A wad, quantified

What constitutes a wad of anything? Here are some definitions I found online:

pack: compress into a wad; "wad paper into the box"
batch: (often followed by `of') a large number or amount or extent; "a batch of letters"; "a deal of trouble"; "a lot of money"; "he made a mint on the stock market"; "it must have cost plenty"
chew: a wad of something chewable as tobacco
jam: crowd or pack to capacity; "the theater was jampacked"
www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/webwn2.1

My definition includes 500 yds of Brooks Farm Primero mohair. May I present exhibit A:

I've been playing around with some of my MD purchases this week, and the first thing I had to do was to ball up the Brooks Farm yarn I bought. Let me first say that it almost physically hurt me to rape these gorgeous skeins, but it had to be done. I tried winding them up on my ball winder, but they got too big and ended up flying across the room most ungracefully. So I wound them by hand, using the Japanese center pull ball technique that can be found in several places (that one's a direct link to PDF file) online.

Yesterday I knit up a gauge swatch with the blue/copper skein, starting with US 5's on the bottom, then 4's and 3's. Interestingly the 4 and 5 both came to 5 st/in although the stitches were much neater on the 4's. The 3 gave me neater stitches yet, and came out at 5.5 st/in. My next job will be to swatch some 2 color slip stitch patterns I've seen in Barbara Walker's Second Treasury to see what sort of things I can do combining the two yarns. I'm really not planning on designing a whole sweater myself, but it may come to that if I can't find any patterns that might work with whatever stitch pattern I decide on.

So I've really just been playing around with my yarn this week... still waiting for more yarn to come to finish the intarsia tank, and I've been putting off setting in the sleeves on Fruity just 'cause. In the rest of my life I've been a form-filling, signature-signing fool, working on getting privileges at Charlotte hospitals. This weekend I'm going rock climbing again, this time to a new place (for me) in Kentucky.

Comments

[June]

Let me first say that it almost physically hurt me to rape these gorgeous skeins

Uh, maybe it was worse for them? :b

[Vicki]

Wow, a new way to wind balls! I haven't forced myself to buy a winder yet, and I just stink at the traditional center pull ball. I can't wait to try that! That Brooks Farm yarn is so amazing, I can understand your hesitation. And it knits up so beautifully too!!