To expand on the stash...

 I'm back with more thoughts.

This time brought to you by another craftsnark thread.  I'm not really interested in discussing the subject of the thread, suffice to say there are many red flags that her behavior is over the line for what is reasonable and healthy.  

What I want to talk about is the posts that inevitably show up that are usually some combination of self-flagellation and justification for the posters own stash.  Never mind that nobody else is aware of that individual's stash, the personal conviction of the poster drives them to apologize for their own collection and justify its existence.  

Could we stop doing this?  I think part of that behavior is that if you are going to criticize someone else for their "overconsumption" than you need to prove that you are different.  No one wants to feel like a hypocrite.  The other part is that people sometimes take things way too personally.  Even though the criticism was never directed at them, it hits too close to home now.  In addition, we are talking about a craft that is predominately (although certainly not exclusively!) populated by female identifying people and I can't shake the feeling that some of this justification and apology is just automatic because so many of those people have been conditioned to believe they shouldn't be taking up space.  Add in stereotypes about how much women love shopping, and horrible misogynistic jokes about women "spending all the money" and now we have a lot of people who feel defensive anytime stash is brought up, especially if having a stash is being described as "gross" and "overconsumption" and "irresponsible."  I don't know, maybe these feelings carry over to other gender identities as well, but as a cis female person myself, I know what it can bring up for me.    

Let's talk about the Flatiron!

I have been the happy owner of a Schacht Flatiron spinning wheel for the last two and half years.  With Andrea Mowry's 100 days of longdraw challenge that kicked off at the beginning of the month I am seeing a lot of Flatirons in my Instagram stories and in my feed these days.  I have also been participating in the 100 days spin-a-long although I haven't really posted anything since taking photos while spinning is difficult without setting up a tripod or something.  Besides that, I am still chugging away at a sweater spin so it would be the same thing day after day.

I am not surprised to see the Flatiron out in full force for woolen spinning.  It is a really good wheel to spin longdraw on, and that was a big part of my consideration for getting it.  Of course you don't need a saxony style wheel to do longdraw, I did a whole sweater spin on my Kiwi; however, it was after that spin on the Kiwi that I decided if I was going to keep spinning large quantities of woolen spun yarn I would probably do myself a lot of favors to have a wheel that was a bit more ergonomically friendly to that style spinning.  The reason a saxony works so well is that with the flyer on the side you are able to draft across the front of your body instead of needing to repeatedly twist your trunk to one side for every draw.

I needed some time to save up for a second wheel anyway, so I spend probably at least a year thinking pretty seriously about that I wanted before I was able to get my Flatiron.  My basic considerations beyond "saxony" where that I needed something still relatively affordable, I still wanted a modern/currently being manufactured wheel, and wanted something I liked the look of.  I know the Flatiron is a little polarizing, but I do really have a preference for a more modern aesthetic when it comes to spinning wheels, and the Flatiron fit into that just fine.  I wasn't really tied to single or double treadle, but I definitely didn't mind it being a double treadle since that was what I was used to.  I really liked that the Flatiron would give me a wider range of ratios than my Kiwi had, and I liked that I would be able to try new drive systems.

In September 2021 I had a little bit of serendipitous luck.  One Sunday morning I opened up Facebook to find a very recent post in one of the spinning related groups I was in from a weaving store in Texas.  They were Schacht dealers and had a few wheels in stock in their store that they were discounting a trying to move out.  They had a couple Flatirons available, and I was just about $100 shy of having saved up what they were asking.  It was too good of a price to pass up and I was mostly there anyway, so I went ahead and made the purchase.

Right off the bat, and this may be a positive or negative depending on your perspective, but if you purchase a new Flatiron it is an assembly required wheel.  The instructions Schacht provides are decent, but I do recall running into a few spots where I needed a little more details and help.  Thankfully, there is an epic Flatiron thread on the Schacht Ravelry group forum and I was able to find the answers to a lot of my questions by searching that thread.  I was able to build it mostly by myself, I think I may have asked my husband for a little assistance on some parts, but I was able to handle it on my own for those most part.  Now the really good thing about the Flatiron, and something that sets it apart from most other saxony wheels, is that you get to decide if you want the flyer on the right or the left.  Most saxony wheels are designed with the flyer on the left, and mine is built that way too, but if your left hand is your fiber supply hand and your right hand is your orifice hand, being able to build a wheel to accommodate for that would make such a huge difference!

