Books: August 2005 Archives

Once upon a time, I used to read a lot of books. I never used to go anywhere without a book, in fact. I had a wide variety of reading interests, general history, mystery, science fiction, sociology, history of science. I was pretty omnivorous. I like to think that I still have pretty diverse reading interests, I just don't have quite as much time to read as widely as I would like. It's hard to have too many hobbies that compete with each other.

While I was in San Diego in June, I got a chance to walk through a Russian submarine. By the end of the tour I'd decided that I wanted to know more about what it would be like to live on one and when wandering through the gift shop of the maritime museum I came across a copy of das Boot, by Lothar Gunther Buchheim.

Sometimes the right book comes to you at the right time and not only provides you with the entertainment of a good story, but also provides you with insights into your own life. One of the guys I once worked for told me that das Boot is one of the best books on managment that you could ever read. And I've got to agree with him. The captain of the U-boat could really teach a lot of people about what the difference between leadership and managment is. For truly, to be manager is not necessarily to be a leader. It got me to spend a lot of time trying to figure out what I think leadership really is and to ask myself if I am a leadership person or merely someone who is good at organizing and creating structure.

So if you like your WWII history combined with a good story and a healthy dose of things to think about, das Boot is definitely a good read. I wouldn't call it light summer reading, but it is a book that combines suspense, history and a good story.

A couple of questions came up in the comments to yesterday's post. I'm not sure how well I'll be able to answer them, but I thought they might be of general interest...

When you say you plied from a center pull ball, do you mean from one center pull ball, using both the inner and the outer ends of the single, or from two center pull balls at the same time?

You can do it either way. In this case, it was one single center pull ball and I plied the yarn using the inner and outer ends. You can do the same thing with two center pull balls as well, but since I only had a small spindleful, I chose just one ball. Setting the twist in the single before I made the ball made it a lot easier to control the yarn and prevent it from tangling.

Why do you set the twist on your singles before plying? Isn't one of the purposes of plying to balance the yarn (ply with as much Z twist as the singles have S twist)? If the single is balanced, how do you get a balanced plied yarn?

I set the twist on the single to make my life easier when plying. In the past, when I have not set the twist and tried to ply from a center pull ball, I have gotten a bit of a mess becaust the yarn wants to twist on itself. This a particular problem with finely spun singles that might break easily when I am trying to eliminate knots or places where the yarn had decided that it likes to bond with itself too much. Setting the twist eliminates some of that problem. I'm not very good when it comes to spinning theory yet, but I think even though the twist is set and the yarn is acting balanced, you still have a twist that that plying will complement. I set that twist after plying as well. I think setting the twist is more about convincing the yarn to be straight and behave. It doesn't actually eliminate the twist. But this is just a guess on my part.