Kinked
Published On: November 4, 2018

So I mentioned before that this yarn, gorgeous though it is, is a little bit kinky straight from the cake.

That’s an artifact of the dyeing process.  A lot of gradient yarns like this are machine knit into blanks, dyed, and then wound into cakes (the dyer who made this yarn posted a picture over here of some dyed blanks waiting to be wound).  When you rip out knitting (either when you rip out your own or when you rip the dyed blank out to wind it into a cake), the yarn can stay kinked.  I don’t generally like to knit with kinky yarn because it makes my stitches way less even and makes my gauge rather unpredictable.  Luckily, it’s easy to fix.

All you need to do is wind the yarn up into a big loop with your swift, tie it off in three or four places, get it absolutely soaking wet (really…be totally sure it’s wet all the way through or else this won’t work…leave it in the sink for several hours, even overnight if you can), and hang it to dry.

When it dries, it will be nice and straight and you can wind it up into a cake again and knit with it without any of the issues kinky yarn can cause.

Now, just to be clear, I totally love the yarn (June Pryce Fiber Arts’ Coventry DK in Speckled Soul Searching).  I am not complaining about the yarn.  I understand that the kinks are there because of how the yarn is dyed, and that it would add a significant amount of time and work (and therefore cost) if the dyer skeined, soaked, dried, and then caked every single skein.  I totally don’t expect them to do that, and I don’t think you should expect them too either.  But I I like knowing I can do it myself before I start knitting, and I suspect a few of you may want to do it too!

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