yarn haul of the century!!

This is my yarn haul!! My lys "Andjareena's" in Carrying Place near Trenton, Ontario, had some Kertzer's Persian tapestry yarn that I used for the first 2 little girl's flower purses I made. Being Persian yarn, it is in 3 lace weight strands that can be separated. I use 2 strands for the felted purses. They are 40 yd skeins and usually cost $3.99/skein. Andjareena's called and offered them to me for $1/skein IF I took the entire lot of 107 skeins! My Mom bought it for me for Christmas!! Happy dance, happy dance, happy dance!!

Look at the SIZE of the bag!!!!

 All the colors of the RAINBOW!!!!! (and you can't see all of the colors:0) I have so many ideas for cute little girl's purses that I can't keep up!!! LOL!!

These 2 are reserved for a very special Flower purse. I took a picture of a very unique plant/flower at the zoo a couple of years ago.

Here are some more skeins. The bunch in the left bottom corner are being reserved. They will be made into a special purse for ME:) The comp doesn't do justice to any of the colors. The one color is a gorgeous teal green color!

 Did I mention, I love my Mommy? :*) Thanks Mom!!


The drawback to the Persian yarn is separating it. The full skeins have to be separated a foot or 2 at a time, unwound (untangled? untwisted?) and wound into balls or it tangles dreadfully!! VERY time consuming and you get very sore arms and shoulders!

The other skeins come pre-cut in 3' (I think) lengths, which has it's own problems. Much easier to separate, but far too short to crochet with! Therefore it has to be separated then joined and rolled into balls. I tried tying them together, but it was not very secure and I'd have TONS of ends to trim after felting. I was also worried that the ends might come undone before it felts, leaving a large hole in the purse! Yikes!

I tried crossing the ends a tiny bit, then turning them back the way they came and pre-felting them a bit with a felting needle. I held the very fine strands over my left index finger, then VERY carefully used the needle to try to "felt" the yarn together without poking myself! (I kind of poked it into the yarn from the side, then kind of "sawed" at the yarn) It worked, kind of, but again was very time consuming and not always the most secure:(

A friend of mine on fb, Brenda Bourg, reminded me of the "Russian Join" method. Thanks Brenda! :0) I had thought of it earlier, but decided against it as the strands are so thin I didn't think it would work. When she mentioned it I decided to give it a try (anything had to be faster than the needle felting method!) So far, this has turned out to be the fastest method. I leaves bigger loops than I like, but it seems secure and I don't use too much precious yarn (some colors only have a skein or 2, not really enough for a purse, so has to be worked into the design very carefully).

Here are photos of my Russian joining.

The ends are first crossed over each other and the needle is at the very end of one end. Because it is 2 very thin strands held together I can't just go straight up the yarn. I have to weave the needle back and forth through both strands very carefully.

Here's a better photo of the needle going through the strands of yarn.

And this is the finished "Russian Joined" yarn strands! I'm not fussy about the loops it leaves, but I can work with it and it should felt so you don't even see it.

Voila! The finished, joined yarn wound into a working ball of yarn! :0) I already have a Flower purse design in mind for this nice bright salmony pink color:0) (it's a lot brighter in person:)