floppy yarn

A somewhat floppy ball of yarn with the tangled center for a center-pull ball of yarn.

Closeup of tangled center.

The remains after most of the center has been pulled out.

This yarn was knitted into half a dishcloth, and then I ran out.  It sat as half a dishcloth for a while, but I decided to make it a ball.  You can see the difference than some steam and a bit of tension makes on yarn - the near side is the kinky immediately-post-knitting yarn, and the far side is after holding it over a pot of boiling water and pulling a little.

Fish-shaped crochet dishcloth. You may recognize this yarn from the previous post.

Reverse mitered knit dishcloth.

A somewhat floppy ball of yarn with the tangled center for a center-pull ball of yarn.

Closeup of tangled center.

The remains after most of the center has been pulled out.

This yarn was knitted into half a dishcloth, and then I ran out.  It sat as half a dishcloth for a while, but I decided to make it a ball.  You can see the difference than some steam and a bit of tension makes on yarn - the near side is the kinky immediately-post-knitting yarn, and the far side is after holding it over a pot of boiling water and pulling a little.

Fish-shaped crochet dishcloth. You may recognize this yarn from the previous post.

Reverse mitered knit dishcloth.

The photos for this post are sort of a followup to yesterday's post to illustrate things.

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As I slowly work on sorting/cleaning/tossing/whatevering my stuff from after my apartment fire, I have turned my attention to the large plastic bag in which resides my yarn stash. The soot, it turns out, gets everywhere - including closed drawers, where the yarn was stashed.

I talked to somebody at one of my LYSs*, and have been told how to wash yarn that has inhabited the homes of smokers - and as my yarn has been contaminated by, but not totally coated in, soot, I thought I'd give it a try.

First, the yarn needs to be wound into hanks. I used two of the legs of my IKEA Poang footstool. The yarn is tied (to keep it in a hank), then swished in a sink of water with a touch of shampoo and conditioner (as an alternative to the fancy hand-wash-knitwear soap you can get). It gets rinsed, then dried (roll in a towel and stomp on it to squeeze out the water, then air-dried), then either put up as fun twisted hanks of yarn or rolled into balls or whatever. Not sure which I'll do - but if I can get enough toilet paper rolls, I think I'll do that, because the hanks are a little prone to tangling. We shall see. I don't have enough towels to do more than one or two yarns a day, so I've got time. The hard part is going to be keeping track of which yarn is which.

I've finished a crochet project (except for the blocking** part), made some progress on a knit project (it will be a dishcloth - this is being made more exciting (and slow) by the fact that I've decided to practice continental-style knitting with it), done some dishes and a couple loads of laundry today. I am feeling entirely too productive ;-)
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* Local Yarn Shop
** An esoteric process that involves the knitted (or, I presume, crocheted) item, water, sometimes heat or steam, and getting it to be the actual shape and size that you want it to be. So far my adventures with blocking have been pretty minimal - rinse the dishcloths, lay them flat to dry, and somehow the bumps, curled edges, irregular bits in the middle mostly end up flat and even looking. It's magic.