The ability to customize is definitely a huge "pro" of the Flatiron.  In addition to choosing the orientation of the wheel, you can also choose between all three drive systems.  The Flatiron can be set up in double drive or single drive, and in single drive you can switch between flyer-led (aka Scotch tension) and bobbin-led (aka Irish tension).  When I first started spinning on it I went for Scotch tension because that was what I was familiar with and there was a lot of new stuff to get used to without also learning a new drive system immediately, but I didn't wait long to try out double drive.  I have also done a little bit of spinning with it set up as Irish tension, but I do not prefer that and haven't really encountered a good reason to choose that particular set-up on this wheel.  It is also pretty easy to switch between drive systems, although I would not do it mid-spin.  The bobbin needs to be oriented differently for single and double drive.  If you are set up in single drive the brake band has a different closed hook to thread through depending on if it is going over the flyer whorl (Irish) or the bobbin whorl (Scotch).  I just leave the stretchy single-drive driveband inside the wheel and tie it up around the front leg when not in use (like when I spin in dd) since to remove or replace it you do need to unscrew some things around the drivewheel hub.  

Beyond the drive system options, the wheel is really versatile with regards to spinning ratios.  The wheel comes with the medium and fast whorls giving a range of 10.4:1 to 17.4:1 standard, but there are also extra slow, slow, high, and super high whorls available increasing the range from 4.6:1 up to 26.1:1.  There is also a bulky plyer flyer available with larger bobbins, larger orifice, and large sliding hooks, but I do not have that yet so I'm not really able to offer much insight into that advantages of that.  That particular add-on is pricey, so maybe someday I will get it, but it isn't as affordable as adding a whorl.  As a sidenote, it is probably worth mentioning that if you want to spin in double drive with the high or super high speed whorl you also need to purchase a high speed bobbin because the bobbin whorl on the regular bobbin is bigger than those high speed whorls and therefore if you try to spin you won't get any take-up.  The double drive bobbin whorl on the high speed bobbin is smaller.

As far as cons go, most are pretty minor.  I do get mildly frustrated sometimes that the orifice hook tends to want to catch the driveband when it is off the wheel (to replace bobbins for example) and so many times the driveband will get caught on it when I'm trying to get it back on the wheel and whorls.  That is an easy fix, I just need to remember to remove the orifice hook first or watch and be careful not to catch it. 

The wheel isn't especially heavy, I can easily lift it up on a table to tie on a driveband or to clean, but it isn't a particularly portable wheel.  That is a lot about size and shape, but it is pretty much never going to be the wheel I drag around the house with me or take to a spin-in.  That's fine- but maybe worth understanding if you are hoping to do that.

During the Ply Guild Spin-In on Sunday, someone mentioned that they feel the orifice is too low.  That was a surprising take to me but I am short so it could be that it just happens to fit my body better or it could be about how I sit at the wheel.  I typically draft about 12-24" back from the orifice, and my hands are generally just above my lap when drafting at a treadle wheel (they might be higher if I am spinning on an e-spinner sitting on a table) so I haven't found that the height of the orifice is an issue for me.  

Sitting at the Flatiron was definitely a different experience initially having previously only spun on a castle style wheel.  It did take a little getting used to, the spots I was sitting with my Kiwi didn't work as well with my Flatiron.  Ultimately I moved it up to my craft space upstairs and now I use it sitting on my office chair.  That has a couple advantages too- for one, I can adjust the height of my chair to get it just right and for another- my chair swivels so it further helps me ergonomically when I do longdraw.  Many saxony wheels, and definitely antique wheels, are single treadle.  A single treadle wheel can sometimes give you a little more flexibility as to positioning, but a double treadle kind of requires you sit in a particular way in order to operate both treadles.  I do find that on the Flatiron, I technically can operate it by only pushing on one treadle, it is much more comfortable to use both.  In general, I find the Flatiron doesn't treadle quite as easily as my Kiwi does, I think this is due to the angle of the treadles and the Flatiron's are just a few degrees higher.  Put a pin in the "harder to treadle" thing though, I am going to come back to that.

