It works!  It works!

I’d overthunk the driveband, and used a leather thong, which turned out to be too much friction.  Substituting a piece of string makes the wheel functional. 

I have Franklin Habit and his blog, the Panopticon, to thank for this reminder of Engineering Rule No. 1: Use the least possible object that will carry the force.  EG: If you only need tensile strength, use a skinny wire.  If you need tensile strength+friction, as in my wheel scenario, use a mid-sized piece of cotton yarn.  Don’t jump ahead to preconceived ideas of what "ought" to be used – you’ll introduce extra variables, like in this case, shape issues (the thong is square in cross-section), and stiffness issues (new leather 3-4mm thick is not as floppy as cotton yarn).  I have been flagellating myself with my Georgia Tech diploma in penance.

Since I figured the driveband out, I’ve finished spinning the snippets of Rowan yarn left over from my hooded jerkin – did I blog that yet?  Er, sort of. (Sorry about that, perhaps I can get pictures done this weekend.)  I carded the snippets back into roving – that means I used carding paddles, which look like giant dog slicker brushes (I should pic them too), to brush out and fluff up the fibers.  That converted the fiber from barely twisted thick yarn to, um, dustbunnies.  Then I used my working wheel to spin the dustbunnies into a single ply strand, and then used the wheel again to twist two of those strands together (in the opposite direction of course, so the twist energy will lock together) to be YARN.  (I guess there ought to be a pic of that, too.  It keeps being dark.  Whine.) 

It’s a very small skein of yarn.  My original intent with the snippets, other than trying out carding and respinning, was to use some of the non-snippet leftovers to make legwarmer thingys that would match the jerkin.  I got about 8 inches of cuffs knit with the original leftovers, I thought that would cover my ankles and show beneath jeans cuffs.  Then I thought I’d change gauge and do the leg out of something much less bulky, the better to fit under a jeans leg.  There isn’t nearly enough HOMESPUN YARN for that, so clearly the plan needs revising.

I also plied the lovely and perfect laceweight single that I spun while in Green Bay over Christmas.  I think it’s still laceweight – but again, there’s not much of it. (YARN!  YARN!  I made YARN!)

I suppose I ought to be weighing things as I go, or measuring in some way.  This is a giant clue why I don’t work in pure science – way too impatient to GET THE RESULTS! for proper documentation.  However, I have taken a moment to measure the circumference of the Weasel  (Maud and the Weasel – sounds like a band) and it’s 90" around.  Okay, what’s the significance of 90"?  Anyone?  2 yards is 72".  90" = 225 cm.  90" = 5.625 cubits.  I’m missing something here.

Also, I am not going to rename Maud just because Lord Saxe Corduane thinks she might have come from southwestern Germany.  Based on her wood, he thinks.  Funny that my mother once lived in Stuttgart, as a child.