I have a pile of batts that I have put off and put off some more, mainly because when I did a test sample, the finished product felt like rope, not pretty fluffy yarn. The culprit in the mix of fibers that's causing the problem is some Corriedale that I knew I shouldn't use and did it anyway. I thought it would work if it was mixed with some alpaca and faux cashmere. Nope, didn't work. This stuff has been staring at me for MONTHS. I became depressed and just couldn't look at it anymore. I stored it away in some boxes in a corner under lots of other boxes just hoping that it would change it's mind and become more cooperative, but it didn't.
Until, that is, I had an epiphany on Saturday. If it wasn't working in a three ply worsted, maybe it was because I had too much twist and it was way too small of a gauge. So I broke out the spinning wheel and approached the batts from a different point of view, after I caused an avalanche of boxes, naturally.
The collective "They" say that it's harder to learn to spin big, fat yarn after you have learned to consistently make thin plies of yarn. Maybe I've been away from it long enough that wasn't an issue. I did have a harder time keeping in slubs though. I decided to try for a super bulky art yarn. This is what I actually got:
More super bulky, less art yarn, but I like it anyway. The yarn pictured above is approximately 390 yards worth. I still have a bazillion batts to spin up, but it goes really quick like this. I've been perusing Ravelry for sweaters that have this gauge yarn and I've found a couple that I might like.
So did spinning it at a larger and looser gauge work? Yep. It's much, much softer. I'm going to keep it as a single ply too. That way I'll get more yardage that I can work with and it won't lose that softness that I craved when I created these batts.