The biggest thing to realize about the Flatiron though is that everything is adjustable.  In the most recent episode of the Ply Guild (Season 1, Episode 7.2 Maggie Casey talks about how wheels have a "fidget factor."  Now a wheel like the Ashford Kiwi 3 is a really straightforward wheel, there aren't many things to adjust- you can change the ratio, you can change the tension on your brake band, you can (and should!) oil it.  Changing the bobbin is straightforward.  The Schacht Flatiron on the other hand is a wheel with a very high "fidget factor".  There are so many places that you can loosen or tighten or adjust, and that has its benefits and it also can create some frustration.  If something isn't quite right you can definitely fix it to make it work better.  Knowing what exactly to adjust is sometimes a challenge.  In single drive, brake band tension is an obvious place to fine tune.  But the whole mother of all tilts as well so even though you aren't adjusting it like you will in double drive, it might still need adjusted a little for the driveband to be at the correct tension, especially if you had switched back to single drive after using double drive.  I have found that living in a climate that is humid in the summer and dry in the winter I sometimes need to adjust some of the bolts on my wheel as the wood swells and shrinks with changing humidity.  Remember I said that sometimes the wheel feels harder to treadle?  If I feel like it is taking more force than it should even after oiling I have found that is usually a sign that I need to make a *slight* adjustment the the bolt at the front of the drivewheel hub and a little bit of a turn to loosen it makes for easy, effortless treadling again.  

The mother of all has a lot of places that can be adjusted.  Obviously it tilts to adjust the tension on the drive band.  The front maiden opens to change the bobbin but you can adjust the degree to which it tightens.  The bearings on both the front and rear maidens swivel.   Some of the adjustments knobs also have parts on them that can be loosened or tightened so if something isn't working quite right it could be that a bolt on the other end isn't tight enough or it is too loose.  

Even after 2.5 years I am still learning about what can be adjusted and what parts may be creating issues.  For example, just today I was having trouble after changing my bobbin.  (For context, I'm spinning in double drive on the 17.4:1 ratio and I am spinning Shetland rolags longdraw.)  I knew I needed a little less tension with an empty bobbin than what I had with a full bobbin, so I ever so slightly adjusted the mother of all to the right.  Unfortunately, it was still a little too much because then I wasn't getting enough tension to make the flyer spin and get take-up.  I adjusted back to the left and then I had twist but the take-up was way too high and the twist was also weirdly not quite enough and so I was having a frustrating time and ending up with a lot of broken singles.  I tried to find a sweet spot.  I tried cross lacing, which helped a little.  Then I started playing around and oiled some more and somehow in all that decided to try moving this screw that stabilizes the front maiden.  Guess what?  That was it! It was apparently too tight against the front maiden and once I loosened it suddenly the flyer was really going and I was getting twist in my yarn and I could back the tension off a little and I was good to go.  I don't even know how some of these things get adjusted sometimes.  But this is not a completely atypical experience for me.  Like I said, I'm still learning this wheel and the mechanics and what affects what.  When I find the right spot, it spins so, so well.  Until I get there though, it can take some real patience.  For this reason, I would not really recommend this wheel to someone who was just learning to spin as a first wheel. But if you've been spinning for awhile and have a good grasp on spinning wheel mechanics (or want to understand them better) or you really want a wheel that gives you some real versatility in what it can do, I absolutely would recommend this wheel for you.  It is a really good wheel, it can do a lot, and I am so happy I was able to get it when I did.

We need to talk about Stash

This is a complex topic.  I've read numerous posts about it in various forums, watched multiple creators tackle the subject on their YouTube channel, and I've even read entire books devoted to the subject.

Speaking of books, I highly, highly recommend A Stash of One's Own by Clara Parkes if this is a subject you grapple with on a regular basis.  It is a compilation of essays about stash, all with different perspectives, and I feel that it really helps explore the idea of what stash is and what it means to different people.  I've read it multiple times myself and it has really helped me form some of my own ideas around my personal stash.  

There's lots of reasons knitters have stashes.  Spinners often also have stashes for similar reasons.

One of the things I keep seeing lately is a lot of judgement and disgust by some people at the "over consumerism" of stashes.  I think this is somewhat a generational thing, this is somewhat just general frustration over a much larger problem in our world, this is definitely at least in part a backlash against "influencer culture" and "hauls."  

