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.
