Is Alden Amos good for anything?

A few years ago I borrowed Alden Amos' Big Book of Handspinning from the library, and I was less than impressed. Even if the book had been completely accurate, I would have turned off by the ego, the constant pimping of his products and dissing on others', and also the lavish praise on a seemingly unrelated person's products who if you look it up, you'll learn is his significant other. But the book is NOT completely accurate. It is littered with errors. From telling you to wind spindles off the end (please do not do that. Depending on the yarn you might be OK or you might end up with a horrendous mess, but it is always better to wind off the side), to the directions for measuring WPI that are completely wrong (he says to pack to refusal. No. It's not measured that way. The yarn should be gently laid next to itself, no gaps and no crowding).

However, he does have the only really detailed explanation of how a double-drive wheel's ratios work to produce take-up, so when I ordered a double-drive wheel, and got one of Borders' rare really good coupons that brought the book down to a reasonable cost, I bought myself a copy just for that section. I read it over again, and... it's basically bunk.

The math is perfectly fine, but it only works on paper. He's neglecting major contributors like, say, driveband drag -- which is the single biggest factor in determining take-up once your whorl ratios are set. Adjusting driveband drag is how you set your take-up rate. So the three pages of calculations are basically worthless except as academic interest to set your minimum. He does eventually talk about driveband drag, after many many pages of theoretical babblings. So the whole theoretical thing is basically worthless.

Just like Scotch tension, with double-drive you set your whorls, and then tighten something to adjust your take-up. Double-drive pulls in more gently and adds twist as it does. That's all you need to know.

Then, just to add insult to injury, another huge glaring error. Alden tells you that your driveband MUST cross a certain way on a double-drive wheel, and you must change the crossing to the other direction when you switch between spinning and plying. The only way to change this crossing is to either cut the driveband off and tie on a new one, or take the drive wheel off.

Luckily, I stopped, blinked a few times, and said to myself "There is no way our foremothers were destroying their precious hand-spun drivebands or taking their wheels apart several times a year." So I went elsewhere and looked it up.

You know you switch from spinning to plying on a double-drive wheel? You pedal the other way. That's all. You don't do a damn thing to the driveband.

Honestly, I have never seen another instructional book with so much that's just flat out, disasterously wrong. I'm honestly getting to the point where I wonder if anything in this book is right. I really do think it's more wrong than right, so it is really sad that this book is one of the "spinning bibles" out there. Luckily most people either can't afford it or aren't that interested in the theory, and own better more correct books, because if this had been the most common book for new spinners, the community would spend the next two hundred years undoing the damage that man had done. It absolutely blows my mind.

I was right!

Over the summer, I called bullshit on the old "whatever group that isn't us makes intentional mistakes to show only God is perfect" crap.

Someone kindly directed me to this article, specifically the second on Humility Blocks. End result of research: it is crap!
Amish do not intentionally put a mistake into quilts, and are aghast at the idea that they would or would think they would need to.
I lambasted the idea towards Navajo work last time.
And the article there talks about how experts in Persian rug and that history also believe the Humility Boof to be BS.

So, enough with the racist crap, fellow artisans.

First Ornaments!

Straight off the scroll saw, so not sanded or finished or anything: