What the....HUH?!!

I give you....my first cable plied yarn.

At least that is what I think it is. But I'm not sure as it doesn't look like the "other" cable plied yarns I've seen.

It is the Romney roving from this post, both the blue and the grey. (Kinda like the Civil war. lol) All of the singles were spun to the left (Z twist?) and then the two grey were spun to the right (S twist?) to create a two ply yarn, and the two blue where spun to the right (S twist?) to create a two ply yarn....then the grey and the blue were spun to the left (Z twist?) together to create a cable plied yarn. That is how I understood a cable plied yarn to be made. I may have been wrong and that's why I'm posting this here. Please correct me if you see a spinning error here. lol I do have some concerns about this skein of yarn. While it is very nice to look at, and very soft and of course warm......I'm concerned about it's "other" personality. See, It's is only in this shape due to some "aggressive" blocking.

When I removed it from the skein winder it looked like this. I was appalled as I've been working very hard at not over spinning my singles and not over plying. I've had much good luck lately in acheiving balanced skeins without blocking them to hide any over twist. I thought I was progressing. This confused me completely. Then I thought I'd just wash it anyway and see what happend.





Normally I wash the yarn and hang it in the bathroom to dry overnight. Occasionally I'll hang a few weights on the bottom of it to "block" out a small amount of twist back if needed. This is what it looked like hanging on the door. After hanging all of my weights on it and it still having a huge ammount of spring in it....I decided it would have to dry on the skein winder to block out overnight. Sorry for the "dark" pictures....but you get the idea of how "springy" this is by comparing it to the next picture. lol

And this is after the drying/blocking session on the skein winder. See how much it stretched out?!! Ok I gotta know.....What did I do wrong? Or did I? Is this normal for Romney fiber? If I make something out of this and it gets wet is it going to curl up like it did in the skein? (If so...no scarf out of this...I won't be responsible for strangling someone!! lol) Any ideas?? Any hints?