I've been struggling to finish projects recently. What's unusual is that I don't have any startitus. I have stuckitus. At the moment I have two socks on the needles and that one stubborn spinning project from the 2014 Ravellenics. (I feel like there is a joke related to slow Ravellenic finishers... but I can't remember the word. But that would describe me and this project.) In order to combat this mysterious stuckitus, I've dutifully spun the last of the singles every Friday knit night. And last Friday I finally finished! I even waited a whole 24 hours to let it rest before removing it from the spindle. Then I recruited some help from Connor to wind off the yarn.
Note how he didn't even have to leave the couch in order to help
I was so excited to finally get a project done. But Connor and I have been housesitting for my parents which means that it was necessary for me to forget the doodad that attaches the mother-of-all to the rest of the wheel. After stomping and angsting for 2 minutes I came up with a solution. It's not perfect, but using two of those rubber bands you find on broccoli works quite well.
Finally. Finally I was going to have my glorious yarn. So I sat down Sunday afternoon and started plying. I hadn't touched my wheel in quite some time and I've never done a true 3 ply yarn, so I was struggling. I figured it was because of inexperience.
As it turns out, I was struggling because I am an idiot I plied the wrong way. I don't know if I've ever done that. As an aside, when beginners knitters have told me that they wished they didn't make so many mistakes, I tell them that the only difference is that the experienced crafter makes bigger mistakes faster. Case in point. I plied all 256 yards of the three-ply and tried to wind it off before I realized my mistake. What's funny is that I still didn't know what was wrong until I let go of the end of the yarn and saw it un-plying itself. (Also, the whole time I was struggling, I made angry noises about how I thought I'd spun lace weight when my swatch said I was spinning fingering weight.)
Here is what yarn plied the wrong way looks like when you try to take it off the wheel
I wasn't sure how big a mess I made. I wasn't sure I could fix it. I wasn't sure I wanted to as I didn't want a lace weight. But I gave it a go. Pro tip: it takes twice as long to ply yarn the right direction if you plied it the wrong direction first. It took forever and two runs through the wheel, but I did eventually get the yarn plied correctly.
The strand above my finger is plied correctly while the strand below is still going the wrong way
As it turns out, I did make a fingering weight yarn. Once the yarn was able to relax a bit rather than be spun within an inch of its life, it was what I had intended.
The yarn on the left is what it looked like plied wrong while the yarn on the bobbin is plied in the correct direction, but has only gone through the wheel once
I hope I don't ruin the yarn some more before setting the twist and knitting it.
Anyone else have a face-palm moment and make a large crafting mistake recently?
3 comments :
I'm very glad for you that you were able to rescue the situation. This is case in point why I don't spin... I would never have the patience to learn to get the tension right for a start! Your yarn looks like it will make nice socks.
Oh dear, I did that once but not on quite so large a scale... I bet that yarn is going to be truly lovely once finished and knit up! My least favorite mistake is casting on something like 200+ stitches for a cowl in the round and then inadvertently twisting when you join, even though you checked multiple times that everything was straight. Those twists are sneaky.
Wow, this seems like it must have been a HUGE pain to fix. The yarn is very pretty, at least.
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