Trenchwork

My head hasn’t been playing nicely over the past week, so while I’m depressingly behind the curve on anything work related, I’ve actually made progress and learned a few things on other fronts. Most interestingly, I really had an opportunity to evaluate my own progress.

First things first. I’ve been spinning some multicolor merino on the Rose. It’s been a learning experience, but a useful one. Here’s what I have:

The Stats.

Fiber: Multicolor merino, Laurel colorway, from Kendig Cottage.
Finished Weight: 7.3 ounces.
Yardage: ca 625 yards.
WPI: 22.
Spun on: Rose.

The Lessons.

Figuring out how to handle the color was a challenge. So far, most of my spinning has been with natural colors or monotones. The exception was the multicolor merino Karen gifted me with, and I’ve discovered in a Simpson’s epiphany that there’s a big difference in how you handle multicolor roving depending on which way the multicolor runs. If the colors stripe across the roving, you’ll get bands of color in your spinning. If it runs vertically down the roving, then you have a few different and somewhat perplexing options. First, you can draft the fiber straight as it is. In that case, all the different colors blend together to create a generic tone of whatever the base color happens to be. Second, you can separate the fiber into the different hues and tones. Doing so will give you individual segments of the new color or hue. I’m sure there’s a third option, but I’ve not yet discovered it.

I started drafting pretty indiscriminately, and realized that if I continued, I’d end up with a generic green. This roving works up beautifully in a worsted weight; the bits of red and yellow hold together well enough to really show up in a green background, and the colors simply pop. In a thin single, however, the red and yellow in the roving just . . . disappears. That meant a change to Plan B, and I started splitting the roving out into the various hues: deep green, yellow, and red. Regardless of how I split it, I still had a base of the green, and that would keep the ply from creating too strident a barber-pole effect. I just had to hope that it wouldn’t turn into mud instead. It didn’t. It actually created some very cool nuances in the green, and I find I rather like it.

The colors are a bit grey in the photo; the green is actually a richer hue than shows here but you get the idea. Aside from color, I learned a couple of other things. First, merino IS slippery, but this roving wasn’t impressively more slippery than the BFL I finished a little while ago. I’ve also found that I like working with “slippery” fiber. It’s easier to draft, and I don’t find myself struggling to handle it. It’s much easier on the hands than fiber which tends to be a bit grabby.

Second, I’m still struggling with plying. While the last couple of spins have been overplyed in varying degrees, this one is actually a bit underplyed. It’s not extreme and it’s not happening consistently (you can see it most clearly in the yellowish section toward the bottom of the photo above), but I do prefer a firmer yarn. Still, it’s usable, and I think it’ll work up nicely into a lace fichu.

This isn’t all I’ve done while my head kept me away from work.

Dye 1

Remember this?

It’s now this:

There’s not enough yardage for a big project, so I dyed it; while I liked the oatmeal, it would make for a bit boring scarf. I wasn’t sure what color would work on this dark oatmeal, so I did a small set of testers. I found that green turns a bit olive, reds turn anywhere between light milk chocolate and dusty rose, and blues turn anywhere from dusty, country blue to a rich marine. I opted for the marine, but it’s darker than I’d intended. I was so worried that the color wouldn’t set properly that I probably used the dye equivalent of a nuke when I only needed a bow and arrow. This lesson really sank in a few minutes later . . .

. . . when I dyed this:

and made this:

Note to self: A little dye goes a long way. If you have one ca 150-yard skein of yarn you’re intending on painting and setting in the microwave, you probably don’t need six cups of dye. I’d intended to paint the skein blue, red, a hint of yellow, red, and blue—I’m craving bright, primary colors—but of course that much dye all sort of runs together. Only the far ends kept their blue tones. The rest turned purple and a lovely rich brown with flecks of yellow here and there. It certainly wasn’t the intended effect, but I rather like it.

Finally, that mad dye experiment is the old Spin 2. Remember that unevenly plyed 2-ply cormo? I debated what to do with it for a long time, and finally decided to cable it. That was an experience with more than one “D’oh!” moment. I’d known that I needed to run the yarn through the wheel and add a bit of twist in order to ply it back on itself, but I hadn’t realized how much twist that needed to be. As a result, when I plied the yarn back on itself, I ended up with a mass of snarls and curly bits because there was more twist in the ply than in the “single.” It sat there for a day while I pretended it didn’t exist, and then I gave up and first let it unspin itself to remove the extra twist and see what I had. Not good; I ended up with two more or less side-by-side 2-ply singles. There was nothing for it; I had to unply it. A day later of unplying, adding new twist to the old 2-ply, and then plying it back on itself, I actually had a balanced cabled yarn. And you know, I rather like it.

This photo shows a slightly fuzzy yarn and the individual singles or plies aren’t as clearly defined as they would have been had the stuff not been multiple versions of spinning and plying then potentially felted a tiny bit in the dye process. But I’ve discovered that a fairly thin original single and two-ply creates a rather rounded cabled yarn. It’s not lumpy and bumpy like some cables, and I think it would actually work up nicely into something like the Irish Hiking Scarf. The really significant thing for this particular exercise is that cabling the yarn gave me more experience with plying, and the ply on this yarn—even if you can’t really tell from the photo—is actually rather even. Maybe I’m finding a happy middle?

New Insights.

All of this has taught me a few things. First, when I was cabling the Spin 2 yarn, I could feel how uneven that second spinning effort was—and how different it felt than the later things I’ve done. The green merino I just finished is—even to my fingers—noticeably more even and much, much smoother. I’m improving. Second, I really do like “slippery” yarns, and I love BFL. Even after being subjected to a novice dye session, it is still a soft, downright touchable yarn. Third, when it comes to dye, think small. As in, quarter-teaspoons of dye and a single cup of liquid. Fourth, ply is a matter of balance. The amount of spin in the ply needs to equal the amount of spin in the single in order to create an even and balanced yarn.

I’m learning.