I’ve spent most of the last few days tediously winding the dyed skeins onto cones. The good news is that the dyed skeins are even and consistent in color. The bad news is that the yarn was underplied, so it twisted up on itself in lots of little pigtails, tangled on itself, and has broken in several spots on each skein. In short, a nightmare to unwind. It took me nearly three hours to unwind about 50 g of the yellow yarn, and I was seriously considering just ditching the yarn and doing another dye batch with better quality yarn. Then I remembered that “snapping” the skeins before unwinding can make a HUGE difference in how badly the yarn tangles. So I snapped the next two 100g skeins and they came off much more easily – about 1.5 to 2 hours a skein. (To “snap” a skein, just put your hands inside the skein and yank them apart with a jerk – that snaps the skein open and loosens tangles, generally without damaging the yarn.)
But it is still long and tedious work, and after three days I’m only halfway through the cone winding for the warp yarns. (I have most of the gold and a little bit of the blue wound.) Because of the tangles, I couldn’t use the Silver Needles electric conewinder on these skeins, so I have been winding them on the double-ended bobbin winder using the handy adapter that Mike Rude (Sandra Rude’s husband) was nice enough to make for me. Fortunately, it goes faster than I thought! I am pleased – it’s actually faster than the electric cone-winder, though you do have to stick around and tend to it instead of just letting it run.
I have been winding the cones using the same method that I would for making pirns – instructions here. I’m hoping it works – can’t see why it wouldn’t, but won’t know for sure until I actually try to wind it off. I’ve wound the yarns pretty tightly and the cones are “ribbed” to reduce the chances of the whole thing coming off, so I think I’ll be good.
Things have also been really busy with between work and wedding prep – so I haven’t had as much time to work on it as I’d like. I also haven’t had time to work on dyeing more samples, and am seriously considering shelving the project until after the wedding. The no-dyeing period before the wedding is coming up fast! but I may try to get some samples done this weekend. I am really, really close to finishing up the Sabraset dye samples (only eight or nine batches to go)! and I’d like to get them done before the wedding so I can focus on the Sabracron F dye samples afterwards. That will be another 400-odd skeins, so quite a bit of work.
I have had kinky wool skeins before, and it helped to hang them wet with a heavy weight on the bottom of the skein. Of course, I wasn’t working with this many skeins! I’ll try to give a description–make a “ring” out of thick copper or aluminum wire (like for clotheslines), cover that with clear plastic tubing. Bend each end so that the ends can be hooked together. The ring is then inserted into one end of the skein and hung from a line. The weight is hung from the bottom of the skein until it dries.