Thursday, April 2, 2009

Yet Another Spinning Mishap

The problem is not with the spinning per se; it's the finishing step. I got carried away and the dye ran and it's all very sad.

It seemed a fun idea to spin laceweight singles -- which is pretty much what I do anyway when spinning the singles for a two-ply fingering. But, instead of plying, I would just leave them as singles. The eight ounces of fiber would generate a LOT of laceweight.

So here's the first spindlefull.



The "Say a Little Prayer" colorway has a few different tones of green and long stretches of plain white. Concerned about smoothing out those twisty singles, I either let the water get too hot or left the yarn in too long or both.

Here's the first skein of laceweight.



See any white? Nope. The green overdyed everything, even turning the light green bits to medium green. There's enough variation that one could probably call it a semi-solid, but that's about it. The end result is two ounces and 700 yards of green laceweight singles. Don't know what I'll do with it, but I'm not making any more.

I've almost finished spinning another two ounces, and these babies will be plied. And ever-so-carefully-and-gently finished.



The plying will be an adventure, because I left my plying box behind on the island. No big deal; it's time to try something new anyway. Various spinning sources are always recommending different ways to ply from spindles (Oddly, no one ever suggests plying directly from two spindles onto a third, as I had been doing. Is that not a good method?). I'm sure a little research will turn up a workable approach.

7 comments:

Delighted Hands said...

Since I have only one spindle, I wound it on my ball winder and then took the two ends and plied them back onto my spindle from the ball-that was my first and it worked like a charm. Do you have a ball winder? The yarn is beautiful even if it is all green-can you learn to like it?

Susan Luni said...

O. M. G. Somehow, I never would have expected that yarn would overdye itself. The light green is not bad. How would it look plied with the others? It would be less of a contrast, so the yarn would look less marled. I'm favoring more solid colors these days, but Maybe that's not what you want.

Kath said...

Oh how sad, I'm very sorry. I know it's not what you wanted but I do think it's very pretty. I also think Luni's idea of plying with the others is a good one to consider.

Knitting Linguist said...

Oh, I'm so sorry about the dye slippage! But your singles look gorgeous; I'll be interested to see how you ply them (plying from two spindles to a third seems to make sense to me...)

Sharon said...

Sewing thread! Spectacular!!!

bspinner said...

Color may not be what you wanted bur is lovely shade of green. I've never plied using a drop spindle. I only use the ball winder method. Can't wait to see your finished yarn.

Sheila said...

I love the color of the overdyed green. I can't commend about plying. I've never plyed and haven't been successful at spinning. I think the finished yarn will be wonderful. I can't wait to see it knit up.