Vera isn’t the only colorful thing catching my eye these days. While cleaning out the knitting baskets last week, I found a skein of handspun that I made last fall and never showed you. This is 4 ounces of Bonkers Fibers, 50/50 merino and tencel, spun into a fingering weight 2-ply. There’s roughly 325 yards here. It’s the first time I’ve spun merino/tencel and really like the combination for silkiness and shine. Not bad for one of my first forays into wheel spinning. I’ve toned done the orange a little so you can see the shots of yellow/gold in it, the perfect antidote for a dull winter morning.
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I’ve been a sporadic reader of the Spin List on YahooGroups, but started paying more attention lately when the topic turned to finishing yarn.
When I wash my handspun for the first time, I thwack it and then hang it to dry. If the yarn doesn’t want to hang straight, I might opt to “block” it or hang it under tension by attaching a couple hangers or a half-full water sprayer to it and letting it dry that way.
From the discussion on the List, weighting the yarn might not be the best thing unless you’re going to weave with it. Weighting the yarn won’t set the twist and doesn’t do anything to get rid of excess twist. Once you wash your finished object, the overspun yarn will revert back to it’s overspun-ness and the stitches might bias or the garment warp.
I’m summarizing a great deal and ignoring some valid points both pro and con and I can’t find the part about why weighting yarn that’s intended for weaving is OK, (anyone?) There was even a side comment or two about thwacking not being necessary unless you’re finishing silk, but we won’t go there. Who doesn’t love beating the dickens out of wet yarn so we’re opting to continue to do that in this house.
All if this is said with a great deal of “maybes” and “mights” since as always YMMV depending upon fiber, amount of twist and whether the moon is in the seventh house.
I’ve only knit a few swatches with my handspun so I haven’t had a chance to test it myself. And I’m not sure what yarn I actually weighted, but I’m guessing most of my earlier attempts had tension applied to them since they still corkscrewed like mad even after washing and thwacking.
The solution of course is to get good enough at spinning to recognize a balanced yarn and to be able to produce it consistently. Which all comes with time spent spinning. I’ve tucked the spindles away for right now, but have been feeling the urge to get back to it. Perhaps as soon as this current bout of startitis calms down on the knitting front.
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And just because we started this post with color, let me leave you with Shop by Colors. Click on a dot and get the credit card out.
Love the yarn!
I love to thwack and weighing down yarn makes me nervous. I’m afraid I would stretch it out and end up with a mess at the end. Ya know? I think a lot of this spinning business really comes down to what works for you. However, I only know enough to be dangerous.
xo
The Shop by Color thingie mostly seems to key on the color of the background against which the object for sale is posed. Still, that was fun.
Thwacking is fun and if it works for you, it works.
Wow, my info for posting wasn’t automatically on my laptop. I seriously need to use this thing more often.
Nice skein! I am noticing a trend with that color being spun a lot this winter. A yearning for Spring me thinks.
Pretty! Love the colors.
I think it’s okay to weight weaving yarn so as to get rid of some of the elasticity. Not something you’d want to do with knitting yarn…
Thwacking, hmmm. I can think of a few things I’d like to thwack but it wouldn’t be yarn! It is a pretty color though.
Beautiful spinning! You make me want to try that blend!
I like the thwacking and shaking and snapping, but not so much on the weighting. I think it hides things about the yarn that could come back later and disappoint.