In which April is halfway over!
Dude. So I went on spring break on April 9. It’s now April 19 and the month is half over, which is pretty crazy and really exciting. We have a full week of school and then four days, a day of in-service, and then my birthday. I’ll be 25 on May 2, which I feel is a little nuts and which cannot possibly be correct, as I am nowhere near where I wanted to be with my life at 25. However, it should hopefully involve something sheepy and yarny, and that’s exciting. After that it’s a couple of weeks til Memorial Day, and after that, it’s just a few weeks to the end of school and a couple of weeks off before the summer program starts.
So over my spring break, I was busy. I went to three or four different doctor’s appointments, took the bird to the vet, visited with Scott, and did crafty stuff. The plan was to finish spinning and plying for Aeolian, and be knitting by…two days ago. The plan did not happen.
Seed Beads on Plying Thread
I spent the better part of the day on Wednesday stringing beads onto my shiny metallic plying thread. I strung what had to be close to 500 size 10/0 clear seed beads by hand. Damn were my eyes crossed after that! I’m not looking forward to doing it again for the second batt. Anyway, I was smart and put the whole project down after that and figured I’d pick it up for plying on Thursday. I started a test-ply and realized that my original thought of plying the single with the plying thread wasn’t going to work. It kept wanting to make super-coils, which I didn’t want, and the yarn itself was not very strong. I made an executive decision to split the first bobbin of singles into 2 and create a 2-ply + thread. I got out my mom’s mail scale and weighed an empty bobbin. Then I weighed the full bobbin, subtracted the weight of the empty bobbin, divided by 2, and added the weight of the empty bobbin back on to give the weight of a bobbin + half the weight of the singles. I wound and measured, wound and measured, and finally came up with two roughly equal bobbins. (Yes, I’m aware that this is painfull nerdy. I blame the fact that I teach math.)
Plying thread & singles bobbin
Then I realized that I have a two-bobbin lazy kate and what really equated to three bobbins. Dammit. I spent forever trying to rig a makeshift kate out of a shoebox and a DPN, which would have worked, except the thread kept winding off onto the DPN and not pulling out. So finally I scrapped it and let the thread bobbin roll around in the shoebox while I plied. That worked out pretty well. Plying was slow, though. I had to keep stopping to slide the huge line of beads farther down the thread so I could ply three or four yards, then lather, rinse, repeat. I had been at it for hours and had to go eat dinner, so I put the plying down, which was the biggest mistake ever. When I came back, I had a huge knot in my thread, right around the beads. Huge. So huge I couldn’t untangle it. I finally just gave up and broke the thread, releasing about a hundred beads. I cried a little. I cursed. I threw things. I posted a hateful plurk that included some colorful language. I considered burning everything. Finally, I sucked it up and restrung the hundred or so beads I’d lost. Then I put the whole thing in time out.
Plied Snow Moon laceweight
Even though the resulting yarn is gorgeous (see left), it has pissed me off, in many ways:
- The thread broke. I had to restring beads.
- It took six hours to ply 67 yards.
- There are knots in my skein where the singles drifted apart (which is my fault), and I couldn’t spit splice them because the fiber is superwash.
- I need 400 yards. I may not have enough even with both batts; I’m not sure how much more yardage I can squeeze from what’s left on the first two bobbins.
- I need to spin 2 more oz/another batt into superfine singles.
- I need to string another 500 (pardon my language) fucking seed beads. Cry.
- This is not done yet.
Toe-Upkins
To distract myself while the Aeolian yarn is in time-out, I started another KAL of 2 with Katie. This time we’re knitting Nutkins, but we’re doing them toe-up. These are my first toe-up socks, and my first time converting from a cuff-down pattern, and am finding both things surprisingly easy and fun. I made my toe a bit too pointy, but it looks fine on, so meh. I’ll know for next time. I feel like I may knit everything toe-up from now on, but I haven’t done the heel yet, so I’ll get back to you on that. Yarn is DIC Smooshy in Chinatown Apple, and I’m doing them one at a time on two US1 circs, which is going swimmingly. :)
Oh, also, before I go. I leave you with a new picture of my babybird:
Lori, April 2009
