Tuesday, October 30, 2007

"Ready..."

The "November Mystery Sock Tour" will begin Nov 1st. I designed a secret sock for the "Socknitters Anonymous" group on Ravelry, but since not everyone is signed up yet, I'll post the clues here, too, and hope you feel compelled to try it out.

Two more days to go.




Spinning

There's a lot to be learned about spinning. I had never heard of "unbalanced" yarn before. After reading up in "Spinning in the old way" about it, it makes total sense. My yarn is not only unbalanced (which almost all freshly spun yarn is), no, I think mine is slightly overspun. Though I am not 100% sure. More experiments will have to follow.

I plied the brown/white wool, and soaked it, and now it's dry I must say it really resembles something I would like to knit. I'd say it's an aran weight, manageable with 5 mm needles. (That's my guess, I could be wrong, I haven't tried knitting it yet.) My perfectionism won't let up, I need to learn to spin more evenly than the 27 grams I have produced so far.





I also plied the green stuff - Man, I got 26 grams of yarn after all this work. I have to say though, it looks nice. Needs a rinse, so it settles down a bit.



See the difference to the brown yarn? It's still way twisty, or, unbalanced.
I have that one little skein because at one point the single broke during plying because it was spun very thinly. It's a bit thinner than the brown, maybe worsted weight.


But wait, there's more! I also plied the merino/silk stuff (though I should have waited till I have more.) The single broke twice during plying, but otherwise I am quite happy with it. It's not yet rinsed.





That's 16 grams of yarn. Has anyone a good pattern I could try???

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow!!!!! Beautiful. It sure has clicked. Lovely stuff. You are off to the races. I can't wait to see what you make next!

Now as one of your spinning slave drivers I have to add a teaching note: handy habit = plain white cotton ties, loosely tied as figure-eights in at least three places along your skein. This keeps them tidy in washing, dyeing, and/or if they spend any length of time being tossed around in a skein. You'll thank yourself later.

Okay go have more fun now!! :-)