We’ve got yarn!

Here is my 3-ply BFL yarn.  I spun this roving on my high speed whorl at the 14:1 ratio.  It measures about 216 yards and weighs 90 grams.  Because I plied from 3 separate bobbins, the finished yarn has a barber pole effect.

I’m really not sure how it will look knit up.  Each section is a little different, depending on the colors of the 3 plies.  There is one section with two plies of that deep wine color that looks pretty dark overall.

Even though I divide my fiber into 3 sections by weight before beginning to spin, I never end up with the same yardage on all 3 bobbins.  I decided to practice my Navajo ply on the leftovers.  The first batch came out pretty well (this little skein is only 20 grams and 56 yards): Navajo ply is really a chain ply technique where you pull the single from one bobbin and pull it through a loop that allows 3 singles to twist together.  Two are going in the same direction, and one is reverse.  I’ve read that if you want to preserve the color changes in the singles yarn, this is the way to do it.  You can see how most of the finished yarn is one color at a time (all 3 plies are the same color).  Here is a close up of these first two skeins side by side:The Navajo plied yarn off the other bobbin was a bit of a mess.  It twisted up on itself WAY more when I took it off the niddy noddy and only partly relaxed after its hot water bath.  You can see how twisty it still is here:I’m not even sure that yarn is useable.  Luckily, it’s only 10 yards (5 grams).

Notice also how the angle of twist differs on these 3 skeins.  The big skein was balanced when I first took it off the niddy noddy and it behaved even better after its bath.  The second one twisted at first but relaxed after its bath.  The third one was way too twisty.

I read a little more about plying and decided that next time I Navajo ply, I’ll go up one whorl size so that the plying happens more slowly.  That should help me not overtwist, I think.

Like spinning on a wheel…

It’s been too long since my last spinning project and I’m not sure why, exactly.  Fortunately, it’s just like riding a bicycle. 

Boy 1 was having “lessons” for a while so a bobbin was tied up with his learning yarn…but I finally decided to take back the wheel.  He helped me pick this roving – remember the BFL I won in novamade’s contest last summer?

I divided it into 3 equal(ish) parts using my scale and began spinning.  I finished the first bobbin and realized I would need to clear some leftover fiber off two bobbins in order to make this 3-ply yarn (I only own 4 bobbins).  After a somewhat frustrating time re-teaching myself to Navajo ply (thank goodness for YouTube), I got this little 17-yard skein: And I tried my best to Navajo ply Boy 1’s singles, but they were so uneven that it kept breaking.  I got this far (36 g) before just throwing the rest out in a small fit of temper: Once I cleared the bobbins, I walked away for a day and came back to spin these: Ahhhhhh, better.  The singles have been plied now and the finished yarn is drying – I’ll show pictures tomorrow!

And… I’ve decided that it’s time to learn the long draft.  I want to be able to get a fluffier, loftier, woolen-style yarn.  My current (and only) technique is for worsted-style yarn, created without allowing any twist to enter the drafting zone.  It makes denser, drapier yarn.

I read a post on a Ravelry forum that the MDSW catalogs are out – someone got theirs in the mail on Saturday.  Not me, though.  Maybe tomorrow?!??

Polworth, Plied

Last weekend I got excited about my new sock yarn spinning project.  But as I thought ahead, I realized that I needed to clear some bobbins before proceeding much further.  I only have 4 bobbins for my Ladybug (someone asked me why I don’t just buy more – I may someday, but they are $36 each…).  The first singles for the new sock yarn were on one bobbin.  Another had the first half of the golden Polworth I spun on the spindle (I had to clear the spindle to spin the other half).  Another had some leftover singles from the purple 2-ply merino silk.  And the final bobbin was empty.

But… I need singles on 3 bobbins and a 4th empty bobbin on which to ply. 

So I returned my attention to the gold stuff.  I finished spinning it on the spindle at Knit Night on Wednesday.  Then I quickly ran it through the wheel (not adding too much twist, I hope) to get it onto a bobbin so I can ply it on the wheel.  I used this fancy shoe box contraption to hold the spindle: Then I realized…OOPS!  I just used my last empty bobbin. 

