Squoosh factor is greater than perfectionism

I'm still very much a beginner spinner in my own head. I don't consider myself a beginner knitter anymore, because I can generally take the needles and make the yarn turn into exactly what I want (it may take some ripping, sketching, figuring, and head-scratching, but I can do it). But spinning isn't that way yet. I can make lovely things, but in my brain I'm always comparing to what I wanted them to be. And they're not exactly the same. Yet.

This is my new pet yarn.


I'm keeping her in my purse and calling her Tinkerbell for a while. She's scrumptious. She's made of my first Spunky Club shipment, and she's lovely.

My perfectionist brain says "but she's so thick-and-thin! You're not spinning evenly enough yet!"

My perfectionist brain says "dude, HOW many times did the singles break while you were plying?"

My perfectionist brain knows that one ply was much denser than the other, and so there's a small ball of unused single on a tp core in my stash room, that I may or may not ply.

And my perfectionist brain says that that small ball and the the waste lost due to broken plies and her thick-and-thinness are evidence of failure on my part.

And then I look at her, and I pet her, and I can't feel bad.


She's lovely. I took her to a movie tonight, and she got held through the end of Benjamin Button after I ran out of stockinette to knit (four socks-in-progress, and they all require thought right now - bad planning.)

And I know that I did many of the things that I wanted to with her. I wanted a softly-spun two-ply - I didn't want to overspin and lose the fiber's original softness. In that I succeeded completely.

I wanted somewhere in the dk-to-worsted weight. Even with the thick parts, I'm there. The thin parts are heavy fingering, this got substantially fuller with a wash. And the evenness across the board is way better than my past thicker yarns.

I wanted the colors to line up somewhat, and while there's a lot more purple in that one leftover ply, it's amazing to see how the outside of the skein is mostly blues, the inside is mostly purples, and it varies in between. I didn't screw up Amy's lovely dye job.



I'm learning. I'm getting better, and this is evidence of that. Yaay. :)