Pure Wisdom

He, that I call "Pure Wisdom" is a member of my most extended family.  He was one of the brightest stars at one of the world's most technical companies, and now is one of its most senior managers. He is no longer concerned with technical issues because he says, "Old must be BOLD!"

We are, after all, are writing our Epitaph. We are writing our grave stone.  Writing in stone takes great force.  Yes, we need to be very bold.

There are many manuals for writing resumes, but there are few guides to writing good Epitaphs.

One was laid out by Ina Corina Brown in the course she taught as a Peabody Scholar.  Sometimes it was offered as a set of things to do on a regular basis, and sometimes it was offered as a personal performance test.  Here is one of the test versions.

1.     Do I seek to to achieve personal growth and development by means of some plan whereby I can enlarge my horizons as well as fill gaps in my knowledge an experience?

2.     Do I subscribe to or regularly access:

2.1.  Some reliable news media? 

2.2.  Some quality magazines dealing with current thought?

2.3.  Some magazines devoted at least in part to book reviews and literary criticism?

2.4.   First rate professional journals?

3.     Do I read at least 2 dozen serious books in the field of biography, history, current affairs, and literature (including classics read and reread)?

4.     Do I make some serious effort in increase my understanding and appreciation of art, literature, and music through the use of pictures, lectures, concerts, records, plays, books and the selective use of radio, TV, and Utube ?

5.     Do I follow some consistent plan for building a library, including dictionaries, atlases, encyclopedias, religious texts, and reference books such as Bartlett's Quotations, Fowler's English Usage, and more modern texts on the topic?

6.     Do I have some consistent plan for professional reading, and for professional growth and development?

7.     Do I have an interest in, and an awareness of, the world of nature so that I can identify and enjoy birds, flowers, trees, stars, and landscapes?

8.     Do I have some enriching and relaxing hobby or interest such as weaving, wood or leather working, cabinet making, book binding or gardening?

9.     Do I belong to and actively participate in at least 3 of the following:

9.1.  A religious body?

9.2.  A civic group?

9.3.  A political group?

9.4.  A literary, art or music group?

9.5.  A scientific group?

9.6.  A social action group?

9.7.  A professional society?

10.  Do I have some consistent and orderly plan for budgeting and handling my income so that:

10.1.  I am able to meet my obligations promptly?

10.2.   Get the greatest possible benefit form my income?

10.3.     Make reasonable provision for the future?

11.   Do I have some consistent can orderly plan for budgeting my time so that I can:

11.1.   Meet my personal and professional obligations?

11.2.    Render service to my fellowmen?

11.3.     Have time for enriching leisure?

12.  Do I take care of my health through habits of eating and sleeping, judicious use of exercise and rest, and regular physical examinations including eyes and teeth?

13.  Am I particular in habits of personal cleanliness and grooming, and in selection, care and repair of clothing?

14.  Do I fulfill my obligation as a citizen by:

14.1.   Voting regularly and as intelligently as possible?

14.2.    Civic participation (serving on boards and committees, aiding in Red Cross and other drives and etc.?

14.3.  Some regular volunteer service to an organization engaged in community betterment?

15.  Am I careful in my oral and written speech habits including enunciation, pronunciation, vocabulary and sentence structure, and do I attempt to correct known deficiencies?

16.  Do I practice the kind of good manners that come of a thoughtful awareness and  consideration of others?

17.  Have I honestly attempted to achieve those qualities of character that I most genuinely admire such as integrity, fortitude, compassion, tolerance?

18.  Do I make a persistent effort to rub off the rough edges of my personality and to become a friendly,  likable person who brings out the best in others?

19.  Am I continuously enlarging the horizons of my knowledge, interest and concern so as to become in the best sense of the word, a citizen of the world?

20.  Am I honestly trying to develop what Overstreet calls “The Mature Mind”, so that I may grow up before I grow old?

See for example http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-41198-154456/unrestricted/chap6.pdf

I transcribed the above from a hard copy, and I know there are some typos in it, but in accordance with "make it work, then make it pretty"  I offer it up in its current state.

The other thing that I would add is that there is a lot of sloppy thinking out there.  Sometimes details matter. And, when details matter, generalities fail. When someone tells you that woolen spun is warmer than worsted because woolen is looser and holds more air, ask yourself if they have the details correct. 

Spinning, knitting, and waving are all technologies where details matter - a lot.  And, yet I find that many modern hobby spinners, knitters, and weavers tend to gloss technical details.  They pretend to want to spin or knit or weave fast, but avoid the tools that would allow them to work faster.

Thus, the  4 additional questions that I would add to ICB's exam are:

21. Am I honest with myself about my goals?

22. Do I test statements asserted by others as facts?

23. Do I keep my math sharp?

24. Do expand and deepen my knowledge of physical science? 

Testing statements is not looking them up at some citation. It is either calculations from first principles, or going into the lab or studio, making the test equipment or preparing the test material and testing it. If you want to know whether I am telling the truth about what kind of fabrics are warmer, knit up some fabric swatches and test their insulation values.  If you want to know if I am correct about knitting sheaths, make one and try it.  Try it with pointy needles, then try it with blunt needles.  I did.   

