Monday, May 1, 2023

Fiber Monday

 

In Which I Have Not Made Much


After finishing the Blue Shawl last week, I took this week off of really working hard on anything. Instead, I decided to finally wind a large hank of worsted wool yarn from Romaxe. This aged skein came from a bag of yarns my grandmother gave me!

A detached yarn label lays across a computer keyboard. The label is white with an orange block design in the center where the ROMAXE logo sits above the name of the yarn. It is clearly very old.
As you can see, this is a very old skein

Most of the yarn I got from my grandmother was acrylic or in very small tapestry hanks of around 25-50 yards of cream, teal, or blue yarn. This Romaxe is significantly longer, in better shape, and shockingly soft. I'd say whatever they did to this yarn to make it "Guaranteed Mothproof" worked.

ROMAXE Knitting Worsted is Moth Resistant and the colors are Washable. This pure worsted yarn is spun from a fine quality of Virgin Wool and will satisfy the most discriminating knitters. IMPORTANT: Purchase sufficient quantity of this color and dye lot number to complete your garment. Make sure it is of one dye lot as the next lot of this color may  differ slightly in shade.
Look at that vintage font!

Guaranteed Mothproof. Washable Color. ROMAXE. Deluxe Quality. Knitting Worsted. A faded pink sticker says "75 Yarn" upside down over the center but the rest of the pink sticker's text is too faded to read. $1.29. 100% Virgin Wool. 4 Ply.
Man, if only yarn still cost only $1.29/hank! Especially 100% wool!!!

Beacon Supply Co. Chelsea, Mass. 02150. Color: 0123 MEADOW GREEN. Dye-Lot: R 19949. Weight 4 Ounces. 100% VIRGIN WOOL. RN32925. MADE IN U. S. A.
I haven't looked it up yet, but I wonder if the Beacon Supply Co.
still exists in Chelsea, MA?

A ball of dark green yarn sits against a pale green blanket and a gray sheet with the ROMAXE label below it.
This color is a slightly cooler, bluer green than my Red Heart Super Saver
in Paddy Green

Yes, all I've really done besides a couple of pokes at thread projects is wind a single ball of yarn and start to swatch it out with a 5.5mm hook. The winding took an entire day and was nowhere near as easy as you'd think for several reasons.

1) I could not use my ball winder because 
2) I do not have a swift, which I needed because
3) wool clings to itself and without a swift, tangling is inevitable.

Seriously, if this skein had been as mistreated as poor Gordon the Gordian Knot, I would've had to slice it to bits.

The wool was very, very clingy, and there was a point about 2/3 of the way through winding it where I had to start pulling from the opposite tail and letting it pool on the floor. This worked out, more or less, leaving me to have to detangle a few obnoxiously knotted sections towards the end. It didn't force me to cut it, though, so this ball of "Meadow Green" "Moth Resistant" wool is now officially wound.

And yes, I have been swatching it with my 5.5mm hook. I tried a 4.5mm hook at first, and it took to the tight stitches well, though it did loose about 80% of its drape. I might try to turn this into some sort of a little bag or purse, because there's only the one ball and I doubt sincerely that 4oz of worsted wool yarn is enough to do much more with. Ah, just looked it up - it's 280 yards or so! That's actually not so bad. Maybe I'll look up some patterns.

It is, of course, the skein of its kind that I received, so anything I make will be monochrome.

That'll about do it for me tonight - totally forgot I had to write the blog lol!

Go Enjoy Something!
FC

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