sophisted | Reading

I've been recently to a beginner's workshop on hand-spinning. It was my second such workshop in about 30 years. I did a little follow-up spinning back then with friends, but I didn't have the leisure or means to continue. This time I wanted to test my hands.

The instructor, who judges handspun yarn at county fairs, brought us some roving. ( Read more... )

yhlee

40/40/20 cotton/tussah silk/hemp (the seller called it an "experimental blend"). Very inconsistent yarn thanks to the learning curve, as I'm still quite new to this. Surprisingly soft once plied, though, despite the hemp content, and one of my favorite fiber blends to spin because there's never a dull moment. This one's going to my graduate advisor.

Cloud oversaw the winding of the center-pull ball using a plying-size Turkish spindle. (I did the actual spinning and plying on the wheel.)

(Still buried under orchestration homework and health stuff, but fortunately I am taking a LONG break from writing so I can recuperate.)

white_aster

If anyone has not yet picked up the Murderbot books, this is a wonderful way to do so for $18 total and to pick up a few other Wells books as well! It includes all the Murderbot books and all the short stories except for the very first "Compulsory" one that you can find still free online, IIRC.

From what I can tell, these are epubs without DRM.

yhlee

Watch on YouTube

Spinning at a spinning wheel - not a tutorial or demonstration of good spinning, and most of the wheel is out of frame so you can see the main ~action. I am still a beginner, and I think I foxed up some of the terminology. But my advisor was curious so I recorded this.

yhlee

What I do when sick: more spinning.

Now that I can spin wool blends at all, next up: working on consistency.

thistleingrey

Though I won't link, I've recently migrated my legal-name blog from WordPress to a static site generator with a much smaller footprint and maintenance load. It took me two years (of intermittent activity, not focused effort)---I had to figure out anew how to type with busted hands, which needed to do other things per day/week as well.

At one point I wanted to pair that blog migration with a reading journey; then I imposed a rule that I'd quit blogging fiction by writers I've met, to lift my burden of expectation. I think now, having read only a dozen books in 2025 so far (fiction and nonfiction, by anyone), that I might meander through the reading journey without the different burden of typing review posts. Some health things are better now than they were two years ago, but my hands and feet aren't, so far.

yhlee

It's wildly inconsistent (wool/sari silk waste blend, about 30 g / 1.2 oz) and I struggled with the learning curve for plying (first on a Turkish spindle that was too small for plying, then on the wheel once I figured out how to adjust the takeup; mine uses scotch tension) but hey, it exists!

I remain desperately curious about the mordant because I soaked yarn in hot water for an hour and the water ran completely clear, and it's a red dye!

But as therapeutic activities (quite literally this doubles as physical therapy for my wrecked ankles, and I'm still sick), this is very satisfying.

yhlee

Unhinged spinning experiment: Immolation Fox prototype #1 (WIP)

Close-up:

(This is a WIP single, which I'd plan to ply, so that's active twist right now.)

I'm resigned at this point to destroying fiber in the service of something I find personally delightful to spin but Shinjo only knows how I'm going to get rid of the resulting yarn since I don't knit or crochet and don't plan to start. I took it up as an extremely backhanded way of additional physical therapy for my ankles.

If I am scarce right now, I'm physically ill, sorry! Spinning is at least a different sickness distraction from Balatro, which eats my device batteries.

white_aster

What I've been doing off and on the last few days rather than what I probably SHOULD have been doing:

Fussing with an old Nexus 7 tablet to see if I could turn it into a barebones library book and Kindle reader, and trying out free audio/video recorders for my computer.

Project 1: Lazarus - I forgot how much I liked the form factor of my old Nexus 7 tablet. Unfortunately, though I COULD install Kindle on it and use the web-based Libby app, which is all I really wanted access to, the device is likely just too old. It got slow often (like, 5 seconds to turn a page slow) after being on for a bit, just noped out and crashed/restarted several times, and even when it was working OK, the battery is drained every few hours, which is just too annoying to manage. To the recycler it goes. When it worked, though, I did like the way it felt. My new phone is thinner/taller than my older one, and I've struggled with finding a comfy way to hold/prop it for reading. I didn't have any of that issue with this 20+ year old tablet. :\
Project status: failure

Project 2: Rum - I saw someone on Tumblr suggest NCH Software for De-BigBusinessing purposes, and being a longtime fan of quality freeware (a dying breed nowadays, where so many "free" things are kind of skeevy and trying relentlessly to upsell you), I checked them out. I found Debut and WavePad to be genuinely nice freeware for easily recording screen video or audio from all the usual sources. I dunno, I had tried this before for a few different applications, and every time the program I was trying was just too fiddly or had other drawbacks. This seemed much simpler and more intuitive. A+
Project status: success (EDIT: qualified - evidently NCH has a trial use period and after that they ask to buy a license or restrict some functions. I'm willing to see what the restricted version still lets me do.... They do seem to make quality software for a reasonable price, tho, so long as you mind whether you're buying outright or an annual sub.)

yhlee

Watch on YouTube

Aggro Goose #2: mimesis is a vector quantity (worldbuilding, "fictive complaints")

(I think the one cuss word this time is...assholes? Badasses?)

My real agenda is to refine my vocal plugin chain, with sf/f discussion as a side-effect. That said, Aggro Goose is happy to take topic suggestions in comments or to yoon at yoonhalee dot com.

(FYI, I'm scarce right now thanks to orchestration homework &c.)

thistleingrey

If you sew garments from others' patterns at all (even if it's been a while), which patternmakers do you like?

Some good-quality designers I'm aware of are Muna and Broad, Closet Core, Itch to Stitch, Merchant & Mills.

If we disregard niceties such as matching a print at fronts/seams, I'm low intermediate, not beginner; I can look at a line drawing and discard a pattern as not possible for a specific individual's shape. I last went looking for patterns 10-12 years ago! A lot of indie designers have entered the market since then, and the big four---Simplicity, Butterick, Vogue, and McCalls---are kind of dead.

(I'm not in a hurry to sew anything, either. Only asking for ideas.)

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dreaming bittersweet

like cherries and dark chocolate

Reading

proto-stitching

spinning, cont'd

Murderbot Humble Bundle

spinning on a spinning wheel

moar yarn

also

a first ball of yarn

unhinged spinning

Fussing with old tech and freeware is my procra-I mean coping strategy

Aggro Goose #2

stitching q

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March 2011

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