Trenchwork

As the title indicates, this is the third spinning result, but the first attempt at spinning with the Rose.

Last month, Karen was so gracious as to send me a small fiber gift. She didn’t know it at the time, but I have some multicolored roving waiting to be spun, and I’ve been holding it until I figured out how the colors would handle. I really like the colors and fibers—they’re merino and alpaca blends—and have been a bit afraid to just jump right into them without having a plan, so to speak. Karen arranged for Epicurus of the Lazy Perry Ranch to send some roving and fiber samples, and they were perfectly timed. I received 4.5 ounces of merino roving, in 1-ounce bags, and painted in four different colors. One bag was red, another was a variegated orange, a third was a brown and orange autumny combination, and the last was a variegated green. I realized that if I played with those, I’d have an idea of how the multicoloreds waiting in the wings would work. I tried spinning from the fold, but realized I liked the way the colors handled when I split the roving and span it normally—so I did. Out of curiosity, I span most of one half of the fiber on my Cascabeles spindle, then span the other half on the Rose so that I could compare the two and get an idea of how far off the wheel spinning would be from my spindle spinning. First, I’m amazed at how much faster a wheel makes the process! I also discovered that while I’m starting to get a handle on consistency with the drop spindle, I have a long way to go to achieve that with the wheel. The learning curve restarts itself, and while I’m not having to learn how to handle the fiber from scratch, there is enough of a difference to make life a bit . . . unexpected.

Playing with colored fiber was a new experience. It certainly gives a kick of immediate gratification, doesn’t it?

The colors are fairly true (the red may be a bit bright), although skeining the yarn hid most of the brown and orange shades and intermingling greens in the middle of the skein. You can see a few strands which show the edges of that portion in the photo, but there’s definitely enough that it would create a comfortable transition in color from red to turquoise/green in the knitted fabric.

The Stats.

Fiber: 4.5 ounces Merino roving from Collette at the Lazy Perry Ranch.
Spun on: Half on Cascabeles drop spindle, half on the Rose; plyed on the Rose.
Yardage: ca 210 yards
WPI: ca 12/inch

The Lessons.

I split the bags in half, then span red, orange, browns, and green. The idea was that I would then swap the singles and ply them together head to tail so that I had red-green on both ends and merged with something in the middle, but I realized afterward that eyeballing “half” is not a good method for dividing fiber. Clever of me. Even had I measured and split, however, it’s doubtful that I’d have ended up with two equal lengths of singles since I’m much more consistent with the drop spindle at the moment than the wheel. So, I joined the singles—red to red—which gave me green on the opposing ends, then wound them into a center-pull ball and plyed them together into a two-ply. I used the Rose to ply, and here I’ve learned yet another important lesson: while I’m getting the handle on proper balance plying on the spindle, I definitely don’t have that nailed down with the wheel. The yarn is overplyed, and I realized after I set the twist that I might have been able to run it back through the wheel and remove some of that had I thought about it. I’ve no idea if it would have worked—I’ll have to ask someone—but since the yarn is consistently overplyed, it might have been an idea. I found it more difficult to evaluate how much twist I was actually getting into the yarn on the wheel than on the spindle, and as a result, I ended up with more than I thought I had. It’s not horribly overplyed, though, so the best option is probably to leave it as it is now that it’s all set and skeined and turn it into something which won’t care about a little remaining kink, like a plain scarf.