Crepe!

After reading the most recent issue of PLY Magazine (devoted to sock yarn), I decided that I wanted to try making a crepe yarn. What is a crepe yarn? It's kind of a two-ply and kind of a three-ply, but really it's its own thing, and that's crepe. To make a crepe yarn, divide your fiber into thirds. Spin one third into S-twist singles. Spin the other two-thirds as Z-twist singles, then ply them together in the S-direction, using double the amount of twist you would normally add to get a balanced yarn. Then you ply the S-twist singles and the overplied S-twist 2-ply - in the Z-direction - to get the resulting crepe yarn.

I know, it's a lot to think about. The yarn supposedly has more elasticity, which is great for socks.

I decided to use my new braid of Cheviot top (from Sheepspot - colorway is Splash) for this:

When I went to my fiber bin to retrieve it, I found another braid of Cheviot top (also from Sheepspot). What?!? This one wasn't in Ravelry, so I didn't know I had it. After thinking about it for a while, I finally decided that this was the May 2018 shipment from the Sheepspot Fiber Club (colorway is Key West):

I didn't log it properly because it arrived during what my family simply refers to as "The Poison Ivy Time." Those were lost weeks, folks. It was bad. Anyway, finding this extra bump of fiber made me feel free to do some sampling that I would normally chintz on, in the interest of not running out of fiber. I decided to combine these two braids to make an extra large skein of sock yarn (about 150 grams), leaving about 50 grams with which to sample.

This is how they look unbraided:

I decided to use all of Key West for the 2-ply part of the crepe yarn, and half of the Splash for the other ply. This left the other half of Splash for sampling.

This might provide a hint of what the fibers will look like together?

I was very careful about labeling my singles along the way.

To double the twist in the 2-ply, I chose to ply normally (for a balanced yarn) and then run the yarn through the wheel again using the same whorl and treadling:drafting ratio. Here is my overtwisted two-ply (on the wheel) and the bobbin of singles:

And what does the finished yarn look like? It's really nice!

It's truly a fingering weight - here it is next to leftover sock yarn from two recent projects. I could not be more pleased about the thickness of this yarn.

Finished yardage is 80 yards for 17.5 grams of fiber. If I can do 100 grams like this, it will DEFINITELY be enough for regular socks.