Okay, so y’member I was expecting a bale of alpaca worsted weight yarn?   Well, it finally arrived last night, all firmly bundled, shown next to my Crocs for size comparison.  

And the first thing a dyer needs to do when receiving new yarn from a different source is to figure out how to undo the bundle (OMG how did they pack it so tightly!!??), and then figure out how each hank was put up.

It is in large (250g) individual hanks, which are too large for me to dye in my normal way, so I have to break them down into 4oz hanks.  The first one let me know that a 4oz hank is about 200 yards.  It behaved most admirably in becoming 2 decent sized hanks.

The second one that I put on the swift to put into smaller hanks, however, thoroughly misbehaved.  Apparently not all yarn manufacturers work the same way.  I thought I had a clear tail from which to wind but within a few turns it was obvious I was mistaken.  The end strand was pulling from between other strands, over and under and through and around.   So I am ever-so-carefully making a ball manually and trying to sort it out.   OMG what a mess — a tedious, time-consuming, mind-numbing, curse-inducing MESS!!

I have no idea how those long strands managed to droop and snag around the shaft below, but I’m not about to start cutting or pulling anything.   I’ll just keep manually winding that ball,

Oh, and lookie…. I just went to start back at it, and discovered the last half of the hank is winding off in the opposite direction.  What the heck???  This one hank may well be an all-day project for me.

Anyway, I expect to have a rack of Alpaca worsted weight yarns to show on New Years Day — 100% Alpaca, 200 yards, $26.00.

The good news is that once all these are sorted and made, I will have a fair good amount of alpaca worsted weight skeins at 200 yards each.  And because they came from a different source I will be able to finally take care of a long-long-overdue bill that neeeeeeds to be taken care of.  So, YAYyyyy  for end-of-year finishing so I can start the new year clean.

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