Holy Mountains of Yarn, Batman!

So, I had mentioned before that a friend was given literally a truckload of cones of yarn. (Well, a pickup truckload, but it's a truck, nonetheless.)

I was allowed to riffle through the yarn and take any cones I might like. Alot of it was acrylic and strange things, but there were a few cones of Shetland wool. Fingering weight and laceweight Shetland wool.

I snatched up a cream cone and a nice grey-green heather cone of yummy yummy wool. I knit them into gauge swatches, and doubled, on size 7 needles it knits up quite lovely. (quite lovely... is that grammatically correct? eh... I'll look that up later.) My intended pattern is from Cheryl Oberle's Folk Vests book - the "Stonewalls" vest. The question was, then, would I have enough yarn?

Well, that was going to be a problem. The cone was ginormous but I needed to use it doubled.

Now I don't have a ball winder. If I can't beg borrow or steal someone else's ball winder I end up slinging the hank over my leg - using the knee to foot span as the yarn holder with the yarn holding leg folded over the non-yarn holding leg in a bizarre yoga type posture. Ohmmm....... It works well for small hanks, like alpaca. I often wind balls in boring places, like when my housemates drag me to karaoke in our rinky-dink town. Trust me, drunk rednecks singing Shania Twain pairs well with mindless ball winding.

But this cone is, as I said, ginormous. There was no way I was going to carefully wind it into however many little center pull balls, even if I didn't have to loop it over my leg. I needed to make a deal... (Insert dastardly rubbing of hands here)

My friend who works at the LYS has a ball winder, and likes winding things with it. She also has a yarn scale. And it so happened that on the day I walked in, she also had a rather irate lady with a felted hat problem. Now the irate lady made a hat out of a lovely brown Bartlett yarn, but she wanted to have it felt down. The Yarn store clerk had advised her not to use Bartlett for felting - it's a tightly spun wool, and while it *is* wool, and will felt, the tightness prevents radical felting. It is a beautiful Fair Isle yarn, but not the best choice for felting, and she was ushered towards many other lovely types of wool that would felt much better. But she didn't listen, and she came back in, mad that her hat didn't felt down enough. She blamed her washing machine for the bad felt job and demanded my friend to felt it for her. And after a long headachey conversation my friend agreed (if only to get the irate lady out of the shop).

When I came in she was lamenting about how she didn’t want to try to felt the hat more. Well me? I love felting things… and I needed a ginormous cone of yarn wound. A light popped on in my head. She likes to wind yarn, I like to felt… if we offered a trade (more dastardly hand rubbing and some curling of an imaginary mustache) we would both be happy.

Ladies and gentlemen… this is why you listen to your helpful friendly yarn shop lady when she tells you a yarn ain’t gonna felt.

This is after one trip through my machine. I put it through twice more and the dryer twice for good measure. It finally fit a large woman’s head, but it was slightly ratty looking. Ah, well… it fit!



But my prize? Check this out! A mountain o’ yarn! I kind of want to try climbing it and yell “ADRIAN!” at the top of my lungs, but I think my roommate might call the funny farm. What the hell, I think I will anyways. Yell “ADRIAN!” that is, not climb the yarn. I don’t want to squoosh the fibers or break the computer desk.

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ADRIAAA-AAAAN!

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Yes, Nate, your roommate is crazy; you can stop staring at me now. I promise I will creep into your room late at night with that big avocado kitchen knife and scare the bejezus out of you if you don’t stop staring at me. Heheheheheh.

Anyways, how much yarn is there? I had been afraid that I didn’t have enough for a vest. Well, there are over 1200 grams of yarn in my mountain… that’s 42 ½ ounces… and likely over 2000 yards.


I think that is enough yarn for a vest.



Score!!!