Wow, it works!

  

  
I made a Rube Goldberg Machine, and it actually works! I've been knitting a lot lately, and given that decent yarn is terribly expensive, I took a notion to recycle the yarn out of sweaters from Goodwill. Which is all well and good, but it takes forever using a drop spindle.

Back when I did my initial experimentation, I had tried to figure out a method for using my treadle machine base to spin yarn, but my engineering was for crap and I abandoned the idea for several months. I was even seriously considering buying an actual spinning wheel to speed up plying the yarn I got out of secondhand sweaters, until I came across plans for building your own.

That's when I learned about scotch tension. See, when you spin yarn, 2 things need to happen. First, it has to get twisted. Second, the twisted yarn has to get wound up onto a spool or something. With the most basic type of spinning mechanisms, you spend a couple seconds twisting, than stop twisting while you wind up the string you just made. Scotch tension is a method for getting these 2 things to happen simultaneously!

As you can see, the gadget above has a spool (bobbin, in the parlance) mounted between 2 arms. The thing with the arms is the flyer. The flyer has a little wheel stuck on it, and the belt from the treadle table goes over the wheel and turns the flyer. This is what twists the yarn.

Well,  if the bobbin is sitting on the flyer, that means the bobbin is turning at the same speed as the flyer, and if all the flyer does is twist the yarn, how do you get the yarn wound up?

It is ridiculously easy: all you do is loop a little piece of string over the end of the bobbin, causing a teensy bit of drag. The bobbin will then turn just a little slower than the flyer, so that not only does the flyer twist the yarn, it rotates around the bobbin, thus winding and twisting at the same time.

The first time I read about how that works I thought well dang, that is just brilliant. I'd been looking at plans for spinning wheels that work using complex arrangements of drive belts and wheels with multiple grooves in different diameters calculated to cause various ratios of twist and take up, and it was all just too daunting. Scotch tension is so perfectly low-tech it's foolproof. Want your yarn less twisty? Tighten the string. Want your yarn to be more twisty? Loosen it. Want to make yarn faster? Pedal faster, silly!

Edit! Featured Instructable! Squeeee!!!!

Ooo OO! I made bagels!

  

  
Start with the pizza dough formula, and add a heaping tablespoon of dark brown sugar. Knead it well and let it rise at room temperature for about an hour and a half, until the air will whoosh out of it when you poke it. Don't knead it, just deflate it.

Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 450 and bring one or two large pans of water to a boil. Start squeezing the air out of the dough the way you would if you had hand washed a cashmere sweater: firmly, working in one direction, with no twisting. You'll feel the air popping out like bubble wrap. The dough will work out into a long rope, and when it's about 3/4" thick, wrap the end around your hand and pinch/tear the dough into a loop.

Set them on a floured surface for about 10 minutes, then slip them into the boiling water. Don't crowd too many in a pan, they should float freely. Boil them for about 3 or 4 minutes, gently flipping them over from time to time. Fish them out by sticking a chopstick through their holes, arrange them on a greased cookie sheet and bake for 20 minutes.

You have no idea how exciting I find this. I am starting to feel like a real baker, not, you know, a person who shambles through recipes and then quietly eats the evidence later.

These are easy. They have to be, for me to get excited about them. There are several steps, but none of them are complicated. Here are some tips though:

1. Don't worry if the dough rings are lumpy. As they rise, they smooth out a lot. Dough does that.
2. Don't stretch the dough very much when making the rings, or the holes in the middles will close up. It's gotta have a hole to be a bagel.
3. Do put sprinkles on them. I used roasted garlic chips, poppy seeds, sesame seeds, and salt. I wish I'd had some caraway seed, but that can happen next time. Slop some seeds and stuff on them just before they go in the oven, they're quite sticky when they come out of the water.
4. Traditionally, bagels are small. This recipe makes about 10 bagels.
5. I put a light shake of coarse cornmeal on the pan. This helps to prevent sticking.

 

I was so geeked out about these that I immediately jumped on my new bicycle and went to the store for some stinky fish, cream cheese and capers. Ok, so partly I was looking for a reason to ride my new bike, but whatever.

Wears Like Iron

Among many other family artifacts my Mom sent out to Portland were a couple cast iron pans. I got 'em, cuz my sibs are already fixed for that kind of stuff.

These weren't the first ones I've owned- in the last year or so I picked up 2 excellent ones at goodwill. Of course, the ones Mom sent have personal value due to their being the ones Dad used since Idunnowhen, but there are things I like about the goodwill finds too. They came from goodwill, duh, so they're awesome. I think I paid about 8 bucks a piece for them, which is about what they would have cost new. In another class of item (hellllooo!?! IKEA svalka wineglasses retail at $4.99 a 6-pack-don't think I'm gonna pay 99 cents each for a bunch of dinged up ones!), paying the same as for a new one would be foolish. In a cast-iron pan, years of hard use are a material advantage. The skillet on the right rear burner also has the inscription "D. Baldyy" scratched into the oxidized material of the handle. At least, I think that's what it says. I couldn't say why I like that so much. The pan in front of it I got a couple weeks ago. It's smaller, and weighs a lot less. Also, it's ambidextrously cast, that is, it has pouring "ears" on both sides. Baldyy has a spout only on the left side, which means it assumes that you'll pick it up with your right hand. Since it weighs a ton, and I'm right handed, that makes a certain amount of sense until I go to scrape the pan out and realize that I'm clumsy with a spatula in my left hand. I'd rather lift left-handed and scoop right. Dweebity, whatever. The little pan works well either way and is a pound or more lighter.

