Wow, three posts in one day!

At craft night last night I got to see a skein winder being used by someone who had a clue (unlike me). I hate to admit it, but I have been draping skeins on top of my winder and gently ‘lifting’ the yarn free. It wasn’t that I hadn’t tried putting the skein on the ends of the winder’s ‘arms’. Whenever I did it fell off, because the winder I have has no tension or spring to it.

Well that was fixed in moments with the application of a simple elastic band.

Since I had that bit solved, I could now set up the ball winder and give it a try. Instant gratification. In a few minute I had yarn cakes. (I so love that term!) In fact, I was like a child with a new toy, going through my stash looking for skeins to transform into yarn cakes and even contemplating rewinding balls of yarn. I wound handspun alpaca. I wound sock yarn. I wound slubby silk. Then the skein and ball winder met their match:

The silk thread.

I immediately encountered many new problems. The first was finding an end of silk to start winding with. How do you find the end of a yarn that really, truly is about the thickness of spider’s web? Answer: you don’t. There was a bit of yarn tied in with one of of the loops of cotton around the silk. I cut the silk there and started winding.

Twenty minutes later the silk on the ball winder was about 2mm thick and the skein looked no different. I realised that this was going to take some time. I also realised I should have wound the silk onto a toilet roll or something, as it was probably going to unravel at the centre like a slinky made of cobweb.

Forty minutes later I found that the silk kept looping out over the end of the ball winder and I’d have to stop, unwind, rewind over and over. I tried holding my finger against the roller to discourage this, but it didn’t help at all. In fact, I swear it was looping through my finger.

An hour later the skein looked less than half unwound, the silk on the ball winder was about 4mm thick, and I was fed up. I cut the silk, twisted the skein back on itself, slid the silk on the ball winder onto a roll of cardboard, and went for a walk.

Now I’m wondering just how insane I am for thinking I can knit this stuff.