Well who would have thought it....

I have two skeins to show today.  I spun one myself and rescued the other one.  Both are Camel Down and Silk from the bag of fibres I am spinning up for a friend.    I was expecting this fibre to be difficult to spin but in fact it was quite easy, and a pleasure to work with.  I spun it worsted, short forward draw, since that is what I am most practiced at, and after all this was yarn for someone else so needed to be as good as I could make it.  I only had 48 grammes as the rest of the bag of fibre had already been spun up by someone else and that skein had come to me as well.  It was a very, loosely plied heavy lace weight/light sock weight  and seemed a bit harsh and straw-like despite the original fibre being extremely soft.  My friend wasn't keen on the loose ply or the texture and said she would never knit it up so I was told to do with this skein of yarn as I wished.  I didn't like to see yarn abandoned like that so I cut off a couple of yards and washed it to see what would happen.  The skein was tied in only one place when I received it so I guessed it was in an unwashed state.  The yarn became a bit softer and gained a bit of a halo when washed but unfortunately the twist also loosened even more.   I figured the twist might not be fully set if it hadn't been washed and decided to try to rescue the skein by running it back through the wheel in the plying direction to tighten up the ply. 

I wound it up into a nice neat round ball over a scrunched up bit of paper and then just let the ball run around next to me as I ran the yarn back through.   Even on the bobbin it looked fluffier and gained a definite halo, presumably from either the singles losing a little of their twist as I plied or just from handling the yarn as it ran through.  It did seem overplied when I did the plyback tests as I went along but it came off the niddy noddy reasonably calm with only a bit of a twist to the skein, though I had half expected it to twist around itself quite dramatically. After a nice warm soak and then a rinse with plenty of fabric conditioner (I only used bog standard hand wash laundry liquid and the same conditioner I would use in the washing machine), the skein hung completely straight.   To ensure the yarn had a nice halo and felt as soft as possible, I whacked it on the kitchen worktop then it went in the airing cupboard for a couple of days, and here it is.  Naturally I forgot to take a before photo because I just took it into my head to go for it and see what happened and wasn't thinking about before photos particularly.  This seems a much more practical yarn for knitting with, is dramatically softer and fluffier as well as more robustly plied,  and my friend was very pleased with how it came out and IS going to knit with it now, so I count that one as a success. 

And this one is the skein I made from scratch.  I am very pleased with it even though it is not as thin as I had hoped it would be.  It is a bit more even than previous attempts I've made though I still have a way to go.  However, it is very soft and squooshy at about 13 wraps per inch which is double knit weight.  Overall I am content that I have produced something useful.  I believe there is 116 metres here which according to a quick and dirty Ravelry search should be enough to make a hat, mitts, kids toys, or a cowl or to put with another yarn of similar weight for a larger striped article of some kind.