just another part of me

I love summer, especially this summer, because it’s not been oppressively hot. I went to the Philadelphia Zoo yesterday, and the weather was fairly nice. There were a couple of uncomfortably hot moments, but overall, it was pleasant weather. Lots of the animals were out, too!

You can click any of those for bigger, and there are more photos and a couple of videos on my Flickr page. Not to be missed are the large version of the Prehensile Tailed Porcupine (you can see his little tongue!), or the video of the crazy duck that dogged us during lunch. He was too funny. I’m going to the Zoo on Friday with my students, so I kind of hope we see that duck again.

I’m alone today, so I felt it was a good idea to finally get the first half of Aeolian shawl yarn off the bobbin. I’ve put off spinning the second half because I am so ambivalent about this yarn, and the combination of the shawl pattern I chose and the yarn I’ve got so far. So before I explain my issues, I’ll show you the yarn first. ;) Once again, click for bigger.

Okay. So here are my issues:

1. Not enough yardage. Between this and the other skein I got from the first batt, I only have about 160 yards. Assuming I get similar yardage from batt #2, I’ll only have 320 yards, instead of the 400 (bare minimum) I need for the small size of the Aeolian shawl.
2. The ply is loose in places, due to the quilting thread I used to ply and also to the learning curve involved in spinning super thin beaded yarn. This might change once it’s washed, though.
3. I worry about the structural integrity of the yarn. There are a couple of places where the plying thread snapped and needed to be knotted, and in the first skein, there are a couple of places where the single snapped and needed to be knotted. Since it’s superwash merino, it couldn’t be spit spliced. :P I don’t think it’ll hold up to frogging well at all.

So, what do I do now?! I haven’t spun the second batt yet, because I’m trying to decide what to do with this yarn. The way I see it, these are my options:

1. Spin the second batt with my new laceweight whorl and see what yardage I get. If it’s not up to 400 yards minimum, I can reassess from there. This locks me into a laceweight project, though, since I’ll have four ounces of wool spun up into laceweight.
2. Spin the second batt a different way/as a different weight and knit a small scarf from the first couple of highly imperfect skeins and something different from the second batt.

I’d still like to knit Aeolian, but I don’t think this is the yarn to do it with, especially with the structural issues it has and my propensity to make mistakes that require frogging. I could scrap the (very stalled) Laminaria I started and knit Aeolian with my KP Shimmer instead. But still…what do I do with the yarn I’ve spun and with the other batt I still have to spin?! Any options I missed? Opinions? Pattern suggestions? Sedatives? Therapy?

Mirrored from winged orange.