Monday, February 18, 2008

Self-patterning Sock Yarn Wrap-up

As promised, here is the rest of this year's self-patterning sock yarn odyssey.
I took me about two weeks to get the yarn wound. Once that was done, I had to dye it. I had estimated that it would take me about three hours to dye it. It took six. I couldn't believe it! I was going to dye a bunch of yarn for a wholesale order the same day and had to do it another day! It did come out pretty and I hung it all up in the bathroom to dry.
When it was finally dry, the lovely Susan came over to help me wind it. Here's what one of the skeins looked like (there were four). It looks kind of short in the picture but that's because I have it all braided up so it won't tangle.Wanda was helping us out that day. We set ourselves up with Susan in the front room holding one end of the skein and me all the way in the kitchen with the ballwinder and the other end around my ever-trusty milkcan. As I wound, Susan would carefully unwrap one strand at a time from her hand so that it didn't tangle.
The first skein we wound was the smallest and didn't take very long. The second skein, however, was super tangled and I ended up having to get up and walk back and forth with the ballwinder, untangling as I went. That took two hours and I was about beside myself thinking that the other two big skeins were going to be just as bad. Fortunately, the other two were much better and only took about 45 minutes a piece. What I realized is that the tangled skein was the one that I took off of the frame by myself and the other two must have been the ones that Doria helped me with. I'm usually a fairly independent, "I can handle it myself" kind of person but I am never going to take one of those skeins off the frame without help again! The consequences are too aweful!
This is what we had by the end of the day. It took another couple of days to wind these off into 4 oz. skeins. I have to say that I'm very glad that I only do this once a year but it was worth it to see the look on people's faces when they got their yarn. Annie was very pleased. She cast on a sock that night and this is what she had by the next week!

Thank you to Susan, Doria, Annie and everyone else who helped or sent nice comments about the yarn.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Oh man, I am now so very, very jealous that I had to skip this year's sock club. *Whimper* Those colors. . .well done, Miss Lucy!

Anonymous said...

me too!! how beautiful. next year i will have $$ for sock club i think!