him because he said to me, "I would like for you to knit me a sweater out of that yarn. Oh wait, I can't ask you to knit me a sweater...(pause here for explanation)

The Sweater Curse - If you knit your boyfriend a sweater, he will break up with you.  This knitter myth is substantiated by numerous first hand accounts of sweater-related break-ups.  I have shared this myth with my spouse and so he was well aware of this curse.

...Maybe you could knit a sweater for the ghost that lives upstairs...(pause for explanation)

The Ghost that Lives Upstairs - my evil Spouse told me that there is a ghost that lives upstairs and he has seen this ghost sitting on our bed with my head in her lap and she was stroking my hair while I slept.  This revelation was given to me in the middle of the night.  Can you say CREEPY!?!?

So, my Spouse knows I knit two sweaters for my ex.  Maybe he is a little jealous of these labors of love, since I've been married to him now for 10 years and I've never knit him a sweater.  I've made him leather armour, necklaces, scarves, tunics, pants, big floofy ren faire shirts and all kinds of other stuff, but no sweaters.

SO I'm charged with spinning the wool for a sweater big enough for the ghost that lives upstairs to loan to my Spouse.  He wears an extra large sweater and I needed to determine how many pounds of wool roving are required to make a extra large sized pull-over.  After some internet-fu I come to the conclusion that 3 pounds should be sufficient.

Here is where I share with you the financial realities of spinning wool.  It is frikkin expensive!  First you buy the wool and that's about $15-20 a pound.  Then you spend hours on end spinning it.  Charge what you like per hour for your time.  For myself, I charge $20 an hour because I am not a sweatshop worker.  I spent the next month spinning wool in my spare time after spending $75 on wool (with shipping and handling).  SO about 12 hours of spinning at $20 an hour... Then I bought dye in black, blue and red.  That was about $20 for the dye.  So including the cost of my time, the sweater is costing over $300.  And I haven't dyed the wool nor knit the sweater yet!!!


That damn ghost!

Dreams, Rip-Offs and Christmas Presents

Here's a long story with a happy ending.

A couple of years ago, a friend from work invited me to her house to learn to spin on a wheel.  I had expressed an interest in spinning after seeing really cool yarn hand-spun on craftster.  They have a fiber friday board and every week people show off what they've made.

It was a fun afternoon and I laughed a lot as I was really pretty bad at spinning but got the basic hang of it and had some really wonky yarn as a result. 

After this and after my daughter moved out and a spare room appeared in my apartment, I started looking for a spinning wheel of my own.  I am a cheapskate.  And a new decent wheel was going for hundreds of dollars.  SO when I saw one on craigslist for $100, I jumped.  Craigslist is a gamble.  But I've had good experiences buying musical instruments from there so...  I drive to redwood city and go this girl's apartment where they have a decent spinning wheel set up and also this one I"m buying.  She's replacing this one she says.

I'm all hope and ignorance so I hand over my 20's and take this thing home.

It is a piece of shit.  But I keep trying to make it work.  I bring home books on spinning wheels and I discover the following facts about this antique spinning wheel.

Just so you can figure out what I'm talking about...

1 - With a leg broken at the bottom, I can't get the thing to stand up straight.
2 - She didn't even have the drive band set up right.  She had two different bands not one band wound twice.
3 - The wheel was termite eaten or screwed up in some way that there isn't really a decent kind of rim to keep the drive band on the thing.
4 - The hooks on the flyer were gunky and just messed up.
5 - All in all a big waste of my money and I don't dare pass this crap on to some other unsuspecting spinning neophyte.

So of course, I had bought fiber and it was just sitting there in that spare bedroom mocking me.  I tried to make that damn wheel work, but I never got it right.  I don't think the person who sold it to me ever got it to work, I think she just had less ethical backbone than me and passed along the lemon to me.

So when my sweet Spouse asked me what I wanted for Christmas last year, I said I want a spinning wheel.  He's all like - what?  I don't even know how to begin to get you a spinning wheel?  So I sent him a link to the site to buy a Babe Starter wheel.

This is not your great grandmother's spinning wheel.  This wheel is made of PVC pipe and a wheelchair wheel with a big rubber band as the drive band.   It weighs less than 10 pounds and it doesn't take up too much floor space.

It looks weird, but it spins great and I love it.  I've spun a whole lotta yarn on it over the course of a few months and everybody loves the stuff that I make with it.

The only downside to this wheel is that because it is so light, I have to weigh it down to keep it from rocking while I'm treadling.  Currently I put one foot on the frame and treadle with the other.

The bobbins are made of plastic.  I have two sets of 3.  I currently am only good at using the bigger of the two - it spins slower and I like the chunky yarn that results.  I have not tried plying yet.

I listen to my ipod while I spin.  I like to listen to Prince - that music has the right number of beats per second for me to spin to.  So I'm spinning and listening to Raspberry Beret and Little Red Corvette.  It is not the idea of homespun that most people have.  But it works for me!

There is more to this story - so stay tuned to find out more.