Time to cut my losses

I do believe that I have blathered at some length about some silk I have been spinning. I found it in the stash, so I only have an inkling of where I might have bought it. A near-perfect match to a lovely merino and silk blend.

I struggled. With a silk top or brick - this was the latter - I would normally pull off a chunk, fold it over my finger and spin with an extended draw. With this prep, I very quickly learned that this technique simply would not work. It was full of, well, for a better word, clumps. If I did an extended draw, these would obstinately refuse to draft out, leaving a huge and unwanted slub. I found that if I did short draw, sometimes I could catch this as they came through and manage to draft them, or if they still refused to co-operate, remove them entirely.

I still don't understand what was going on - sometimes the dye job was implicated, sometimes it was the silk prep, presumably badly prepped, all on its own. One of the most frustrating spinning jobs I have done in a while, and quite painful, too, hard on the hands.

We come to plying. I had spun all the fibre on to one bobbin, and deliberately chose, knowing all the risks, to ply from a centre pull ball. I REMEMBERED TO PUT A PAPER QUILL IN THE CORE. I start to ply.

The singles is much more variable than I had thought. Even though I had tried hard to mitigate the thicker, clumpy sections, I still had far more slubs than I liked. Ah well, soldier on. Maybe it would not look so bad, be a useable yarn.......the paper fell out of the core.

Quick as a flash, I stuffed my thumb approximately into the middle of the centre pull ball, and continued. All was going quite well until the phone rang, and the DSM seemed to be having problems with something. I stopped plying, and TOOK MY FINGER OUT. (Sometimes, extracting ones digit is a Good Thing. Not this.)

Almost immediately I started plying again, disaster struck. Trying to sort that out, disaster was piling upon disaster. I got the scissors, and cut myself free, took the time to look closely at the plied yarn.

It was horrible.

I not only cut the yarn, I cut my losses. I should have done it sooner. Just means a slightly different project is all. With no silk yarn.

No doubt I have learned something from this, right?