The Squishiest Yarn Ever

About three years ago, I received some fiber in a swap. I was only learning to use a drop spindle then, so it went onto the fiber shelf. Now that I have my wheel(s) going, I took out this fiber and put it onto my Ashford and decided to make some sock yarn. Well, I think it was on that wheel for the better part of a year, and I finally finished it. During the ensuing time, I learned that it was better to make sock yarn 3-ply and this was divided in half and going to be 2-ply, so I just finished it and decided to see what it would want to be when it was done.

The spinning was worsted style and seemed to be pretty fine. I plyed it a week or so ago and skeined it up. When I counted the wraps on my niddy noddy, it seemed like I had something like 700+ yards...out of 4.5 oz of fiber. I will double check that when I wind it into a ball, but there's a lot of yarn, nevertheless. It's Allspunup merino and the color is a mixture of blue, gray, and brown.

It's what happened when I washed it that amazed me. I've spun and washed yarn before, but it always came out looking pretty much like it did when it started. This yarn fluffed up a lot and when it dried became the squishiest, fluffiest yarn I've ever made. Considering that it was supposed to be smooth, tightly twisted sock yarn, it missed the mark by quite a bit. Not that I'm unhappy; it will probably be a shawl or maybe a scarf now. It's soft and warm and...did I mention squishy?

This spinning never ceases to amaze me.

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I Can't Stand It Anymore

Those who know me accept the fact that I am an English major at heart, if not in real life. I can spot a typo at 50 paces and a misplaced apostrophe at 100. I have much more respect for writers (even bloggers and people who post in forums on the net) if they use apostrophes correctly and spell accurately. In reading one of my favorite knitting blogs just now, I was disappointed in the author (who I enjoy and generally think does a great job of keeping her grammar and spelling top notch) when she made the mistake that I seem to notice constantly lately. (No, family, it's not putting "at" at the end of a sentence, but that annoys me, too.) Lose vs. loose. What is so hard about this? Loose is when your pants are too big and fall down. Lose is what you've done when you can't find your car keys. You don't loose weight, you lose it (if you're lucky.) The sweater you knit is not too lose, it's too loose (assuming it's size is too large for you.)

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