I have mentioned before that I very much love the Harrisville Designs Shetland wool. I am using it for warp for my next weaving project and realized, too late, that I had not purchased enough skeins of yarn for the fabric I wanted to make.
This is not so bad as dye lot is not terribly important for this one, so I could order more online. When I went to order, however, I saw that many places sell "washed skeins" or "unwashed cones". Having not experienced the unwashed yarn before, I opted to try that instead of the previously purchased skeins. One of the websites selling this product mentioned that the unwashed wool allows you to let it "bloom" when you wet finish your final project.
I understand bloom but have never seen it so I opted to try an experiment when the yarn came.
In the picture above the yarn on the left is the unwashed Shetland. Next to it is a cut of the same length that has been washed AND agitated. You can see how much it both shrank and "fuzzed up". To the right of that one is another piece that was just washed without agitation. There is only a tiny bit of difference in that and the agitated one. And on the far right is the pre-washed Shetland from a skein (in a slightly darker color). This is actually the same length as the unwashed but it has so much more bounce that it would not lay flat.
I also washed a strand of the pre-washed yarn to see if it had any additional shrink. It did not.
The whole thing was interesting though, and reminded me that it would not hurt to actually take the time to washed a sample of new yarn before I start a project, just so that I do not get caught off-guard when it does something interesting after wet-finishing ;-)
This is not so bad as dye lot is not terribly important for this one, so I could order more online. When I went to order, however, I saw that many places sell "washed skeins" or "unwashed cones". Having not experienced the unwashed yarn before, I opted to try that instead of the previously purchased skeins. One of the websites selling this product mentioned that the unwashed wool allows you to let it "bloom" when you wet finish your final project.
I understand bloom but have never seen it so I opted to try an experiment when the yarn came.
In the picture above the yarn on the left is the unwashed Shetland. Next to it is a cut of the same length that has been washed AND agitated. You can see how much it both shrank and "fuzzed up". To the right of that one is another piece that was just washed without agitation. There is only a tiny bit of difference in that and the agitated one. And on the far right is the pre-washed Shetland from a skein (in a slightly darker color). This is actually the same length as the unwashed but it has so much more bounce that it would not lay flat.
I also washed a strand of the pre-washed yarn to see if it had any additional shrink. It did not.
The whole thing was interesting though, and reminded me that it would not hurt to actually take the time to washed a sample of new yarn before I start a project, just so that I do not get caught off-guard when it does something interesting after wet-finishing ;-)
I, unfortunately, did not get my loom entirely warped. While I was cleaning Saturday, I got a bit dizzy when I bent over to pick something up. Stood up too quickly under the old-fashioned hardware on the door and hit my head on the latch... resulting in 7 staples and a splitting headache.
I did get the warp beamed and threaded through the heddles and the reed. I will tie on to the apron rod this coming weekend and hopefully start weaving.
To the left you can see my method of beaming alone. I felt I did not have enough tension on the warp the last time so devised away to add that without an extra set of hands. I think it worked fairly well.
And below, you can see my consolation prize for spending much of Saturday in the urgent care center.
I did get the warp beamed and threaded through the heddles and the reed. I will tie on to the apron rod this coming weekend and hopefully start weaving.
To the left you can see my method of beaming alone. I felt I did not have enough tension on the warp the last time so devised away to add that without an extra set of hands. I think it worked fairly well.
And below, you can see my consolation prize for spending much of Saturday in the urgent care center.
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