Lisa Souza Biffle
approximately 380 yds.
It looks so pretty right? Well looks can be deceiving. Check out the back side of the skein. It’s positively skanky. (Click on it for a bigger look. I’m not sure what’s going on because some of the ugliest parts seemed to have plied well. Is it just that I need to set the twist?)
Let this be a lesson to you: DON’T FUCK WITH YARMA*. Yesterday I made the beyond beginner’s mistake over at Rock Chick‘s by mentioning that I thought plying was easy. HAHAHAHAHAHA! Yarma! That cruel bitch laughs at me and then makes me stay up until 2AM skeining and re-skeining and damn it took me like five hours to ply this crap! I bow to you YARMA! You are my queen! (And I was even spinning in front of the exorcised yarn cabinet. A lot of good practically setting my house on fire did for me!)
Anyway, before you all tell me how great it looks – it looks so sloppy to me! I was so excited about my nice even singles and when I said yesteray that the more you spin the more it covers up all the shit on the bobbins I was RIGHT! Maybe I just really do suck at plying? Could it be that the skein is too large and I should break it up into two smaller skeins? I haven’t set the twist yet because as I said I was up until after 2 dealing with this and this morning I wanted to take pictures which actually suck because it’s snowing today and there’s like no light in the apartment and I refuse to use a flash. And I got that 380 yds number by measuring the niddy noddy length (17″) and then counting how many strands there were on one side(203) then multiplying the number by 4 then by 17 then dividing by 36. Right?
Back to my yarn. I thought it would be so much nicer. I might not like the colors so much, that’s true, but I really thought it was going to be better this time. It seems just like the last stuff I plied and yes I was all happy about that stuff, but that’s because it was the first stuff I ever made. I wanted to feel like I made progress.
Ugly
Pretty
Any and all advice is greatly appreciated.
*Yarma: Last night I was talking to my brother and telling him about the whole Ikea debacle and I told him about the exorcism and I said I didn’t want bad Yarn Karma and he said, “Yeah. Yarma.”
Good Yarma: Anybody who participates in this or this has it in spades.
Bad Yarma: What happens to you when you don’t kiss the knit goddess’s ASS. “Oh that’s easy! I can [knit/spin/crochet/put your fiber related activity here] that with my eyes closed!”
Oh dear. I certainly can’t help you because I don’t know ANYTHING about spinning or plying. I’m sure you’ll get lots of wonderful advise from all your brilliant readers. But, your pictures don’t suck, and stop being so hard on yourself!
I really don’t think it looks bad – and I’m not just saying that. I also think that setting the twist evens things out quite a bit and you may be happier with it then. As for the niddy noddy maths, well, my niddy noddy makes 2 yard or 1 yard lenghts, so I just count the number on 1 side and know that’s how many yards I have.
Soak the skein in some warm water, roll it in a towel to get most of the water out then grab one end of the skein and thwack it a few times on the side of the bath or bathroom tiles. Reverse ends and do it again. Keep going until you feel better.
Oh, and this will even out the twist over the skein quite a lot as well.;-)
You don’t like those colors?!? I would consider paying serious money for that yarn, just because the colors would draw me like Liz Taylor to a buffet. (Dating myself, tell me about it.)
I am doing Dulaan for 40 Days, but I am still making sure not to even think that I have any fiber-related technique knocked. And maybe putting a yarn wreath on my door too.
I like the colors! I’m of no help with the spinning though. I’ve told everyone who knows me not to allow me to learn how to spin. I just can’t afford it. I don’t ever do anything half-ass and know I’d need a wheel and all of the other cool, expensive thangs to go with it!
Cara I think it looks great. If I were you, before bowing too low in humiliation to the Yarma deity, I’d set the twist. Then drink a tall beer, go to sleep and look at it when you wake up.
You know Cara, you are absolutely right, those plys are crap! You should immediately box them up and send them to me!!!
It’s not that it’s bad plying, it’s just beginner’s plying and spinning. When you ply, you’re twisting the yarn in the opposite direction than when you spin. This process removes some of the twist from the singles. This shows up worst in the sections of yarn that are thicker and have less twist than the thinner, more twisted parts. That’s what you see in middle of the picture you labelled “Ugly”, especially in the blue and red strand right in the middle. The blue ply is fatter/has less twist (the two things go together) than the red ply. Setting the twist will not fix this, because the two plies are inherently different. Your plied yarns are only as good and even as your singles are.
Enjoy your first few skeins and keep them handy. You will be absolutely astonished at how much your spinning changes and improves over time!
I’m with Laura–get that yarn out of your house IMMEDIATELY. Send it HERE!
I don’t spin, so to me it looks really amazing. I love reading everybody’s suggestions–what a brain trust you have helping you with this stuff.
OKAY Cara I hear what you are saying about Yarma but may I point out to you that if you saw that yarn in a shop, made by somebody else, you would be not only buying it but blogging about what beautiful yarn you got? How you love its little irregularities more than life itself?
