She seeketh wool and flax and worketh willingly with her hands. --Proverbs 31:13

8/31/2006

I have been trying to get this post right since Thursday, but blogger and I were having a slight power struggle. For the most part, blogger kicked my heiny. Anyway, here it is now, in a greatly modified and shortened version.

After being less than pleased with my first attempt at the color way I have been working on, I went back to the drawing board this morning. I started by laying out all the colors I plan on using. I want the apple green to dominate, so I used more of that. I am also using a small amount of an alpaca/mohair mix that I dyed at the same time as I dyed the wool. The Mohair/Alpace will give the finished yarn some texture.

Striping the riving on the carder didn't work, so I went for a different approach. First I carded on the small amount of contrast colors I had. Then the apple green, bronze green and golden nugget. Last, I carded on the mohair blend. I stripped the batt in half and placed the two pieces together, the sides with the mohair blend sandwiched in the middle. Then I put the whole thing through the carder again

Pleased with how the batt had turned out I split it into a long w, predrafted it a little and then wound it up into a ball. You can see here how different this predrafted roving (the one in the back) is from the one that was just stripes on the drumcarder.(The small ball in the front)





I spun the roving using the point of contact method of spinning I have been practicing for the last week. I am getting better at it. There are still times when I don't get enough twist in the yarn before it pulls onto the bobbin and falls apart, but for the most part, I'm getting more consistant. As irritating as it is sometimes, I really like how fast this is, and how soft the plyed yarn is. I am having much less of a problem with overtwisting, and most of the skeins hang in a circle instead of twisting back on themselves now.




Now I like this yarn. I hope to have a swatch done to show you tommorrow, but let me know what you think. I'd like to know.

2 comments:

Laura said...

Wow Jan the colors are very beautiful. And the mohair gives it so much loft and great halo effect. Isn't it amazing how the different fibers affect the yarn and how tight the twist wants to be, etc?

I've tried my hand at carding.... now I need to do it with instructions. I've gotta dig up a few sites on the web to see how to REALLY do it. I made a tiny rolag and spun it but I'm not used to such short lengths of fiber - I'm used to something that I assume is commercially prepared - you know, in those really looooooooong strips!! I've gotta figure out if there's some way to coax the fiber into that kind of a posture. I'm very determined to make this work so I can blend fibers myself.

Maggie Ann said...

this is so pretty and interesting! I have just learned to spin with a drop spindle and am enjoying it.