Dyeing and Plying

I don't quite understand different techniques of spinning hand dyed roving.  I find spinning roving that is 1 color rather monotonous.  However, I don't really like the barber pole effect of dyed roving that is then spun and plied.  After reading this article, I decided to try and apply her techniques.
There were two issues.  She talks about the different techniques of pre drafting versus splitting/ stripping, yet in her experiment, she plied one with a white yarn and plied the other with itself.  I really couldn't tell the difference, and the fact that she therefore had 2 variables bothered me.
I took this roving and split it, plying it with itself:

 And the result: 

Then I took this roving and pre drafted it and plyed it with itself:

 

I couldn't tell any difference between the two techniques.  

So I decided to run an experiment of my own.  I dyed up some roving with koolaid in my crock pot (lemonade, black cherry, and iced blue lemonade) ( I think).

The resulting roving looked surprisingly like a snow cone.  

The pre drafted roving (top) had a much greater chance of multi colored singles.  The stripped roving is a little more vibrant.  In both of these, I divided the roving in half, spun on different bobbins, and then plied together.  There wasn't a large degree of matching up.  I still can't tell much of a difference between the two.

Tdf day 5

I like this a lot more than I thought I would. Iced grapes and Pomegranates.

TDF Day 3

Sadly over spun...

Scarfy Thing

I am working on knitting up the hot chocolate with marshmallows yarn.  Unfortunately, I am not as pleased with it as I thought.  I don't like the randomness of the slubs.  I also think they kind of look like grubs which is kind of gross.  I think it would have been better if I just spun a think and thin yarn instead of looking for a concept like hot chocolate with marshmallows.  Another thing that made it harder is that the yarn is a bit overspun and has a lot of variety.  The slubs are close to 2 wpi, where the thinnest yarn (usually overspun) is around 20.  I settled on size 10 needles, which were too small for the slubs...  I'm thinking about adding buttons to make it wearable.

Hot Chocolate and Marshmallows scarfy thing

In other news, I am getting yarn ready to dye with koolaid.  I am also hoping to participate in the 2012 Tour de Fleece for the first time this year and excited about MOAR SPINNING!

Still Spinning

I checked out a copy of Anne Field's Spinning Wool: Beyond the Basics (thank you interlibrary loan!) and it isn't as helpful as I hoped.  I am not really sure what to do with the yarn.  I can't match how I spin with the methods she dscribes, and I'm a bit paranoid that I'm doing it wrong and I have bad habits that will limit me later.  However.  My yarn continues to be more consistent as well as less over spun.  I'm just a bit worried that now it is underspun, but I think I just made that it.  I don't have pictures yet, but the latest I spun appears to be about sport weight, and appears balanced after plying.  I haven't experimented more with art yarn. 

Marshmellows

Hot chocolate with marshmellows is one of my favorite things.  I'd seen  brown wool with white silk noils on esty that I wanted to buy, but it was a bit out of my price range.  However, I bought a grab bag from another seller to practice with.  She included a brown and white (not quite sure what to call it) roving and I immediately thought of hot chocolate with marshmellows.  I decided to attempt to incorporate what I'd learned about coiled yarns as well.  (video here from dyingwitch)

I ended up fighting my wheel a little.  The delta orifice was large enough to take the coils, but not the butterfly hooks.  I also had more lace weight than thick and thin, so when I ran out of the thick and thin I just plyed the lace weight with itself.

I don't have pictures of the thick and thin roving, but here is the lace weight:

And here is the finished product on the bobbin.  I didn't have time to unwind it last night  The lace weight (I don't know what kind of fiber it is) turned out a little fragile and I had issues with it breaking as I plied the coils.

The picture only shows 1 1/2 of the marshmellows.  I hope to update this post with more pictures.  The end was only lace weight.  I am trying to figure out what to make with the yarn when it is finished.

I also need to create labels for the handspun I made for a swap.  I have to finish the yarn, measure WPI, and make a label.  Hopefully finishing it on the niddy noddy will allow me to measure it so I can include that on the label as well.

Red Roving

I have been recently spinning this superwash wool. I would put it at about sport weight. I bought the roving from etsy, but I think it is brown sheep roving. Not sure. I had a hard time getting started and ended up needing to split the roving down fairly small so I could draft it out.

I am going to let it rest on the bobbin until I finish making my new niddy noddy. I've been using a coat hanger to unwind yarn, but this is too much. It is also for a swap, so I need a hankier hank.

Welcome!

I have been interested in spinning yarn for years. Probably since I first watched Sleeping Beauty as a child. A few weeks ago, I purchased a Majacraft Little Gem spinning wheel from my local yarn store's going out of business sale and some pencil roving.

I have been surprised at the difficulty in finding information about spinning. So here we are. I want to write about my experiences in spinning as well as create a way to access information. I'm in graduate school, so I can't promise a consistent schedule of entries.