I’ll admit it. I’ve been stalling and not starting this blog project. My husband set me up with the blog about two months ago, and I’ve done nothing with it until now. I got stuck in so many places…I haven’t started my breed study (more on that later), I’m not good enough, I don’t know what I’m doing…and I would really always rather be “doing” than “writing about doing.” But then it got hot. Really hot for Bellingham, and frankly it’s too hot to do anything besides sit in front of the fan and type my first blog entry.
I’ve decided that it’s ok if I don’t go in chronological project order, and that it will also be ok if I revisit projects later on. This is, after all, a learning process all the way around.
My most recent spin is Falkland wool, dyed by Sarah Anderson for a color workshop I took with her in June at Black Sheep Gathering in Eugene, OR. In the workshop we had solids to play with too in order to see how you could play up or mute what’s in this variegated roving. I spent some time mixing it with acid green for that class – which makes for a neat effect, but in reality I adore these colors all on their own. I decided to spin up the rest all in one long piece and chain ply it. Chain plying is sometimes called Navajo plying as well, an I learned how to do it in the workshop with Sarah. You can check out her video tutorial for Navajo plying below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmlwtojLXI8
This wool was an absolute dream to spin. It’s got a nice long staple, drafts easily with a little fluffing of the fiber, and makes for very pretty color separated singles, as you can see. My wheel was sitting in just the right place for the sun to hit the bobbin in the evenings, so I took photos as the colors shifted from day to day. As an experiment I put my wheel on my second fastest whorl – a ratio of 11:1. It worked, but resulted in a very high twist in the singles. I used short forward draw and treadled about 3 counts per draft – 2 might have been better.
When it came time to ply, I slowed way down and went to my biggest whorl, which is a 6:1 ratio. I ended up with two short skeins, because my yarn broke while plying and I was at a good stopping point. I hadn’t tried to chain ply since my workshop, and it does take muscle memory to make it work. I tried to go too fast a couple of times on the first skein, and while I thought I was paying attention to what I was doing I now couldn’t tell you what my strategy was. When I wound it off and skeined it it was SUPER overtwisted in the singles, and twisted around itself many times to the left (Z). I didn’t pull enough twist out in plying, but if I had it would have been twine instead of yarn.
I did pay attention to what I was doing with the second skein. I treadled about 5 counts per 5-7 inches of my draft – because it was chain plyed, I pulled quite a long bit through to make each loop and fed it onto the bobbin about every 5-7 inches. I smoothed the plys as I went. This was a more relaxed bit of plying than the first for sure, just in terms of my mental state. I’m always amazed what an effect that has on my spinning, and I’m really just learning that as I go along. As it turned out, this skein was equally overtwisted Z – so perhaps I accidentally did exactly the same thing with the first skein and just didn’t know it?
I blocked the skeins by soaking in lukewarm water without wool wash. I then snapped them and hung them to dry over hangers.
Overall I’m so pleased with how it turned out! I am sorry that it’s only about 120 yards, though – not really enough to do anything with, but I’ll swatch it and see how it looks. It doesn’t seem stiff in the skeins, but I suspect it will make some pretty durable fabric.