(you should sing the title, ya know, for the full effect)
so, after a weird coincidence of talking about Navajo plying and then, that very day, coming across a Spin-Off that contained a how to article on the technique, i broke out the spinning wheel. gah. gah i say! because i spun up a metric crap load of this cheap-but-pretty roving i scored into this
fairly decent set of singles. gah because my wheel, which i got for absolutely free and, therefore can not complain about too much, has such a severe wobble that i can't ply the singles into a 2 ply yarn. the wheel was home made, i'm fairly certain, and not all that well put together. the uprights that hold the actual wheel part in place where first glued in, then screwed in, and finally, cause obviously something somewhere wiggled, NAILED in. consequently, repair is going to be a pain in the ass. i am now faced with deciding if i should just go ahead and knit the singles into some biased lacey thing or to wait until a time when i can get a new wheel (le sigh) which will probably be in years, not months or weeks. so, that is why the gah.
in happy, better news, i've started on an amalgamation of the Calla tank from magknits and another tank designed by Squeaky Weasels that uses a brillian DNA cable. i didn't really like the all around cabley-ness of the Calla tank, and imho, Squeaky Weasels' tank was just too busy with the lacey lace panels and the DNA cable. so, this is what i've got so far
(forgive the picture, it's a bit bright). what i really wanted to do, i couldn't find the lace pattern for, and being a lazy woman, i just said "screw it! i'll make do". so, i kept the two smaller side cables from the Calla pattern, used the DNA cable in place of the center cable, and changed the back to plain stockinette with eyelet columns (a picture when i'm done cause really, it's wicked boring). what i had envisioned what a very simple lace that almost mimicked the DNA cable. when i have more gumption, i might have to plot that out cause i don't think it would be too difficult.
now the reading part. i try to make a "summer" reading list each year. this year, i'm running behind and haven't even started my list, though i have been a reading fool. the only concrete goal is to read the Narnia Chronicles (so i can return them to Megs who i've been borrowing them from for, oh, a year and a half). this isn't going to do diddly squat for my summer after next week (it's taking me like 3 hours to read each of the first two books, and i can't imagine that the rest will be much different). so, dear blog readers, how about some suggestions? i'll read just about anything.