A mountain out of a Molehill...

This week I have been preparing one of my Colourmart scrap sets for knitting up. I prefer to prepare my yarn first. I know many people knit with it "as is" with the oils in it, making a swatch first and washing that to determine what the oiled and the washed gauge is, and making allowances for this during the knitting process. I've come a cropper with that one once and anyway, I really, really enjoy the whole skeining, washing and winding process. As you can see, the before and after shots are quite dramatically different. I find the whole "fluffing up" process really magical and in this case I would say the yarns have at least doubled, possibly trebled in thickness and are about 100% softer. The cream in particular is super soft and squooshy.

The original, unwashed set is to the left, the washed and skeined result to the right. It doesn't have quite the impact in the photos as I had thought it might so you may have to take it on trust that the yarn has turned from string to lushness with the application of water and soap.

These were skeined up, then washed in washing up liquid/Dish Soap, and very hot water. The water is as hot as you can stand to put your hands in and you use quite a bit of washing up liquid. Care needs to be taken not to agitate the yarn too much in the hot water otherwise it will felt up. The yarn is left for thirty minutes in the water then the water drained off. I had to wash these three times before the oil was all out. (The bubbles will stay on the water once the oil is out).

Next they were rinsed until the water ran clear. Finally, the last rinse water had human hair conditioner added instead of fabric softener. I just used what I had on hand for my own hair.

The skeins were then wrapped in towels and rolled up. I walked over them to get the worst of the water out and then slung them into the tumble drier on low heat for 25 minutes. In my machine that equates to 15 minutes heat and 1o minutes cool tumble. This didn't dry them totally but fluffed them up to their full extent without felting them. I am always afraid to tumble them too much in case I tangle or damage them so they've spent two days in the airing cupboard to finish drying as they were still dampish when I got them out of the machine.

And tonight, they will be ready to wind into yarn cakes and swatch for gauge. Its going to be long sweater but I haven't decided whether to make it colour blocked or striped as I am still struggling with percentages of colours and stripe/block sizes, and won't have a final plan until I know what the gauge is going to be.