Wednesday, February 11, 2009

One heavy spindle!

Let me tell you, I'm very seriously considering finding some other project for this yarn.. because it seems a right shame to have gone through the trouble to ply the whole 100 grams, only to cut it in half for socks!!

This thing got heavy. The cop got seriously huge. I had to tinker with all sorts of different ways to wind it on to keep it stable. I ended up alternating between winding it cross-ways for one layer, and winding straight around to even it out. The yarn is beautiful so far and very even as far as I can tell. I can't wait to get it wound into a skein.

PVC Niddy Noddy
Some days I am really thankful that I'm not afraid of tools. I don't mind pulling out a power drill or hacksaw and going to town. I put together a PVC niddy-noddy just for winding this yarn. To make one, you start with about 4 feet of PVC pipe (I used 1" diameter pipe), and two T-connectors. Cut four 6-inch pieces, and one longer one for the center. The length of your center piece depends on how long you want the skein to be. You also need to account for the width of your T-connectors in the length of your center bar (and technically you also need to account for the width of the pipe as well, but let's not get too crazy with the math). In this case, 18" from top to bottom yielded a 2-yard skein, which is too long for my swift. I went back and with some estimation and basic trigonometry came up with new numbers and cut a second one to 12.5" ... but this came out to 60" for the skein. So much for estimation. Five feet is a perfectly reasonable skein, but also a pain in the rear for calculating final yardage (wraps * 5 / 3). So I increased that to 14" and viola! it was a perfect 1.5 yard skein.

I think I'll put on some TV (can we say DVR of "Heroes" and "Battlestar Gallactica"? Yay!) and wind myself a skein tonight. This baby wants to be washed!

1 comment:

Geek Knitter said...

Wow, that's a lot of yarn!

Love your knitty knotty... I think I may need one myself.