It is a grey and uninspiring day today, quite chilly and rather damp. Definitely an indoors day. I am wandering the house, in this awful quiet, wondering just what I have to Show and Tell today. Presently I am stumped, so I am going to park this post as a draft and come back and chat to you later after a mug of strong coffee has perked me up a little.
Later…
Things never go as planned, do they? Recently I have been winding skeins. I thought that today I might finish winding, take photographs, record the stash at Ravelry, then write this post showing the resulting yarn cakes and chat a little about my plans for the stash.
I got so far. Then I came to this:
Long-time readers may recall that some time ago I triumphantly carried off three skeins of Cherry Tree Hill Orenburg Lace from p/hop-per Sarah. The yarn had languished on my worktable for ages. Sarah had hand-dyed it with Indigo and had made exceptionally small skeins of theyarn to do so. So small were the skeins that neither of my swifts would adapt to their size.
I looked around me today for some inspiration and look what I found:
I bought this set of edging scissors from Costco some years ago. They live in a revolving rubberwood stand…
As I wound some of the yarn of, the skein magically expanded. I moved the skein down… and all went well for a brief while…
…then the yarn applied the brakes — and the breaks. It is a phenomenally strong yarn but has suffered a significant felting and that provided so much resistance that the yarn broke.
Ultimately, I wound off the whole skein, in three balls of assorted sizes, and with further adjustments to my improvised swift:
I picked up the second skein and… got nowhere with it. It’s just a tangled sticky mass — and is even smaller than the first, it won’t fit my new swift. I shall need a second pair of hands to help me with it. I spent half an hour trying to free up an end. It was not going to happen. I’ll try the third and final skein another day.
The saddest thing is that this is the most expensive and exclusive yarn that I am ever likely to get my hands on. £25 for 50g at current exchange rates. At least I can make something of the one skein — 50g yields 600 yards.
See you tomorrow, after Spinning group, with some extensive WIPpage — and just maybe with some meringues.