When our yarn arrives with us it’s in skeins (or hanks). We dye it – and then we reskein it.
Why?
These days the majority of our yarn is dryed indoors, but that hasn’t always been the case. Yarns which were dried outside often got blown about and tangled. Yarns can tangle in dye pots, and we know that trying to wind yarn into a ball from a tangled skein is tricky, especially if you’re trying to do the job yourself. We’ve got the luxury of umbrella swifts and electric skein winders, so it’s much easier for us to sort out any problems.
Reskeining yarns lets us check the joins which are part of the spinning process. Sometimes this is a splice, and occasionally these can loosen. Reskeining yarns lets us check that the yarn is sound (and if it isn’t then we don’t sell it). We use an electric skein winder so we won’t always spot a knot – but we’d know if the yarn was coming apart.
The main reason for reskining is to show how the colours look when mixed together. That’s important as that’s how the colours are going to look in the finished project. The appearance of the skein changes completely.
Here’s an example of that.
This is a skein of BFL nylon sock yarn in the faded rainbow colourway after it’s been dyed and dried.
This is the same yarn after it’s been reskeined. You can see how the colours mix together, and you can see every colour that’s in the skein. It’s really fifferent.
Another skein after dyeing and drying – this is ultimate rainbow. There’s loads of impact with these pictures because you have blocks of colour – but that isn’t how the yarn is going to knit up.
The same yarn after reskeining. It’s a very different looking yarn.
We’re going to start adding photos of the yarns before it’s reskeined to listings, so as new yarns are added to the shop you’ll see more of these images.
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