For every Reddit post decrying people having and displaying their massive yarn stashes, 10 more users will leave a comment justifying their own.  I try not to do this myself because I feel comfortable with what I have, I regularly evaluate my stash and my purchasing vs using habits, and frankly, I don't need to justify myself to a stranger on the internet who wasn't even talking about me in the first place.  

While I've given a lot of thought to my yarn stash, I haven't exactly had the same deep introspection my fiber stash for spinning.  This is probably in part because no one is making Reddit posts decrying the existence of fleece closets.  Not that I have one of those.  I just hear they exist.

Tonight though, after seeing another one of the aforementioned Reddit posts on the weekly BEC thread in r/Craftsnark, I go to thinking about this more.

Roughly a third of my yarn stash is handspun yarn, and I am someone who regularly uses my handspun!  The truth is that I can produce yarn much faster than I can knit it.  Of course the proportion has been gradually changing as well as I purchases less and less commercial yarn these days while I continue to spin at a fairly consistent rate.  That isn't the point though.  

When people buy yarn, a lot of times they buy it with a project in mind, or at least a rough idea of the product category or how they might use it.  At the very least, if it isn't just meant to be something pretty to look at and collect, it is meant to be knit with, eventually.

Fiber is a little bit different.  Sure, sometimes it is purchased with the idea of making a specific type of yarn to be knit into a specific project and of course sometimes dyed braids are purchased with that same "it is so pretty, I'll figure it out later" thought process.  I guess I can't speak for anyone else, but that is really only a portion of my stash.  I also have fibers meant to be used in smaller quantities and blended into other fibers for effect.  I have mill ends in an array of colors, I have sparkle, I have luxury fibers.  I also have fiber that is meant to practice on.  I bought a pound of Heinz 57 blend so that I always have combed top to grab and practice on when I want to try something out or practice something new.  I have fibers that I haven't really learned to spin well yet: cotton, flax, hemp, various types of silk, camelid fibers.  I have wool that ranges from 1 oz samples of combed top to an entire raw fleece of sheep breeds (or in the case of the fleece, a cross) I want to work with and haven't tried yet.  I even have a couple small bins that contain clean locks, processed wool, singles, plied yarn, and knit samples that I created for a demonstration last fall and I may use again in the future.  

I think you can probably see a common theme when I'm describing what is in my fiber stash.  Yes, there is fiber ready to spin and become a project; however, there is a large portion of my fiber stash that is meant for play, exploration, and learning.  When you learn to spin it isn't as simple as just buy some fiber, learn to spin, make the yarn you want for your project, and you're good.  It is a skill.  It takes a lot of practice to develop the skills to be able to create the yarn you want to make.  It takes a lot of learning and hand-on experience to gain that technical knowledge.  If you want to exercise that creativity muscle, it really helps to have materials to work with and combine.  My fiber stash is not primarily about acquiring and it definitely isn't for show, it is about having the materials at hand to develop my skills.  If I want to spin, I need fiber.  I need various types of fiber, I need multiple colors, and I need multiple fiber preparations to really be able to do all the things I want to do.  

This is the part that is getting lost and I think is really frustrating me in this discussion about stash.  I'm talking about my fiber stash here because it is so clear to me when I look at what I have and what its purpose is.  Yarn stashes can be very similar though.  Especially when you are talking about someone who has been knitting for several years, they absolutely can represent that knitter's journey as they've developed their skills, honed in on their preferences, tried new fibers or yarn types, and gathered materials that will spark their creativity.

I'm not advocating for anyone to go max out their credit card so that they too can record YouTube videos in front of a giant wall of yarn they cannot hope to ever use.  Is that even really happening though?  Yeah, I've seen a few channels where the answer might be "maybe?" but by-and-large,  I don't really think it is.  Knitters develop stashes for lots of reasons and just because some possibly are building them through "haul" mentality, I don't think that is the primary driving force for most people, and really, I wish I would stop seeing so many posts that are so critical of people ensuring that they have the materials they need to continue their hobby.  If you read A Stash of One's Own, take note of Debbie Stoller's essay at the end.  I think it is important.