It’s only yarn, and that is all
Why do I feel the way I do?
It’s only yarn, and that is all
But it’s so hard, plying yo-oooouuuuu, plying you!
That’s your song lyric of the day. xox Kay
My experience is in making thread the same way as plying is done. It is the undertwist wasn’t quite enough for your overtwist. Janet has it pegged. Now you think with that experience I could make yarn…but NO! You have made YARN! It may not be perfect but it is part of the learning PROCESS. You didn’t really expect perfection your first time out did you?
Oh BTW, I too will take the yarn off your hands…I LOVE the colors.
run it back through the wheel, let the good parts go striaght onto the bobbin and twist more the looser looking area’s.
I have seen some other bloggers do that with lots of success.
It looks gorgeous. Step back for a few minutes, yes, give it a wash and hang it up to dry, perhaps with a hanger on the bottom as well to give it a very light bit of stretch while it dries, and then look at it again. Look at it as if someone else had created this yarn, or as if you were seeing it in a fancy LYS with a stylish tag on it.
See anything different?
Plying isn’t easy, you deserve a yarma (lol) smackdown for that, in fact, it’s the part of spinning I struggle the most to master. But that yarn looks absolutely great. Yarn should not be expected to be perfectly relaxed off the bobbin–that seems to be a common misperception in blogland (like, you hang up a freshly plied skein and it shouldn’t twist at all–singles relax on the bobbin–unless the whole thing is spun and plied in one sitting, that result probably indicates underplying). So take all that technical stuff for whatever it’s worth to you, but again, hang that yarn up, walk away from it, do something else, and come back.
Can you see how freakin’ beautiful it is, NOW?
I thought so.
But the colors are BEAUTIFUL! I don’t know a darn thing about spinning, but it looks nice to me!
I am learning to ply right now too and having a hard time with it. I thought it would be easier than spinning for some unknown reason but to me it is a lot harder. Good luck with it all!
Stop being so hard on yourself. I love the colors!
I don’t call it Yarma, I call it “acts of knitting hubris”. Laissez le bon temps roulez!
I’m not a spinner, and I HONESTLY can’t see anything I don’t like about the yarn you’ve created. I agree with Cate. Let it rest and go do something else. Don’t crush youself with expectations, because you’re creating really lovely stuff. Enjoy it.
You absolutely will not see any of those supposed flaws when you knit with this lovely yarn! If you are a beginner spinner you should be patting yourself on the back instead of flagellating yourself for your imperfections. And I teach beginners so I know whereof I speak! You are good, girl. And you will get even better with more practice.
Ack, all this talk of spinning is making my head spin! I love the colors, Cara, and it looks great to me — someone here must have the answer so that what you see as ugly duckling will become pretty, pretty yarn.
Yarma. I absolutely love it!
Love you, too. Thanks for being you and there and all that.
Yarma or no, that yarn looks fabulous for the short amount of time that you have been spinning.
I especially love the colors!
See, commenting on my posts is like getting plying cooties. So sorry, dudette.
when you measure your niddy noddy, be sure that you are measuring from outer edge to outer edge – it should be 18 inches ….. and then you simply count the strands, divide by 2 and that is the number of yards you’ve got…. love the whole yarma thing
YARMA – snerk. I think I may have to steal that term and use it for myself. Thank you for the giggle, and good luck with the plying. I am too much a beginner to even attempt advice, so I will just will you good yarma!
I have to disagree with your captions that say “ugly, pretty.” They’re just two different versions of pretty, that’s all.
And spinningfishwife’s advice is good, too.
Hey, thanks for the mention Cara — I was wondering what the Yarma mentions in my emails were 😉 And I don’t think the spinning’s so bad…have you actually knit it up yet? Might look thick and thin…like you totally did it on purpose!
Hi
The yarn looks great.
Wash the Skein in some warm water with dishwashing liquid. Rinse a couple of times. Do NOT agitate. Chuck it in the machine on spin (turn of the water taps to your machine first). Spin it till you think it has suffered enough, then get it out and give it a good smackin’ around the head!!! No seriously, hold the skein in one hand and hit it hard against the machine, the wall, your hubby and kids! Keep hitting until you have roughly hit the whole skein against something hard. This will even out the ply.
Believe me once you knit it up you will be so happy with the final product. Beeeeeautiful.
When I first started spinning I made a blanket out of all the bits I wasn’t happy with. It turned out great. I’ve even had offers of people wanting to buy it.
Great Job.
Jo
Gosh, late to the party and its all been said.
😉
I guess I’ll add that, I’d ask you to try and be less judgmental about Caraspun until you try knitting with it. A beautiful (to you) skein can make an ugly fabric and vice versa.
I want to say, as someone who just stumbled upon your blog today, that I think this is amazing. I took my first spinning class last night and it was COMPLETE HELL how on earth do you do it? I can not get it, so hopefully someday I’ll be where you are, instead of just breaking off every little piece of yarn I make.