Not a Repeat

It seems like all I've done lately is reprisals, nothing new, and it's enough already.

I've been distracted I guess, so it took a while to get this one right, as you can see.

It's pretty unusual for me to have failures this bad sitting around, as I'm generally a big fan of scissors (actually, I did cut up one or two of them. The dismembered ones are Even Worse than the rejects above, hard to imagine), but it's kind of interesting to see how I got here.

Two hurdles:

1. Making it perfectly symmetric about the equator without contructing each hemisphere separately and then joining them, and
2. Using an overlay for stabilisation

I'm not convinced that this is the best, or even the only overlay, but it's effective at least. It might be fun to have a pattern for the basic bead with variations for the overlays.

I do like the ends though.

I also think I'm way overdue for some yarn porn.

This double-knitting/sportweight yarn is three plies of merino plus some sort of rayon: seacell, tencel and rayon from bamboo respectively. Two plies were from handpainted yarns, the third a solid raspberry. It took forever to ply: the entire last episode of Prime Suspect, plus half an hour or so, to give you an idea.

I tend to overload my bobbins, especially my plying head, but this was the biggest plying bobbin I've ever wound. I like loose, loose tension for both spinning and plying, but as the bobbin got fuller faster than it seemed the singles bobbins were emptying, I had to keep upping the tension to pack the plying bobbin down more, until eventually it was so full that if I'd ad another seven inches of yarn, I might have had to throw it away.

Three hundred and seventy-nine grams, or thirteen point four ounces.

Still not enough for an entire sweater though.

On the other hand, my handspun cashmere/tussah sweater is about the same weight. Of course the yarn is also fingering weight, but still.