The long un-winding road

Yesterday I spent one solid day unwinding skeins. First they went from my Tinkertoy swift to bobbins, then from bobbins to cones. I had expected it to be easy to unwind the bobbins onto cones, but it turned out to be remarkably difficult! Eventually I clamped a metal rod to two tables and used that as an axle. Nonetheless, it was tedious, frustrating work, as I had to go slowly to prevent the yarn from snapping. I am not a patient person when it comes to tedious, boring jobs, but I persevered, and after an entire day of unwinding, I wound up with these:

It doesn’t look like much, does it? Especially for one solid day’s work. But there are about 6000 yards on each cone, so despite having only about two hundred grams total of yarn, I should be able to wind my 15″ x 10 yards warp.

Which I started doing this morning:

At my chosen sett, 90 epi, and winding from only three cones, it takes about half an hour to wind a single bout. (I actually wound two at once, which took an hour.) Unfortunately, an hour of winding was all my still-recovering ankle would tolerate, so that’s my output for the morning. 🙁 I will probably spend the rest of the day either working on muslins or working on Creating Craft, and try another two bouts in the evening. Despite my eagerness to get this warp on the loom, I am not going to aggravate my ankle sprain. I want it to heal nicely – otherwise I won’t be able to do any weaving!

I did try to unwind the superfine silk, but it had tangled badly during the dyeing, and while I’m sure I could get it off with several hours of work, winding by hand, I don’t have that kind of patience. I’ll no doubt try again, and this time I’ll put in twelve skein ties instead of eight. I’m not hopeful about getting better results, but since I have some pre-dyed, pre-coned black yarn about the same size, it’s not critical for testing out the collapse weave.