Sheep to Shawl: Part IV

Part I covered washing the fleece, Part II covered prepping it, Part III covered spinning singles.

As of today, I have about 750 yards of spun, plied, and finished yarn. I think I will be doing one more skein, but I am taking a little break first and working on some bulky yarn to keep myself from getting into a rut. Still, I think it is time to show off some of what I have been doing.

When I last wrote about this project, I was about of a third of the way finished with the first bobbin. Two months later, I have finished two full bobbins-worth of yarn, plied them together, and finished the yarn.

I have a lovely tensioned lazy kate for plying, and it really helps to keep the yarn even.

Yes, I keep my lazy kate elevated with a box of Apples to Apples

I keep the lazy kate a few feet back from where I am sitting, so that the singles have a chance to even out as they are winding on. I don't know how much it helps though, since they have been on the bobbins so long that they have settled and lost their twist energy (though it will return when I hit it with a warm bath later).

Where with spinning singles, the fact that I don't have a lace setting for my wheel was nice for a beginner (it gave me a lot of time to draft, since I was treadling 3 times for every inch of yarn) the lack was very much felt for plying. It took what seemed like forever, and not much to do but let it run through my fingers.

After I had finished plying, I wound it onto my niddy-noddy. I counted, and there were over 250 wraps of yarn on it when I was finished with one bobbin-ful, and I had two bobbin-fulls.

The first skein, I tied it with black yarn, because that is what I happen to have in lace-weight, and it doesn't really matter. The second was tied with the small bit of remaining singles. To tie it so that it won't get tangled when I finish, I wove the yarn in and out in four places. I have seen recommendations to "make figure-eights" but I never feel like just two divisions of the yarn is enough, so I make about 8.

Skein #1

Once I had left it on the niddy-noddy for a few days to settle, I took it off and got ready to finish.

When I finish yarn I usually don't thwack the yarn to make a halo, or anything fancy. Because there was still some lanolin on this, I just swirled it around in really hot water with soap to reactivate the latent twist energy and get out the lanolin and oils from my hand. Because it was so yellow, I also gave it a hot bath with some hydrogen peroxide. I don't think it really did anything though, comparing  pictures before and after. Maybe I need more in the bath, but I am afraid of ruining the wool.

Skeins getting a bath

I don't have a large house, so I did all of my finishing in our bathtub with a bucket and a lobster pot (which we do not use for lobster). I hung the skeins to dry in the same place with plastic coat hangers.

The last step, after they were dry, was to twist them up for storage, and weigh them: 4.8 ozs, 752 yards of fine yarn.

Progressing nicely!

Part V can be found here.