Thursday, October 10, 2013

Yarn cakes

I Love Yarn Day is almost here, so let's talk yarn cakes!  Specifically, how lovable they are, because they mean you can finally start knitting.


And not a moment too soon because that is a LOT of sock yarn I caked this week.  (There's another pair in a bag ready to be cast on, but they were from the last big windup session so I'm not counting them.)

Winding yarn into cakes is a big part of buying yarn in skeins, and it's something I usually put off till I have a a bunch:  it's rare for me to have, simultaneously, the time to spend and the space to set up.  In a yarn store, I'm so drawn to the simplicity of balls of yarn - just sit down and knit, bliss - but all those gorgeous hand-dyed yarns don't come that way so you just have to live with it.

Mainly because if you don't, and just try to knit from the skein... um, you'll regret it.


(best not to ask how this happened: trust me, it wasn't because I tried to knit from the skein.  in fact I wouldn't mention it at all except it's exactly the same thing that would have happened if I had.)


If you need to know anything more about winding yarn into a ball from a skein, check out this exhaustive post I wrote on the subject a while back.


Today I'm a little preoccupied with the number of pairs of unknit socks up in that first picture.  Bearing in mind that I get a new sock skein every month from the Knitterly Things club, and assuming I could knit a pair of socks every two weeks (ha), I might be caught up by - what, February?

I'm just not going to do this math.

It really helps that the Vesper sock yarn coming in every month always looks gorgeous, like this:


Niagara on the Lake - one of my favourite places, and such a perfect name for this colourway.  I really, really want to wear this yarn in sock form as of yesterday.  Well, maybe next week, because it'll be cooler next week, and I'll enjoy merino socks more then.

How do you approach this whole yarn thing?  Do you buy skeins or avoid them?

Oh! and if you haven't been following Stitch and Unwind all week for I Love Yarn Day freebies and guest posts, you can visit this easy link to catch up.

Or, you know, just go straight to my own guest post, which went up today... I'll post it in a .pdf here tomorrow.  See you then!

4 comments:

Leslie said...

As I've said before, I LOVE winding skeins into cakes. For me, it's the first opportunity I have to run my hands along every inch of the yarn before I use it. I check for cuts, knots and unruly bits and will cut them out if they are too bad. Plus, the resulting cake is too tempting not to dive into immediately! :)

Mary Keenan said...

I remember you saying that Leslie, and I bet if you'd been with me when I started winding that one skein I bet it wouldn't have ended up in that horrible tangle! (it's all better now: Pete worked on it every night for a week to make it so, bless him.)

Leslie said...

I had one skein of malabrigo that took me almost 2 hours to untangle. I have no idea what happened to it, but David was my "swift" that night and we were both ever-so patient! (ha!)

Mary Keenan said...

Leslie, what a cute date ;^) Pete was like a mama bear with the lump of tangle and wouldn't let me near it... except once in a while to weigh it, so he'd have some sense of progress, heh.