Oh yes... The Baynes has been getting another workout and is such a happy wheel because of the attention.
This is the merino batt hand-dyed by Denny at Lettuce Knit which I bought on my trip to Toronto (Hi Toronto Knitters!)
Actually, it's two bats. One was a fairly evenly dyed deep turquoise blue, the other a fairly unevenly dyed batt of shades of turquoise and white. Denny explained that she'd used it to exhaust the dye bath. Fair enough. I decided to separate each batt into strips about a thumb wide and to alternate them in my spinning. The hope was that it would produce a variegated yarn that would have shaded areas rather than blatant stripes.
I'm still working on this spinning thing. I took one lesson on hand spindling the summer before last. That's it. I think this is somewhat underspun as a single, although I don't really know what I'm doing wrong there. The plying seems ok but that's probably because I don't know what I'm looking at. I would like to take a class that would show me how to adjust the wheel properly (I'm just guessing as I go) and would love to have a spinner give me pointers on technique. I'm sure that with some experienced eyes I could be making a nice consistent sock yarn in no time.
Meanwhile, this is a perfectly knittable yarn in a perfectly beautiful shaded turquoise that makes me think of sunlight on a perfect pool. The skein is about 235 yards of about dk weight and I think it would make a perfectly lovely lacey scarf.
What do you think?
Next time: Llama, Llama, Llama!
Very watery-looking -- good idea to spin them together!
Looking forward to seeing how the alpaca does.
Posted by: Katherine | July 20, 2008 at 10:11 AM
I guess it looks a little underspun in some places and a little overspun in others and the ply tpi is a bit uneven in spots. But when you get it knitted up it will really look so good you will wonder why you worried about those things. The only thing I would consider is that if there are sections that are really underspun, lace knit will leave them without anything to felt to and therefore rather weak.
As a hint for getting the tpi even on plying, always ply the same length from your wheel eye to your hand and count your treadles. Get a rhythm going (pump 5 and feed on the 6th for a fairly tight knitting ply) and you get even, consistant looking two ply yarn. This is even more important if you do a Navajo 3 ply which BTW would let you maintain the variations in color when you spin lite and dark strips like you described above.
Llama and alpaca are substantially different to spin than merino. Both are harder to process correctly and harder to draft. Because of that, you have to be very careful not to overspin them or you will end up sacrificing the hand and the insulating properties that make them such wonderful fibers. I'm not sure how much personal experience you have with spinning or with your wheel but I usually encourage my students to stick with wool for at least three months of intensive spinning before they go off to other fibers.
Have fun, spin long, spin fine and enjoy your time off. It sounds like you earned it.
Posted by: Phil Harang | July 17, 2008 at 06:53 PM