or: an attempted summary of the far-too-many posts that are here already
For all that I can be more stubborn than a mule, I am also absolutely terrible with commitments. Perhaps more accurately, I just tend towards an all-or-nothing attitude. This blog is a mess, yeah, but you can find pretty much everything documented somewhere here. I am trying to keep the tags and categories at least relatively organized, but realistically... no. Nope. It's a disaster.
If it helps (not that I honestly expect it to), I do update with weekly progress and to-do lists on Sundays, works in progress on Wednesdays, and finished objects on Fridays. It's obviously a bit of time spent there, but I think the documentation, planning, and accountability (regardless of if anyone reads it, I will always be conscious of the possibility that someone might). On that note, sorry for the rather candid tone of this blog. I'm trying to focus my time-wasting-overachiever energy on things that can at least be passed of as self-care, because I am going to properly finish this school year, and if my meticulous note keeping is not going to help my grades, then I am going to at least take snarky notes.
Anyways.
updates
It's not Friday, but I am officially done spinning 5 samples of 5 different yarn types, and since I'm writing this post right now anyways, I will give the rundown of the two newly finished yarn types here. (I'm also hoping I'll have some finished actual-experiment-stuff to write about on Friday. Besides, I've still got to get together a proper informational post/video for all ye merry uninitiated folk, plus taking some more scientific measurements.) They're both 4-ply yarns, one with a cabled ply structure and the other with a traditional ply structure.
This is not super relevant to science, but I also swapped to an upright Lazy Kate system. Which, admittedly, is now just sliding the cops of yarn off onto pencils and putting them into pencil holders. It's certainly not perfect, but it works a lot better, and definitely decreases the tangles I was experiencing.
Based on my experience with these, I have officially officially officially ruled out the possibility of a 5-ply test sample. It was hard enough getting (... somewhat) consistent 4-ply, so I don't even really want to imagine what it'd be like to attempt to strip into fifths. (I know I say that every single time, but I am seriously dropping it now. There is no more hope being held out. I'm not going to have a perfect 5-by-5 experiment, and I have made peace with that.)
(ETA: it appears that I never mentioned this on the blog, so just a note that I also decided somewhere around this point that there would be no high- and low-twist samples. Also, given the inconsistencies in the cross-sectional area, and the fact that tensile strength is theoretically an intensive property, I dropped the thick and thin samples. This was a pretty natural decision once I got over the initial stubbornness, given that these needed to be controlled variables -- and since I wasn't going to have time to do more than one experiment, that means that they couldn't see much deviation.)
After spinning, I took measurements and trimmed all my samples. I cut each one to be about 48 cm long. The angle of twist is about 46 degrees, and the yarns clock in at about 6 wpi (~0.42 cm diameter).
More photos relating to this are, as always, on Instagram so that this post doesn't go on forever.
progress summary
Like I said, everything you could ever want to know is on this blog already, but it's a little disorganized, so here's a rundown of all the posts and what I've done:
experimental design: I did a lot of work with this, which ended up boiling down mostly to nothing, but in any case,
rough experimental outline: my initial thoughts on where I was going with this experiment, featuring a lot of lofty expectations that have since crumpled to the ground
more experimental design: figuring out some more reasonable decisions and working out the kinks (pun absolutely intended)
WIP Wednesday: final experiment prep: final thoughts on course corrections (although more course corrections definitely had to happen) and materials discussion
sample preparation:
FO Friday: spun samples: overview of single-, 2-, and 3-ply sample spinning
primary research progress compilation (+ update): this post! (overview of 4-ply traditional and cabled samples)
Basically, I'm finished the sort of 'bare minimum' for sample-making. Doing some extra work with varying angles of twist and navajo plying would be fun, but it's not necessary. I will be going out soon to do the actual experimentation (i.e. pretty much once this post goes up since this write-up has taken longer than it really should have), since everything is ready to go.
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