September 12, 2005
Pop Quiz
What is the property of Shetland yarn that makes it possible to knit fair isle sweaters entirely in the round all the way to the neck?
And might that very property of Shetland wool make it easy to spin?
However, might that property of Shetland wool make it a very BAD candidate for plying from a center pull ball?
If your guess was 'stickiness', you are thinking more clearly than I was on Saturday when I had my plying agony with my handcombed Shetland.
But after a lot of yelling and cussing I got a hank of yarn.
It's not the nicest yarn I've ever spun, and it's astonishingly little yardage for its weight of 3.5 ounces (unless I lost count while winding it off, which is entirely possible given my state of mind...). Maybe I can get 4 of these. Because I'm not separating out fine from coarse in the fleece before combing it (just getting out the VM was effort enough), it's definitely outerwear-grade yarn - there is a jacket pattern in the latest Knitty that would be perfect if I can eke out enough yardage from this and some other Shetland I'm spindling.
No other news from our way. It was definitely a bad spinning karma weekend, nothing I tried worked well, so I stayed away from my beautiful Wild Things merino until the air clears!
Posted by Prudence at September 12, 2005 09:08 AMThe jacket would look great in the shetland and on you!
Posted by: elizabeth on September 13, 2005 07:28 AMWhat was the yardage amount for your 3.5 oz. skein? Anyway, it's good to see that you were able to overcome the plying agony without pitching the whole thing in the trash.
Posted by: Vicki on September 13, 2005 09:25 AM