Last night, I went to a spinning guild meeting where we were preparing to dye self striping sock yarn. The dyeing happens next month, and this month, we got to wrap the yarn onto a board.
400 yards of fingering weight yarn onto a board. It took about an hour and a half of winding and counting to get it all done. I must admit that as I was doing it, I was thinking that 1) I’d rather spend the time knitting on my monkey sock, and 2) is it really so bad to manually change colors when knitting socks as opposed to knitting with self striping yarn? Or more accurately, self striping yarn that I spent nearly 2 hours wrapping onto a board?
Fortunately, I spent the evening sitting next to Katie (which would make anything more enjoyable). When I shared these sarcastic musings with her, she said that what she was excited about was the imitation fair isle they’d done in the sample, and she was wanting to learn how to do that.
Then I felt silly, because I don’t particularly care for the imitation fair isle patterns in some self striping yarns, and was planning on skipping that part in my own dyeing. However, the appropriately placed imitation fair isle would warrant an hour and a half or more of winding yarn onto a board, and I can see how it would make the process more necessary.
I’m not exactly complaining. I’m excited to see the project through, and it’ll be fun to do with the guild. (My first foray into dyeing, which is something I REALLY want to do). But I somehow didn’t think it through enough to realize that making self striping yarn with a pegged board would involve a lot of winding.
Monkey sock! Monkey sock!
This thing is FUN! It’s an easy knit, not remotely boring, and looks really neat. I have strayed from my usual sock strategy which is to do both socks at relatively the same time on two separate needles. 1 cuff, 2 cuff, 1 leg, 2 leg, 1 heel flap, 2 heel flap, etc. I was so excited to start on the stitch pattern with this one, that I went directly from the cuff into the leg, and I’m over halfway down already. I need to rein it in and start the second one so they’ll end up roughly the same size.
In searching through my many stashes of yarn around the house (I didn’t realize I had yarn in so many different places), I found sock yarn for about 13 pairs of socks. Many of which are koigu!
That’s so cool.
February 21st, 2007 at 1:19 pm
I always have a great time hanging out with you too! 🙂 I couldn’t believe the other lady sitting next to me with the crummy attitude – I thought, “My goodness, why did you even sign up for this if you’re going to complain the whole time?! It’s not like we were being forced to do it or anything.”
It did take a long time but at least you finished winding it at the meeting… I had to come home and wind for another hour or so! It’s finished now though and all the ties are on, so I can’t wait to do the dyeing part! (I almost wrote dying, heh, heh.) I need to put it on my blog too. See you again soon!
February 21st, 2007 at 3:26 pm
I love the pattern on the sock, and lucky you having such luxurious sock yarn to make so many socks with. I think I would get rather bored winding all that yarn around that way too, when I could be spending the same amount of time knitting.
February 21st, 2007 at 4:47 pm
I’m totally jealous that you have that much sock yarn in your stash(and koigu to boot!). And oh my! Dying your own self striping yarn?? WHere does one sign up for that?? I’m just a hop over the water from you….I am totally interested in getting involve in the guild…how did you find it?? Thanks! I throughly enjoy your blog but don’t comment as much as I should :o) I hope you are feeling better too!!
February 23rd, 2007 at 7:51 am
Seattle Guild I assume? I really need to NWRSA. Darnit! Where did you get the plain sock yarn? Did the guild buy it in bulk? Did you guys make the yarn winding thingamajiggie that you’re using. How exactly is the yarn wound?
WOW! I’m just FULL of questions, aren’t I?