twistedloops

My big goal for this year is to learn to love my stash.  I decided that I need to work towards having only yarns in my stash that I like and will use.  Right now it’s really a jumble of things I love and “what on earth was I thinking” yarns.  Last year, I was pleased with the yarn purchases I made, because I did really love all of them.

I made my first step towards this goal recently with one of those “what was I thinking” yarns.  It was a yarn I got forever ago, when I was first learning to knit.  It’s a super bulky, 2.25 st/inch, loosely spun thick-and-thin single. Not a yarn that fits with the profile of what I usually knit.

In the spirt of my goal, I decided to try swatching with the yarn, to see how it knit up. While swatching, I noticed that was so loosely spun that the simple act of knitting removed twist to the point that it fell apart.  After swatching up a skein (it’s only 33 yards), I really didn’t like the finsihed fabric.  Since I didn’t love the yarn, and I wasn’t sure what I could get for it if I tried to destash it, I decided to try something crazy.

First, I ran it through the spinning wheel counterclockwise to remove all of the existing twist.  Then, I sat down with the result and spun it as if it were a thin roving.  I drafted and spun for several days.  When all of the singles were spun, I decided to ply it into a two-ply yarn.  Here is the finished result.

I’m so pleased with how it turned out.  I’m thinking about casting on with it soon for something like the Shetland Triangle shawl.