A new definition of "forever"

The Joy of Cooking, which is one of the most entertaining cookbooks ever written, defines eternity as “a ham and two people”.  But I found a new version today, when (you guessed it!) my 120/2 silk finally arrived!

Unfortunately, it arrived on only two cones, one of 500g and one of 1500g.  This meant I couldn’t wind the warp straight off multiple cones: given the unequal sizes, the tension would be different on the strands coming off each cone.  I also wanted to wind with at least four threads at a time (at 96 ends per inch, this would be a real timesaver).

What to do?

Well, I whipped out my trusty Silver Needles electric conewinder, ran the yarn through a tension box to improve the tension, and started the cone winding.

And winding.

And winding.

It’s now been about an hour and a half since I started, and the conewinder, laboring valiantly, has wound off…about 100g.  In other words, about 2/5 of a single cone.  A little math says that winding off 1 kg onto four cones of 250g apiece will take about 15 hours, or almost an entire dawn-to-dusk day.  Thank GOODNESS I don’t have to do it by hand!

The Silver Needles electric conewinder, by the way, is not designed for this kind of load.  The plastic housing is largely unventilated, and while there’s a small fan inside the housing, it’s way too small to cool the motor.  So I have removed the housing and pointed a household fan at the motor.  This seems to be working pretty well.

And, for those who like pretty pictures, here is the header image for my new website:

Take a look at it close up; there’s a lot of detail missing from the thumbnail.  The fabric, of course, is that marvelous study in iridescence, and I really like the way it’s rumpled.

Of course, it two hours of reading up on CSS and PHP to get the right code into the right libraries to display that header image on the new website, but I’m starting to understand how this WordPress theme “thinks”, so I’m content for now.