//TODO: Provide Title.

I am asexual. I made the discovery in April 2011, after years of thinking that I just wasn't any good at being straight. Also, I am a nerd. (Remember that, it might be important.) I run The Asexuality Archive and What Is Asexuality?, and wrote Asexuality: A Brief Introduction.

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Not officially measured yet, but it looks like this one will probably come in at over 80 feet. Which is shorter than I was expecting.

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Green stripe going well so far. Will not have to throw it all in the river.

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* needs to go shopping

* spends an hour attempting to plan the most efficient and optimal route to pick up three things

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The terrible orange scarf panel is complete and I think I sealed all the ladder holes. It looks so ratty.

If the green stripe does the same thing, I'm going to throw the whole thing in the river and give up.

Although, I wonder... I know people anecdotally have said that certain colors or yarn brands are a problem in these machines, but with this scarf and the number of panels I've done, do I have a statistically significant sample size to prove that a specific yarn sucks?

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What the hell, yarn?

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On the plus side, this was finally what it took for me to figure out how to use a latch hook to fix ladders.

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What the hell, yarn?

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Wake up sheeple! BIG TIME IS LYING TO YOU.

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I really should start a giant scarf TikTok that's just yarn and endless whirring and clacking sounds.

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Re: your yarn tangle issues, center pull on skeins is always hit or miss unfortunately. Hobbii had good center pull skeins but they've fallen into the AI nightmare pit.

It may be worth investing in a yarn winder and rewinding your skeins into cakes. I use the KnitPicks winder and it makes really good center pulls. Start from the outside of the skein, hold the yarn in your non-winding hand for tension, and let that thing freak. If you're winding to store make sure you wind twice (once from the outside of the skein, once from the inside of the completed cake) to prevent the yarn from stretching

With these yarn winders, how do you set up the skein so that it doesn't flop around as you roll? If I had a good solution for that, I could just feed the outside end straight into the knitting machine and skip the rest of it. I have one of those spinning spindles, but it tends to get stuck when the yarn winds under the bottom. I've looked for a horizontal holder, but all the ones I've found are wood on wood without bearings, so that just seems like it'll start a fire.

Hmmm... I wonder if I could jam a paper cup on that spindle. That might hold the yarn up so it won't get stuck.

(This project is as much engineering as it is art...)

I haven't ordered anything from Hobbii yet. I knew about it and looked when I first started this project, but they were hit hard by the Orange One's Surprise Everything Taxes, so I didn't order anything. Shame about them... They have some 1400 m skeins that I was considering because these 1000m skeins I have just aren't long enough.

[oldmanyaoi-jpeg]

I'm gonna be honest chief, I just let it go crazy most of the time. There's usually no issues until there's maybe 10m of yarn left. Though I have seen other people use paper towel holders (or just a dowel rod shoved through the skein secured to whatever) to moderate success. The only easy way to wind yarn into cakes is to buy hanks and a yarn swift (the wood on wood things most likely, they only work with hanks) but hanks are uncommon outside of artisan local yarn shop stuff and swifts are expensive.

Also I just learned about the AI thing myself, which was a real bummer because their yarn is of a quality you can't find in the states 😔 I think Michaels is the only craft store left and most have an okay yarn selection, but you may have better luck buying direct from manufacturer. KnitPicks has some yarn but Yarnspirations owns Caron, Bernat, Red Heart, Patons, and Sugar n' Creme. Just make sure you check the yarn weight so you know you're buying worsted weight.

There's a TON of yarn and fibrecraft subreddits that have a wealth of knowledge beyond what I know. r/YarnAddicts might have some answers for good places to buy, they also have a market thread where people are trying to offload their stash, because fibrecrafters love collecting Materials. There's also YarnSub that can show you a TON of other brands like what you're using.

Editing in a Facebook post (i know, boo) that i've referenced before too for good measure. lots of good recs in the comments but here's the meat:

[redbeardace]

The wood on wood thing wasn't a swift. It was basically something set up like a paper towel holder, where there was a base, arms on either side, then you put a dowel through the yarn and sat the dowel into grooves in the arms. You kind of end up with yarn on the cob.

The idea is that as you knit or crochet, the yarn slowly rotates. The problem is that with the knitting machine and motor, it will constantly be rotating at a pretty decent speed for like 20-30 minutes without stopping. (Maybe longer with these XL skeins I'm using.) Now, I was never in Scouts, but I'm pretty sure that that's how a fire is born. But otherwise it would be perfect for me, because I could just skewer the yarn and the machine could pull the yarn up and the ball would rotisserie around.

I've bought from a few of those places. Most of the scarf is your middle of the road boring cheap-o Red Heart/Big Twist/Loops & Threads kind of acrylics, because it's a few bucks for a five foot stripe and I don't have to worry about shrinking, running colors, blocking, etc., and I can get them in 65000 shades. It's exactly what this project needs. But I'm always on the lookout for colorful rainbow-y/pride-y skeins for the connector pieces between the flags, or for special styles like speckled or glittery. (Sadly, there are a lot of those that are like $25 baby seal/alpaca blend or whatever, and I end up having to pass...)

