The Beebas' Bottoms

Mixing Family and Business the Mommy Way.

Posts Tagged how-to

Widgets that work, and That don’t work…

Mar 23

Posted by Theresa in how-to | 3 Comments

In the last few weeks, I have installed some new widgets to my site here. And I have uninstalled some.

You might notice the Label Cloud. That is a very cool widget, I found instructions for at www.techknowl.com.

You may also have noticed the Related Posts Links, which are now removed. Somehow, they worked well at first, but later started saying “please upgrade”. Since they were less than pleasing, I won’t tell you where I found them. I’ll keep looking for a better solution.

Or the fact that my Blogger Nav bar is gone, giving the blog a more streamlined and (hopefully) more professional look. That was a tip I found at another TechKnowl post.

I also was able to add true Meta Tags to the code of the Blog. Yet another TecKnowl post.

Notice a theme? I like TechKnowl, lol.

But really, I keep hearing people talk about how they like WordPress better. Why?? I can get everything they have right here, and not confuse my readers by changing over to a different URL.

Hey, if WordPress has it, and I want it, I bet I can find it. What do you think?

And, if I find more cool widgets, I’ll share them with you. Its only fair, after all. If I am gonna do the research to find these things, whether I use them or not, I may as well share that info with my loverly readers!

Till later, Signing out.

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My Very First Video Tutorial… Keychain Diapers

Mar 19

Posted by Theresa in how-to | 1 Comment

Ok, in all fair warning, I need to say, the video quality is terrible. my captions didn’t come out and I had to go over them in youtube. and this is my first ever video tutorial, so kind of an expirement.

Be Kind.

[kaltura-widget wid="rr6ykht4tk" width="410" height="364" addpermission="3" editpermission="3" /]

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The Art of the Rolag

Feb 27

Posted by Theresa in business, how-to | 3 Comments

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As a newcomer to the fiber world, I have done my share of research. I read about worsted spinning and woolen, semi-worsted and semi-woolen. I taught myself longdraw/from the fold with top (not by any means the best way to learn long draw, by the way).

I saw the term rolag more than once. I even saw pictures of them in books and websites. But nowhere did I see them for sale. I knew I had to try them, to satisfy my need for knowledge.

My first rolags were a mess. they looked nothing like the pretty handfuls of fiber I’d seen in pictures. But they spun. and they spun well. So I tried again. They were better.

Rolags are the number 1 BEST way to spin a true woolen yarn. I hear some people say that they can only spin thread in woolen way. I’m not sure why that is, but for me, I don’t find it true at all. On the contrary, I find myself able to spin much thicker singles when I spin woolen from rolags, and much faster, too.

so, for those who are now saying, “I wanna spin from a rolag, but how?” First you need your rolags to do it with. You can either buy them, if you can find them to buy (hint, I will have some stocked at the Grand Opening of the Indie Dyers Coop) or you can make them.

To make a rolag, step one:

Charge your hand carder. I used some washed but unprocessed perendale wool. you could also use that commercial top you can get everywhere. just draw the top across the carder gently, leaving fibers caught in the teeth. My Perendale was in lock formation, and I just laid the locks out on the carders side by side. they were so nice and clean I didn’t even have to pick them. (Thank you Beth of WhorlingTides for this beautiful fiber.)

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Step two:

Draw your second carder across the first, straightening the fibers, and blending them together. Be sure you don’t mash the teeth together, you’ll damage your carders. You just want to move the fiber from one card to the other. I do this till all my fiber is on my second card, (it helps to have a bit of an upward draw as you pull the card across) and then I switch cards. My Perendale is now all nice and fluffy on one side, but still somewhat in lock formation on the other.

So, to get the other side, you’ll switch hands now. start brushing your now empty card across the full one. When you have emptied that, then you need to make a decision. Are your fibers neatly aligned? do they look nice and fluffy, top and bottom? Mine did, and I chose to say they were carded plenty, and move on to rolling them. If you think you need to go over them again, go ahead. I don’t usually card more than 3 passes, though… more than that can start to cause broken fibers and tangles.

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Step three, Rolling your rolag:

The final step in making your rolag is to roll it. there are lots of ways to do it. For me, I take my empty card, and using the flat back of it, I fold over all the fibers hanging off the edge of the full card onto themselves. then I start gently rolling them back, keeping them as even as possible. When they are all rolled, roll them right off the card. I even like to roll them across again, if I think they aren’t staying neat enough.

Then, you will have these:
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Yummy, aren’t they?

Now, spinning rolags, another fun and rewarding activity, will have to come another day. I hope you enjoyed this journey of rolags, I know I did.

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Snap Press Conversion Time!

Aug 30

Posted by Theresa in how-to | No Comments

I’ve been wanting to convert my snap press into a Kick Press for a while now, Every since I saw a picture of it online. Well, Guess what? I’m doing it!

Well, actually, my husband is doing it for me. But I collected all the parts for it.

So here are the specs. I know I was lost looking for specs, and I want this to be easy for anyone to do.

Supplies needed:
–1 tool stand. I used a 29″ Universal tool Stand, 29.99 from harbor freight, and 8 dollars shipping. if I had ordered a day earlier, I would have caught it on sale for 19.99…. but oh well.

–Lumber. I used 3/4″ A/C Plyboard, one peice cut to the size of the bottom of the stand (it should have been a few inches longer, though, I think) and one peice for the top, a bit bigger than the top of the stand, to give me a good surface. (My stand is a very narrow one though, only 9.5 inches wide on top, so if you have a wider top, you may want yours to be closer to the size of your top.

You also need a peice for the lever. the ones I saw online used 2×4, but we used a length of 2×6. It gives a better foot space.

–Hardware. A hinge, we used a regular door hinge, and bolts to connect the pieces. You will also need some rope and brackets to connect the bottom of the stand to your base wood.

and here’s how we built it.

step one: take the whole family to the store, get out of the car, and realize you forgot your list of measurements at home. Go Home and get them.

step two: Back to the store. buy hinges, and plywood. don’t forget rope and bolts.

Step three: Make DH start putting the sucker together. Make sure to get a cute pic of Beeba 1 “helping” sand a paint stirrer.

Step four: get the sucker inside, and fight with getting the rope length exactly right. Realize the base wood should actually be a good six inches or so longer, because it is really not easy to press snaps while sitting with a diagonal push. It would be much easier to press them if the weight were straight downward.

Step four. Enjoy having a Kick press that, while not perfect yet, is a whole lot better than it was when it was fully manual.

I’ll update when I finish improving it.

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