Saturday, November 15, 2008

Spun lace weight

Today was another day without knitting. I mostly spent my time plying a bobbin of the BFL that I dyed red back in May.

I'd spun it up as fine as I could thinking I would make a 3 ply for socks or something. Since I'm having fun spinning a bit thicker at the moment, I decided to just ply this single to itself to make a lace weight 2 ply. The plying seemed to take a really long time, which made sense once I got the finished yarn off the wheel and discovered that it was about 680 yards.

When yarn has been sitting on a bobbin for a day or two you can describe it as "rested." This single had been on the bobbin for months so I think it should be described as "hibernating." I had to make a guess about how much twist to put in the ply because the single no longer really twisted up on itself. When the plying was done and I took the finished yarn off the niddy noddy it really wanted to twist up on itself in strange ways:


I have since given the skein a good soaking in hot water and a whack or two and now it is behaving like nicely balance yarn. I'm thinking of knitting myself a nice lacy stole with this. I'm so excited to be spinning yarn in yardages that allow me to knit more than simple hats and scarves.

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