Finishing

I have finished Leila’s yarn. Perhaps you know what that means, perhaps you think you know. Here’s a brief pictorial walk through the process I call finishing yarn.

First I spin the singles. In this already posted picture you see the left-overs from spinning singles for the first skein of yarn as well as that first skein.

In this second picture both the bobbins are on the lazy kate. You can tell there is less of the lighter blue. Perhaps there wasn’t quite as much wool to start with, or it could be that the lighter blue single is slightly thicker than the dark blue. Either could contribute to the discrepancy. This photo was taken after the second skein had been plied.

This third, out of focus, picture shows the knot tying the two singles to the leader – the yarn attached to the bobbin. I am ready to ply.



The fourth picture shows how I keep some tension on the two singles until the twist is sufficient to allow the yarn to wind onto the bobbin. The singles go between my fingers, under them, and back up between the next fingers. I keep plying until one of the two singles ends.

The fifth picture shows what I do when one single ends and I still have quite a bit of the other single left. I start wrapping it around my hand, using my middle finger to reverse direction.

The sixth picture shows the full amount of single I still have to ply back on itself. Given that the finished yarn has over 90 meters of the dark blue two-ply, and that some of the original single would be taken up with twist, there must be over 200 meters of singles yarn here. My next step will be to extract my middle finger from this and “wear” this bracelet around my wrist while plying. The single flows fairly freely from two directions, creating a two ply.

The seventh picture shows me winding the two ply onto the niddy noddy to create a skein. My niddy noddy is a handy two meters making it easy to estimate the length of the yarn.

The third skein, still on the niddy noddy, tied in four places.

Next up comes washing. I wash in the hottest water I can get from my tap. Then I rinse in cold water, and follow the rinse with a second rinse this time hot again. The process helps shock the wool into remembering its original curl and should help keep it from seeming to shrink later.

I don’t have a photo of the wet yarn being whacked on the wall. This further helps full the yarn but also helps remove the water from it. Finally the yarn is laid out to dry. There are 216 meters plus 94 meters in the skein on the left with the dark blue yarn. The skein on the right is 368 meters. The only things left to do with this yarn include: weighing each skein, labeling them when dry, and then giving it to Leila.