Hi all, I had a strange experience with a batch of yarn and was wondering if I could get some feedback. I spun the singles and made a balanced 2-ply yarn. The yarn is multicolor heathered stuff, so I was able to readily ensure that the fibers of the individual plies were parallel to the yarn before feeding it onto the bobbin. I even used a magnifying glass. I am sure it was truly balanced.
The yarn was hanked, tied, washed, dried. When I held the hank by one end, it hung in a stable loop, no twisting. I looked at the fiber in the plies - still looked balanced. I went to rehank it and measure yardage. I put it on the swift, passed it through the homemade yardage counter (thanks again Cj! You rock!), and tied it to my barrel winder. I started winding, but then I noticed if I had any slack in the yarn between the swift, counter, or barrel, the yarn twisted as if it were UNBALANCED. Gah! I noted the direction of the secondary twist (it behaved as if it were overplied) and ran all of the yarn (7 oz!) back through the wheel to remove some twist, hanked, tied, washed, dried again. Looking at the fibers after this second round of plying, I would say it is just a smidge *underplied.* However, it still does the same damn thing, it kinks up (as if overplied) when it's not under tension! I didn't know what else to do, so I used my hands to hold the yarn somewhat firmly and "blocked" it with a lot of steam (~30 min. to block 4 skeins), laid it flat to dry, and it seems to behave OK now. I hope. Rita B. had a SO article some time ago about steaming the *heck* out of yarn to permanently alter it, but I didn't steam each hank for 30 minutes. I don't know if it will lose its memory when it gets wet again. But what the heck? What causes this? Any ideas? Puzzled, June -- Twosheep Blog: http://www.twosheep.com/blog Twosheep Handspun Yarn: http://www.twosheep.com/yarn To stop mail temporarily mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: set nomail To restore send: set mail