Anyway: Good news! I more carefully dug out the center of the next giant pound of yarn and it was able to go for about 25 minutes without tangles! Got several feet of scarf out of it. Of course, now it's paused, so it's slowly stretching under its own weight and it'll be dragging on the ground when I turn it back on... I'm sure I'll figure out what to do somewhere in the next 27 giant skeins of yarn I have to deal with...

[redbeardace]

Re: your yarn tangle issues, center pull on skeins is always hit or miss unfortunately. Hobbii had good center pull skeins but they've fallen into the AI nightmare pit.

It may be worth investing in a yarn winder and rewinding your skeins into cakes. I use the KnitPicks winder and it makes really good center pulls. Start from the outside of the skein, hold the yarn in your non-winding hand for tension, and let that thing freak. If you're winding to store make sure you wind twice (once from the outside of the skein, once from the inside of the completed cake) to prevent the yarn from stretching

With these yarn winders, how do you set up the skein so that it doesn't flop around as you roll? If I had a good solution for that, I could just feed the outside end straight into the knitting machine and skip the rest of it. I have one of those spinning spindles, but it tends to get stuck when the yarn winds under the bottom. I've looked for a horizontal holder, but all the ones I've found are wood on wood without bearings, so that just seems like it'll start a fire.

Hmmm... I wonder if I could jam a paper cup on that spindle. That might hold the yarn up so it won't get stuck.

(This project is as much engineering as it is art...)

I haven't ordered anything from Hobbii yet. I knew about it and looked when I first started this project, but they were hit hard by the Orange One's Surprise Everything Taxes, so I didn't order anything. Shame about them... They have some 1400 m skeins that I was considering because these 1000m skeins I have just aren't long enough.

[redbeardace]

Scarf officially stands at 913 feet currently. My next target is a quarter mile mostly because that just sounds impressive. I was running some projections to see if I'm likely to get there with the yarn I have.

I stopped estimating at 400 more feet because it's pretty clear that I'm going to blow well past that if I do everything currently planned and it doesn't turn into more tangle frustration.

I'm going to need a new target.

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Very important question...

Giant scarf?

Teeny scarf?

Shiny scarf?

Sparkly scarf?

Dappled scarf?

Fluid scarf?

Regular scarf?

Book?

Other book?

Pictures?

Clean house?

Voting ended onJul 13

The problem is the answer is "Yes", but I need a single "Yes, now".

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I DEMAND RANKED CHOICE VOTING.

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But also, joke's on you, because right now I'm dealing with an almost kilometer long yarn tangle, so working on a giant scarf is cleaning my house, because there's knotted yarn balls all over the hall.

[redbeardace]

Very important question...

Giant scarf?

Teeny scarf?

Shiny scarf?

Sparkly scarf?

Dappled scarf?

Fluid scarf?

Regular scarf?

Book?

Other book?

Pictures?

Clean house?

Voting ended onJul 13

The problem is the answer is "Yes", but I need a single "Yes, now".

[redbeardace]

I DEMAND RANKED CHOICE VOTING.

[redbeardace]

Pride Scarf Update!

The scarf is no longer just a random side project. It is now an official prospective Guinness World Record attempt. At least until they say no, at which point it becomes an official Guinness World Record reject, which is still pretty cool.

[redbeardace]

Very important question...

Giant scarf?

Teeny scarf?

Shiny scarf?

Sparkly scarf?

Dappled scarf?

Fluid scarf?

Regular scarf?

Book?

Other book?

Pictures?

Clean house?

Voting ended onJul 13

The problem is the answer is "Yes", but I need a single "Yes, now".

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I forgot the other other book. Oh well, too late now.

[redbeardace]

Whoever voted for "Unmanageable Yarn Tangle", please stop. That was not one of the options.

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Oh, I should have looked closer. I meant to buy the "Pound of Love" brand, but I apparently picked up the "Pound of Hate and Rage" that was next to it and a dollar cheaper.

[redbeardace]

Hours of attempted untangling later, and it's only about half free. Somehow this made a self-propagating tangle that persists well after the original has been dealt with.

And there are a bunch more of this brand left to go and I can't find the center pull starter on any of them, either. I guess I can go from the outside if I have to, but that means babysitting the spinning spool more.

[redbeardace]

Very important question...

Giant scarf?

Teeny scarf?

Shiny scarf?

Sparkly scarf?

Dappled scarf?

Fluid scarf?

Regular scarf?

Book?

Other book?

Pictures?

Clean house?

Voting ended onJul 13

The problem is the answer is "Yes", but I need a single "Yes, now".

[redbeardace]

I forgot the other other book. Oh well, too late now.

[redbeardace]

Whoever voted for "Unmanageable Yarn Tangle", please stop. That was not one of the options.

[redbeardace]

Oh, I should have looked closer. I meant to buy the "Pound of Love" brand, but I apparently picked up the "Pound of Hate and Rage" that was next to it and a dollar cheaper.

[redbeardace]

Very important question...

Giant scarf?

Teeny scarf?

Shiny scarf?

Sparkly scarf?

Dappled scarf?

Fluid scarf?

Regular scarf?

Book?

Other book?

Pictures?

Clean house?

Voting ended onJul 13

The problem is the answer is "Yes", but I need a single "Yes, now".

[redbeardace]

I forgot the other other book. Oh well, too late now.

[redbeardace]

Whoever voted for "Unmanageable Yarn Tangle", please stop. That was not one of the options.