So I ended up hand winding the purple singles onto a short length of PVC pipe that I use as part of my homemade niddy noddy (boosted from my kids’ box of PVC fun – they build things out of it – think Tinker Toys).  Then I slid the PVC pipe onto my kate, and reminded myself how to Navajo ply.  Thank goodness for YouTube!  This time I used this video, which is very clear and just what I needed.  (Navajo ply is a chain ply technique that allows you to make a 3-ply yarn from singles on one bobbin – great way to use up those leftover bits of singles because you can use every last inch.)

I got another 33.5 yards of this pretty merino-silk and cleared my bobbin. I love how round the 3-ply yarn is compared to the 2-ply.  See the difference? 3-ply is on the left; 2-ply is on the right.  I might have to use this technique for an entire batch of singles sometime soon.  (But not the new 3-ply sock yarn, because I understand that the chain ply doesn’t work so well with certain long and/or wiry fibers, and mohair is one of them.)

Once I cleared that bobbin, I plied the gold stuff into this 2-ply yarn.  I go 259 yards out of 101 g: I had a tiny bit of singles left on one bobbin, which I promptly navajo-plied, and got so little it wasn’t even worth winding up.

Now I can proceed with the sock yarn.

I’m not unhappy with the gold stuff, but it’s somehow different from the yarn I spin entirely on the wheel.  Maybe the twist on my spindle-spun singles was less consistent?  I’m not sure.  The Polworth top was sooooo buttery and the yarn is less so.  It’s not rough and rustic, exactly, but nor is it buttery soft.  Learning curve is still on the way up, I guess!  (Spinners, speak up if you have wisdom on this, please.)

More Blue Yarn, Woolen This Time

Last week I had the fun opportunity to do a spinning demo for a class of first-year students at my college.  Their course is called A Matter of Substance, and it’s about the raw materials that make up our world.  The faculty member is a physical chemist by training.  The students are writing papers about things like wood, glass, steel, plastic, etc., and one of them chose to write about textiles.  (She might have had a nudge from me, her friendly reference librarian.)  So the professor asked me to do a short spinning demo for the class.

I decided to take both spindle and wheel, and to have the wheel set up with finished singles ready to ply.  That meant I needed to spin some singles, since I had recently finished the Mohair-Finn yarn.  I grabbed the remaining Heidi’s Blues roving I purchased at the 2008 Knitters’ Day Out market.  This was one of the first things I spun, and some of it became 40th Birthday Yarn for Kristina. 

Here was the original 1/2 lb of roving (called Heidi’s Blues – I think one of the sheep was named Heidi):

Here was Kristina’s birthday yarn (248 yards, 114 g, 2-ply):

And here is the remaining yarn from the Heidi’s Blues roving (209 yards, 91 grams, 2-ply). There was way more yellow in this half of the roving!I tried to spin this in more of a woolen style and I do think it looks fuzzier than the first skein.  Usually I spin worsted, but I wanted to try something different and see if I could change my drafting style (which is very inchworm-y). I think I felt more free to experiment with this roving because some of it had already been finished successfully.  It’s a weird mind game, but I felt like I could afford to mess this up, you know?  My singles were definitely less consistent and more fuzzy (less smooth) than they usually are. 

I had a little bit left on one bobbin, so I fired up YouTube and taught myself how to Navajo ply (I found this video to be the most helpful).  For my readers who don’t yet spin, Navajo ply is a 3-ply technique that actually creates a chained yarn rather than a plied yarn.  You make it from one single (not singles from 3 different bobbins), which makes it great for using up every last bit of single on the bobbin.  It is also used when spinners want to preserve the color changes in a painted roving so that the resulting yarn moves from one color to another (rather than showing a barber pole type stripe).  I WAY overplied my Navajo ply bit – it relaxed a little in a hot bath but is still twisting like crazy.  Clearly I need to work on this technique some more.  Let’s end with another good photo, shall we?