Balling up a skein of yarn

My yarns arrived on Saturday and I have been very excited to try them out! I finished the first scarf on my warp in a bit of a rush in order to get to the new yarns.

Alright. I have never used skeined yarn before. The kind that looks like this:

I figured it worked like anything else, you pull out all the ties that are holding it together and you pull the loose end. This quickly turned from an exciting moment, to all out war. Both ends came loose and I didn't know how to hold it on tension (or that you needed to) in order to wind it on a ball winder. It turned mostly into large piles of knots. I decided that before I went any further, I should probably look up HOW to ball up a skein of yarn...Since I don't have a swift, I looped each end of the circle of yarn onto my knees and held it taut. While I did this, I pulled one end completely out until all the yarn was lying in a pile on the floor and had the other end attached to the ball winder. This whole process ended up taking me about an hour or so to get several small balls of yarn (because I kept having to break the yarn.) and one larger ball. Who would have thought yarn could be so confusing?!

Well anyway, I've tested a little of the yarn (The Spice colorway) in a twill on the warp. It feels SO SOFT!! It's lovely yarn and I think it will weave up nicely. I'm not particularly attached to it, so I might end up selling this scarf. Also, I have another scarf that is pretty much the same colors. I think I'll probably weave up the green and aqua scarves for myself. (well it was MY birthday present!!) I was thinking I'd use the olive Tencel I have with the Dill Heather (the green) and then use the aqua (Shallows) with the navy Tencel I have. I don't like scarves that are cotton. I have one and the only reason why I like it is because it's the first scarf I ever made. But it's not particularly warm, it wrinkles a lot and it can get a little itchy because of the weave structure.

I'm sure those scarf warps will not go on next though. I'm going to try to weave napkins and place mats for my culminating project over the break. I need to make 4 place mats and 4 napkins. I am making plates in my throwing class this semester that will match the place mats and napkins. I can't decide if it would be better to have the place mats be variegated or the napkins variegated...Hmmm...I am getting a bit excited about weaving all this nonsense. I'll just have to hurry and get those scarves off of there!! I'm still not sure what I'm gonna do for the third scarf...I might use the yellow and tan in stripes that match the warp. I'm actually kind of not crazy about the twill that I'm using for the current scarf. I don't really like straight twill...But maybe I could try going up and down to create a zigzag pattern instead. I like that a lot on my overshot scarf. I need to stop blogging when I'm in an office. It makes me want to go straight home and get on my loom!!
~JoAnna