Prep Work

So Saturday was my mom's interment and everything that needs to be done for her has been done.  Now it is time to think about deadlines.  Which loom.  Threateningly.

It would seem that starting to panic a wee bit a month before a class might be a bit premature, but in reality, most of my prep work for a workshop is done 6 weeks ahead of a class because materials have to be prepared and mailed.

For the Olds Fibre Week program however, I get to drive so I can bring everything I need with me.  

For the level one class, I wind their first warp for them to save time during class.  The program is information dense.  During the five days of class I present approximately 12 hours (or more) of lectures, filled with information, most of which many weavers have never thought about, never mind considered.  Some who come are more experienced, but that doesn't mean they have been presented with some of the material that I include in my classes.  Like ergonomics.  Efficiency.  Which are not actually covered in the course content, but...well, I'm me and I cannot not discuss these issues to people who are expected to do some level of teaching.

So I wind the skeins of wool onto cones, and then I wind their first warp for them.

In the past I have wound all of the skeins onto cones, but have not received all the cones back again.  So this time I am only winding the skeins that I am going to use, then enough skeins for them to wind their second warp.  Since each sample warp consists of one skein, I will be able to get all my cones back again.

I use the Silver Needles cone winder.  It is the 'best' cone winder I have found for the price.  I also have a large industrial cone winder, but it really doesn't like to pull/wind from a skein and I didn't have enough money to also buy an industrial swift that would wind off as the cone was winding on.

Eventually I will offer the industrial cone winder for sale because I am no longer buying large quantities of yarn, coning it off and re-selling it.  

The other reason for jumping on this class prep now is that I will be teaching the Olds level one in Cape Breton the first week of June, coming home with about 5 days to recover, then driving out to Olds to teach the class there.  I will then have about 5 days to recover from that, then drive to Victoria and the ANWG conference.  So I feel like I really need to do as much as I can now and not wait to the last minute.

Appropriate Tools

I have many tools in my studio, mostly because they provide a savings of time in some way.  An electrical bobbin winder makes winding bobbins faster.  I bought one when I realized it was taking longer to wind a bobbin by hand than it was taking to weave it off.  

This is a Silver Needles cone winder.  I much prefer to use yarn from a cone than a ball.  For a while I was working a lot with skeins of yarn, and getting them into a package that didn't provide a lot of problems was making working with that yarn a chore.  So when I first heard about the Silver Needles cone winder, I bought one right away.  It was a bit pricey (between exchange rate and shipping, it was even more expensive), but the ability to quickly and relatively trouble free process of getting skeins onto cones makes the purchase well worth while.

My original cone winder was getting very worn out.  I do, after all, use it a lot and parts wear.  Then I heard that the company was back in business making the winders again.  I thought long and hard about buying another one because really, how much longer am I going to be doing this?  Well, as it happens, I hope for a good while longer.

The yarn I wound today is for a research project and is a hand spun singles wool, fairly fine.  I was able to get all of the skeins wound this afternoon with no muss, no fuss.  The combination of winder and squirrel cage swift makes getting skeins onto cones a piece of cake, as they say.

If you contact Silver Needles tell them where you heard about the winder.  silverneedles@aol.com