Friday, March 8, 2013

Fiber Expiration Date

Did you know that fiber has an expiration date? Well, no not really, but when you leave them on a quill or bobbin for an extended period of time, they tend to set ON the bobbin.

Whilst I was cleaning up my Stash Storage after Stitches West, I happened to run across SIX quills of cormo that had been sitting there for about a year (or more) along with 2 one ounce bumps that I hadn't been spun yet. Oops.

I don't recall why I set it aside; probably some new and interesting fiber or knitting project caught my eye.

So, like any good spinner (set at trying to clean her Stash room), I set about making a 3 ply yarn out of these poor neglected singles, and the resulting yarn is  254 yards of a sport weight yarn. BUT, the plied yarn looks sad and splitty...and oh very extremely balanced coming off the niddy noddy. Essentially, there was no "life" in the resulting yarn.

I consulted with my former SpinU instructor Sandy on the poor state of my yarn. After she "tsked" me for leaving the singles for such a long time, she recommended that I really full the  the resuling yarn (which is a very slight form of "felting" the yarn) and that no one should see the difference.

I did as instructed and Sandy was correct. Plus, when water hit the yarn, it regained much of its life again, and came back very "springy".  But, it still looked splitty, so I did a very thorough and abusive fulling of the yarn, which made it puff up a bit, so all is good.

I probably will end up dye'ing the yarn at one point in time, but here it is.


I still have two ounces of cormo left over, which I'll probably spin woolen. Sandy recommended that I try it and see what comes up, so try it I shall. I need to practice woolen spinning on my Ashford Traditional anyways.

Plus, I need to do something besides just sew project bags..... :-)

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