Getting Dizzy

My head is spinning....nope it's my spindle.

I took my daughter to the playground and figured I would work on my red/orange/yellow Cotswold that I had dyed and pseudo felted. When we got there I realized that Sarah Anderson spoke the truth in her book "The Spinner's Book of Yarn Designs." As my Cotswold sat waiting to be spun, the felting that had begun in the dyeing process had continued. My roving, which had started as a long strip about 4 inches wide, was now about an inch and a half wide.

I had about an ounce left, but I needed to get it done, so I spent my day spinning up the rest of the red, or as I am calling it "Indian Paintbrush." I got through my ounce in about 3 hours, and then, because I am insane and procrastinating other projects, I decided to ply the two strands I had. WOW!

I keep having the same issue when plying. I don't know if I don't divide the wool evenly, or if I'm just not spinning consistently enough, but I keep having more yardage on one single than the other, and it was bad. I think in my Indian Paintbrush I had about an extra 20 yards on what I spun up that day. What a mess. Once I finished my first bobbin, I had to unwind the second bobbin and had to double it back on itself. I guess I need to work on putting the right amount of twist into my yarn because as great as it is that I know my yarn won't break, it's crazy to deal with all those "pigtails" while plying or working with the singles.

It took me two Doctor Who episodes on Netflix to get through the wound bobbins, but then another two to untangle and ply the remaining "extra" yarn. In the end I did get a nice skein of DK-ish yarn with 183 yards out of four ounces!

It really is red. I promise.

However, the story does not end there. The thing is I still have 4 ounces of the Cotswold that is dyed and 4 ounces that isn't dyed. I'm not too concerned with the undyed wool as it is sealed in a ziptop bag and doesn't seem to be felting. The dyed is another story. So now I have another 4 ounces to spin and ply ASAP. Though I think I am just going to spin it all in one single, go to my LYS (local yarn store) and use their ball winding service to get it wound into a center pull cake and ply it from the inside and outside at the same time. I'll let you know how it goes.

It's days like this I wish I had a wheel and didn't have to stop spinning all the time to wind my yarn onto my spindle...feel free to comment if you want to donate to the Kromski fund :-P.