By reading the classics, we learn, "Trust, but verify!"

Favorite tools of 2011

We went to Yellowstone last summer and saw everything.  There was a lot of walking to the geyser basins and waiting, waiting, and waiting for the geysers to erupt. I was knitting boot socks from hand spun Romney.  I had the whole knitting bag with me but one knitting sheath became the choice :

As I look at pictures of sailing this fall, there it is, always with 9" long, 2.38 mm steel DPN.  I will say that on some of those sailing trips, the needles got doused with sea water, and rusted. Everything was wet for a couple of days.  Still a bit of crocus cloth brought the needles back to perfect conditions in minutes.

There was a lot of sampling of series of yarns.  Many of these were done on a very light weight knitting sheaths tucked into an elastic pant waist band:

This one was made from redwood.  The redwood is much too soft to support the small steel needles, and hence needs a hardwood adapter, maple in this case.  Moreover, the redwood is too weak to hold interchangeable adapters tightly, and thus the adapter must be glued, and it is not interchangeable.  Just the tool to knit yarn hot off the plying bobbin.

And the winner:

My Ashford flier with standard high speed whorl (22:1) and a bobbin with a 5/8" core and DRS of 1.017  for spinning singles in the range of  10,000 ypp.  This has been a good setup for spinning singles in the 9,000 to 15,000 ypp range.  It is simple, inexpensive, and it works!  This rig will spin 11,200 ypp singles, faster, easier, and more consistently than any of the mass produced spinning assemblies.  Only Alden Amos' flier assemblies are faster.

How it was done

I look at  old knitting sheaths, and I ask, why did they do it like that?

For example look at this photo of  various knitting sheaths (http://knittingsexandgod.blogspot.com/2010/01/more-on-spinning.html) and note that a number of the knitting sheaths on the right hand side were made of two pieces of wood.  One carved, the other one turned and inserted into the carved piece with tenon joint.

Certainly many of the older "love toke" knitting sheaths were carved from single piece of wood.  Many of my early sheaths were carved from a single piece of wood and I went to a lot of effort to turn the needle adapter.

However,  last week, my wife had a new red wood fence put around the back yard and the work men left me a lot of little pieces of red wood.  It is a nice light weight, attractive wood, that is very easy to work. So I made some knitting sheaths.

They are both designed to tuck into the elastic waist band of sweat pants or shorts. They work very well with 7.5 inch #1 DPN.  The soft wood is strong enough when the tenon joint is glued.  If you use a friction joint so that that needle adapters are interchangeable, then the softer wood tends to crack at the joint.

Mostly, I have been using 9" needles with spring action for sock knitting for the year or so,  but these little knitting sheaths do not provide enough resistance to support the spring action, so these little knitting sheaths need a different motion. That is OK, the motion is driven by the shoulder muscles, and there is still no stress on the hand. It is almost as fast as the spring action. Made from red wood, the knitting sheaths are light and handy, and the shorter needles are better for knitting bags and travel. I find it worth while to keep this technique in practice.

When you are making knitting sheaths, this is a concept that you may want to consider as the soft wood makes fabrication fast and easy, and they seem to last.  The needle adapter in the top photo was turned from a bit of ash limb that I had to prune off to make way for the fence.   Turning green wood, can be a very fast and easy process.

The bobbins that I make are not as robust as the plywood bobbins that I get from Ashford.  Mine show a disconcerting attraction to concrete floors. Thus, I have had  several opportunities to think about making bobbins. 

These are DD spinning bobbins, that provide a 40:1 ratio on my Ashford Traditional, with a DRS of ~1.01, and a core diameter of 0.625" they are optimized for spinning 16 hanks per pound. The singles on those bobbins is a Shetland - Jacob blend spun to ~9,000 ypp.

I have moved to making the cores and whorls from one piece of black walnut stock. As you can see, there have been trials along the way.

I make the end disks from cherry. And, I like bronze bearing insets better than the Ashford Delrin bearing insets.  The Delrin is far and away the better bearing material and they are lighter.  However, the Ashford bearing inserts have little spacing collars, and with my small core diameter and small whorls, I just do not have enough clearance for the spacing collars on the Delrin bearings.  

My current process for making a spinning bobbin is to bore a straight hole through the core blank.  I use the ends of that hole center the blank as I turn the core/whorl.  The bobbin core blank needs to be straight and smooth to fit the holes that will be bored in bobbin-end blanks.

I scribe a ~3" circle on some 3/4" cherry stock, drill a 1/16" hole through the center of the circle and cut the blank on the band saw.  I use a spur drive on the wood lathe to turn the blank round and part it into 2 pieces.  Each bobbin end piece goes into the lath chuck and I bore the center of the blank to fit the bobbin core blank.  I glue the bobbin ends on to the core.  I turn the final shape of the bobbin ends and the whorl on the wood lathe. The bronze bearings are held in place with a dab of  E 6000 industrial adhesive.