Pleased, Very Pleased

Ah, I love it when something creative comes together totally the way it was imagined. This spinning project was one of those rare occasions when that magic really happened.

This makes me pleased, very pleased.

Above is a sample I just knit up this morning so I can see how the yarn I chain plied last evening in class will look when it is knit. And I love it! But I have gotten ahead of myself.

In the beginning

This started out as a roving dyed by BJS Fiber Creations from Bellingham, Washington in the States. The roving is made up of 85% polwarth (a breed of sheep) and 15% tussah silk, and although it lacks the fuzzy, fluffy feel of merino wool, the polwarth is sturdy, non-scratchy, has a long staple and is affordable (all the qualities a beginning spinner needs). As you can see above, the roving was dyed with long stretches of colour. Those stretches show up on the bobbin as blocks of colour. There are 4 ounces or 113 grams of this wool/silk blend to spin. It is one-half done in the photo.

After approximately four hours of spinning the entire roving was spun. As you can see from the photo above the spinning continues to be rather consistent. Yeah! My concern was in plying or putting more than one strand of yarn together with another. If two strands are used one ends up with two ply yarn. Two ply yarn is rather flat and can be unattractive when used in certain knitting applications like ribbing. Three ply yarn is more rounded and creates a yarn more like commercial yarns.

I wanted to three-ply my polwarth yet maintain those long lengths of colour. If one used the typical plying method of merely spinning yarns together the odds of getting a barber pole effect are high.

Photo credit to Saffron Knits

See in the yarn photo above, how one colour wraps around another and it creates that moving striped look? That is not what I wanted to create.

A method called chain plying keeps like colours together. In essence one is holding back the twist with one hand and the other is creating a stitch like a single crochet or chain stitch. Not only is it tricky to describe it is even trickier to do. (If you'd like a video to see how it is done click here and go to 3:15 to see the chain ply process in action.) I didn't quite understand chain plying my first time taking a spinning class, and even Felecia Lo's Craftsy class didn't clear up my confusion. But last night, last night I really understood and chain plied one of my two bobbins.

My chain plied yarn!

Barbara, the instructor, looked at what I had done and said it was very good. And me, well I was completely flabbergasted that finally this technique made sense. Perhaps it was the struggling from the past that helped with last night's success. The photo below shows the difference between a bobbin that is plied and one that isn't. Also note the loveliness of the yarn hanging out on the right.

It won't take long to ply the second bobbin and within a day or so, after it dries (because once plied the yarn takes a swim to set said ply) I will be able to make up a seed or moss stitch scarf using this yarn, like the sample above. My test knit gave me information about the proper needle size and number of stitches to cast on. Yup, I am so very pleased because I can finally call what I am making yarn.

So hey Susan, I am now able to spin up something for you. Time the two of us go roving shopping together!

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Ode to the Cat

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Flagel Knitting Files

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