Monday, 18 April 2011

The spinning story part three

After the fairly successful if somewhat smelly and rough blue fibre the next step was to make something soft and squashy from a nicer fibre.


I had one plait of fibre in my stash, it was pinks, light purple and grey. None of these are really my kind of colours so I did two singles using a third of the plait each and another 30g of a darker purple I had dyed myself as a trial.


These were plied together to give a stripy effect.


The remaining third of the plait will be spun and navajo plied later on.


I split the roving a lot down its lengthwise, probably ten or more times to give a really thin roving to work from. This meant only a little drafting needed to be done as it was spun so solved the problem of taking too long to draft.


I also made a special effort to treadle slowly.


I am really pleased with how this came out, it is nicely squashy and not at all twisty. I had hoped to make a sock weight but it is probably thicker than DK (worsted) weight.


The next challenge will be to get the same squishiness with a thinner yarn. I need to do some fibre shopping first though :D

2 comments:

  1. It's lovely! I like to do a lot of fiber splitting too, to lessen the drafting while spinning.

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  2. Beautiful! When I spin would I always split the roving too. I know what you mean, trying to get squishy with thin yarn...that is my challenge too.

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