I did it!!! I have made YAAARRRNNNN!!!
It was a bit of a struggle at times and really enjoyable at times. The plying was much easier than I expected. I read – properly, this time – the instructions that Maggie Casey gives in her book “Start Spinning” and it was waaay easier than spinning.
I did have “fun” when one bobbin finished several meters before the other. In the future, I’m going to have Navajo plying for dealing with this situation. In the meantime, I consulted the Oracle that is Twitter and thanks to @Deimne, @Dianeknits and @BionicLaura for their advice and @cathyqtpi and @WrapNTurn for their encouragement.
I did I bit of a quasi-scientific endeavour with weighing scales to try to find the centre-point of the remaining single. Of course, this really only works with commercial yarn that has a consistent “density” throughout.
I missed the centre point by a few meters so one bobbin ran out again. This time, I took a trip down the hall to find the centre point.
I didn’t quite get it then either so when I was left with a meter or so of one single I tried a few chains of Navajo.
So after soaking and snapping and hanging to dry, I did some measuring. (I immediately realised I would have been better off doing the measuring before I had fastened ties around the skein. *sigh!* I live and learn!)
I’ve got 3oo meters of yarn (give or take) and it’s turning out as (on average) 11 or 13 WPI. Kinda, sorta, DK weight (with sections of super-bulky!)
I’m now dreaming of all the possible things I could make with it…
January 23, 2011 at 10:14 pm
Congrats! The colours are lovely. I look forward to seeing what you make with it.
January 23, 2011 at 10:45 pm
Thanks so much. I can’t wait to see too… any suggestions?
January 23, 2011 at 10:34 pm
Colour me impressed! Your yarn is fab and I like how you named it after that unpronounceable volcano.
January 23, 2011 at 10:44 pm
hee hee! I had to google it and cut & paste it anytime I wanted to use the name! Don’t ask me to say it, tho. I like what Bill Bailey called it on Twitter at the time “Eyah-jolly-japers”
January 23, 2011 at 11:33 pm
[…] Undermeoxter talks about beginners spinning books; a spinning WIP and plies it […]
January 24, 2011 at 12:42 am
You totally made yarn! And very lovely yarn at that. It will be gorgeous knitted up or perhaps it should remain as a show off ‘look I made yarn’ type skein. Sorry I wasn’t much help with the plying! I usually just leave the left over bits from plying. I have them wrapped round various toilet roll inserts.
January 24, 2011 at 8:29 pm
I’m going to keep that strategy in mind for future. At the moment I don’t have any stash of previously spun yarn; but I can see how these oddments could come in handy in the future.
January 24, 2011 at 8:10 pm
Wow! You´re dedication really payed off. I love the colours, and as sinéad said I look forward to seeing what it knits up as.
January 24, 2011 at 8:31 pm
Thanks so much. It’s funny with the colours that one skein looks quite different – colourway-wise – than the other. It isn’t all entirely as I planned / envisaged but, hey, it’s a learning process and the result is a lot better than I expected.
January 25, 2011 at 8:53 pm
That looks amazing!
January 25, 2011 at 10:17 pm
Ah! we’ll have you spinning in no time…
February 1, 2011 at 9:01 pm
[…] amazed by my first proper skein – Eyjafjallajokull. 300 meters of DK(ish) weight yarn. I’m excited to day-dream about what it will grow up to […]