My brain spinning

I got through all the brown corriedale singles last week and sat down on Tuesday night to chain ply them.  It was really a slog.  Nothing seemed to be going right.  It was overspun, hard to ply and just not feeling right.

So I trusted my new to spinning brain and stopped.  It was definitely not right.  But I didn't know what was wrong.  I figured the singles were overspun and took was left on the bobbin and ran it through the wheel in the opposite direction to remove some of the twist.   That seemed to help.

Since it worked for the singles, I decided to try it with the plied yarn.  That seemed to help a bit, but it still looked like twisted weirdness.  So I packed it in and just left it.

Wednesday morning it dawns on me.  It looks a lot like the first time I tried to chain ply.  That time I had the wheel spinning the wrong way so I was plying, but also adding MORE twist to the yarn.  All S and no Z as it were.

Doh.

I did the same thing again.  And it took me about half a bobbin of singles to notice.  Shit.

I pulled it off the bobbin.  Muppet hair anyone?

I'm still mad that I got distracted and messed this up. I really wanted to see if I could make sock yarn. 

I did ply what was left properly and quite nicely.  About 100 yds of fingering weight.  Maybe a bit thicker.  And pretty consistent.

At least I learned something.  Hopefully I won't make that mistake again.

Especially with this:

My June Colourways Grafton batt.  I spun half of it already.  Aiming for light worsted weight.  It was very fun after all that brown (I have a decided preference for spinning colourful stuff).  I decided to let the colour fall where they will.  I think they'll blend beautifully.

Comments

[JoVE]

Great spinning. And that Grafton batt does look beautiful. I still have the webpage open in a tab on my browser contemplating signing up for that club. Must spin more.

[Knittripps]

Your spinning looks great. I still haven't figured out plying. I can get pretty decent looking singles but after I ply them together the results aren't too hot. Practice makes perfect, right?

[Annie]

Welcome to the "all S and no Z makes an ass out of you and me!" club. But I skeined and saved mine--I threw it in the washing machine and felted it, and then made a giant mitten out of it for washing the car (couldn't stand to throw out that much work in spinning). Congrats on figuring it out!

[Deirdre]

I am so looking forward to seeing what you make of that gorgeous batt... all this, and running, too... my hero!

[Dave]

Yikes! Can you not just run it through the wheel again, twisting it the other way?

The batt looks wonderful -- that's one of my favourites so far. I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with it. :-)

[Marcy]

Mmm. That is one yummy looking batt!