Quackity-quack

While thanks to a heads-up over at the Knittyboard, we've all been over at Youtube watching Muppet classic music videos (Beaker and The Swedish Chef sing Carmen; Gonzo and the Perfect Pitch Poultry chorus perform Strauss's waltz...), I've managed to finish Kayla's Ducky socks in one week (well, 8 days). The pattern is from Interweave, "Socks for Veronik;" the yarn is KP Bare Fingering wool & nylon dyed in broom sedge:

A little spinning advancement

Last Sunday I had a spinning class on twist and grist, as offered by Sally Jenkins of The Golden Needle.  One of the first things we did was to check the actual ratios of our wheels.  My Fricke 160-ST turned out to actually have ratios of 5.25:1, 6.7:1, 8.25:1, 11.25:1 and 17.6:1 (claimed numbers were pretty close:  5.7, 6.8, 8.7, 12, and 19.4).  So now I know exactly what I'm dealing with.

Then we tried working yarn at different treadle speeds:

and at different ratios:

Finally, I was able to prepare and spin a few samples of specific yarns, designed and properly executed, including sock yarn (3 ply, 21 wpi, other values measured but not being reported here):

and lace (2 ply, about 32 wpi):

So I'm quite happy.  Or I would be if only I had time to spin.