I'm Not Really Buying Yarn, I'm Conducting an Experiment

In a recent post to the Yahoo Spin List, Leigh MacNolan-Dudenhoeffer wrote about her experience in respinning Caron's Felt It yarn and plying it with brown Coopworth roving (check out her blog for the details). Pretty cool experiment. I immediately thought "SWS!"

SWS is, like Felt It, a softly spun singles yarn. Lot of gorgeous things are being made with SWS and it really shines in entrelac (see here and here, for example). I've been eyeing it for a few months now, but was concerned about the pilling that's pretty much guaranteed with such a softly spun yarn. And anyway, I'm resolved to knit from the stash this year, right?

But this is for science! Uh, yeah. That's right. Science. Why, it's An Experiment! (channeling John Lovitz) And so earlier this week I hit TSWLTH.


I brought home a skein and removed the bobbin with the loden singles I've been working on from the wheel. Unspinning the yarn required nothing more than running it onto a bobbin in the S (counter-clockwise) direction, enough to take out the Z twist. This gave a nice pencil roving:

...which was then spun into a much finer singles:



... which was plied into a fingering weight yarn:



Oh, and did I mention that, flush with extra 40% coupons, I bought a few more skeins yesterday?

Because, you know, this is for science.