On the left are the pans mom sent. In front is a skillet that, while it is the same diameter as the larger of my goodwill scores, still weighs less. This runs with what I've heard about vintage cast iron: that one of the desirable features of some really old pieces is that it was cast in thinner molds. They have the same dimensions and durability as newer items, but are easier to sling around. This one was coated with dust & polymerized grease, and had a couple mouse turds adhered to it for lagniappe. Oh yeah. Plus, it's also got the two spouts. The thing in the back is larger and deeper than I think I'm ever likely to need, but I might try making bread in it. The seasoning on it had degraded pretty badly and it was showing a lot of rust when Jej pulled it out of the box. Does anybody remember if Dad used that thing to cook his picnic hams? Or bake bread in? Anyway, it's a no-foolin' piece of ironmongery.

So what did I want to take on these grotty old things for? It took about half an hour of elbow grease, baking soda, and cooking oil to get those 2 pans back in really decent shape. I'm pretty confident that they'll cook really well when I try them out, but it was kind of an effort.

Because they are simply better than anything else at what they do. There's a reason there are so many teflon pans at goodwill- the damn things wear out. They also aren't safe at high temperatures. You heat up a teflon pan under a broiler and everything you eat is gonna get a nonstick coating. You could invest in fancy enamel LeCreuset or some shit. I mean, I love mine, but again- I thrifted it. Enamel is easy to clean and safe at high temperatures, but once you whang a hole in it, you might as well throw the pan out, and some of that stuff is mighty costive. Or you could buy stainless. You'd pay the same or nearly as much for All-Clad, or something else that would give you equally good heat distribution, and you'd save on weight. Or you could pay a tenth the amount for cast iron. At any rate, unlike either teflon or enamel, the nonstick coating that develops on a cast-iron pan is continuously self-repairing. I think that's the feature that beats the heck out of all other choices for me. Low-tech beats high tech on safety, durability, and effectiveness, plus throws in the magic Accio Reparo! function at the end. I love that.

The herd

It got too hot to eat, let alone cook. But it's much better than last year, when it was also too hot to move, breathe, or think. This summer has not yet been too hot for me to indulge my other obsession.

In the cabinet on the right: the first treadle I bought, from the goodwill bins. It's a White, and runs most beautifully. I think it dates from about 1917. Sewing machines like company. In the center cabinet is another White, which I got because I had become obsessed with treadle operated machines. The second one is cosmetically in great shape, and also runs extremely well, but I think the older one is a little lighter to operate.

On the leaf of the right hand cabinet is a Singer. I don't know much of anything about it yet, cuz I just bought it on Saturday afternoon. But it seems complete, if rather stiff. It came in the cabinet on the left. So why is there another machine in the cabinet? Because that beige machine is a clone of my mom's machine, which I learned to sew on. After I bought it, I learned that it was the last model Singer produced that was designed to convert to treadle power. So obviously I needed a Singer designed cabinet. Which happened to come with this machine head that I'm very excited about because it appears to take modern needles and the same type of bobbin the beige machine does.

Then there's my serger. That's the thing on the chair. Very high tech, it intimidates me a bit. But it does that thing you hem t-shirts with, and it sews, trims, and finishes  a seam in one pass, which is a big timesaver. I don't like computerized machines, but when I need one, I really need one.

There's another machine that didn't make it into the picture. I've more or less retired it- it's the one I bought with my very own money back in 7th grade. I saw a classified ad in the Ann Arbor News, and called the lady, and then Mom took me to the bank where I withdrew my 100 dollars. Or maybe Mom paid the lady with a check, and I paid Mom. I don't remember. It's a Necchi, which is a more or less defunct brand. At the time I bought it, the White company had owned out the brand for some time; I'm not sure Necchi branded machines are even produced any longer. I hear that really old Necchi machines are serious pieces of equipment. Mine, not so much. Early on, it was great, but it's got nylon gears, which I've broken twice over the years, and it was never meant for heavy work, so I've warped the main drive shaft. Currently it's functional, but that's about it. I keep meaning to take it to goodwill, but, you know...we've been together since seventh grade. I made some of my favorite things on it. But christonacrutch, I really don't need 6 sewing machines.

I name my sewing machines. The vintage ones, anyway. The Whites are Lizzy and Jane, and the beige Singer is Anne. I thought the Singer that came with the cabinet was going to be Marianne, but it doesn't look like that's its name. I'll have to get it functional, and then we'll see. God, I hope she isn't Emma.