Winding Two Strands of Yarn Together
I was extremely excited to get on board the trend of holding a strand of mohair/silk together with a strand of wool to make a sweater fabric that is unbelievably cozy, soft, and pretty much glows. The yarns I chose — Julie Asselin Anatolia and Nurtured Fine are so gorgeous and I love them together.
As I cast on, though, I tried to figure out the most convenient way to hold the two strands together. This is always a question, but it seemed particularly important given that Nurtured Fine come on cones and I just couldn’t see having a big cone flop around my knitting bag with a delicate ball of mohair/silk. So I decided it would be better to wind the two together into a cake that I could just use as a regular ball of yarn.
But I discovered a little hiccup — the two yarns didn’t wind together at the same tension on the first try because my Anatolia mohair/silk was on a swift, which creates some tension as it spins around, while the Nurtured Fine wool was on a cone coming from the floor without any tension to speak of. So after I’d knit from about half the ball, it started to get tangled because they weren’t coming off the ball at the same rate. I also didn’t wind super neatly, so with two yarns that are both pretty sticky, it was a little bit of a mess. BUT, I discovered it’s super easy to add tension to the yarn on the floor just by holding it gently! Problem solved!
Here’s a video showing how I wind from the cone of Nurtured Fine sitting on the floor and from the skein of Anatolia mohair/silk on my swift. If you’re knitting with a yarn that doesn’t come on a cone, be sure to just wind it into a centre-pull cake first, then you can set the cake on the floor and pull from the centre. As long as you keep an eye on it in case it flops about a little, it should work just the same.
(Oh, and there’s no audio on this video just in case you’re wondering. I haven’t gotten a decent mic yet and I always mute these kinds of videos myself, so it’s just visual.)
The sweater I’m wearing in this video is Seablush in The Farmer’s Daughter Soka’pii
