One month, two skeins

The focus is on "deft drafting" this month in The Sheepspotters' Society. I set two goals for myself: to spin a skein of yarn that is thicker than my default, and a skein of slub yarn (thick and thin). I'm happy to report that I got both done.

Here is the first skein, spun from BFL (Blue Faced Leicester) top in a worsted style. My skein is 97 grams and only 158 yards, so it's definitely thicker than my default. It's also faster to spin!

I love the colors in this skein (the colorway is Gummi Bear from Sheepspot) and I wanted them to barber pole rather than to match. I took a little time to look at how the fiber was dyed first:

Then I split the entire top vertically into two sections. I spun the first one as is, but I tore the orange end off the second half so that I started spinning with pink. (I just added the orange to the end.) This worked sort of okay, but I noticed as I was plying that the colors started to match up again. I guess my vertical split wasn't super equal (I didn't weigh the halves) and/or my singles were inconsistent. I broke one of the singles and rejoined in a different color so that I could continue the barber pole look. All in all, I'm pleased with the final result. It's so squishy and soft. 

I could either make a hat with this, or use it in a hand woven scarf. In order to extend it, I would use another yarn as the warp and use all of this for the weft. 

For my slub yarn, I used the recommended fiber: Rambouillet top. This is colorway "Summer Palette" from Three Waters Farm. As with the BFL, I checked the dye technique before beginning. This is hand painted in a similar way, but the fiber is folded into 3 strips instead of 4 like the other one:

I decided to divide this one in half in the middle (not splitting the whole top vertically), and I weighed the halves to make sure they were as equal as possible. 

For the first half of the fiber, I made an intentional slub (thick spot) every draft. This helped me get a lot of practice in quickly. When I was done with that, I decided that I wanted another singles with fewer slubs, so I added a slub every fourth draft. I only spun two thirds of the second half, figuring that I would have more length with fewer slubs. I was right and had very little waste after plying those two together (and I have a little bit of leftover fiber for other experiments). 

Here's the final yarn. You can see how big and poofy the slubs are, especially when two slubs line up with each other in the plied yarn:

I got 142 yards in 94 grams, so this is also a thicker yarn than I usually make. This one isn't perfect - there are some pigtails in the thin spots - but I learned a lot and it was really fun to do. I think this would look really cool as the weft in a hand woven scarf (again, with another yarn as the warp). 

The colorway is supposed to be summer-y, but I think of it as a late summer colorway, with sunflowers and zinnias and early mums. It doesn't look too bad in autumn, either.

When I joined The Sheepspotters' Society, I was hoping to improve my spinning skills. November delivered and I look forward to the coming months!