Spinning Tuesdays: The Problem with Spinning a Sweater’s Worth of Yarn

There’s a problem with knitting a sweater’s worth of yarn. No, it’s not knitting the sweater.

Now I only want to buy sweater quantities of fiber. For me, that’s around 2 pounds.

I went to the Ann Arbor Fiber Expo this past weekend with my fiber gang.

And I bought a sweater’s worth of fiber (I wasn’t the only one!) at Fiberstory.

I bought a pound each of these two colors, thinking to combine them.

Fiberstory fiber. Earthy tones = Terrain (100% Merino) Blue and earthy tones = Milo (75% BFL, 25% Tussah silk)

How do I chose colorways to combine. For me it’s a little instinct and I try to have one color similar between the colorways. Sometimes I twist the fibers together to get an idea.

Fibers stripped and twisted.

Yes, I stripped the fibers. This is another time that I monkey with my fibers. To see what colors look like together.

I will also strip or divide my fibers into at least quarters, or more ,to do combination/tandem/marl drafting. I get close to pencil roving/pointer finger in size.

Fiber stripped and ready to spin.

Let the spinning commence!

Fiber and yarn plied like with like.

Fiber and yarns, plied and combined.

In the yarns above, the top yarn is a single of each color plied together, the bottom yarn is both colors drafted together and plied together.

They look pretty similar, so I knit swatches.

Just plain they are lovely, but not quite what I want.

Yarns plied like with like and swatched. Milo left, Terrain right.

Combined in two different ways, I like the color play better.

Left: singles of each color plied together. Right: colors drafted together and plied together.

They look similar,but I think I like the speckles better in the combo drafting version better than the subtle striping in the plied sample.

Plied and combined.

I like the hand of the swatch when the fibers are more deeply combined, too. But because the the fibers behave differently when drafting, the marl drafted yarn is more uneven than I’d like it.

Uneven yarn, but I can fix it.

To fix it I would stack the two fibers (the yarn here I spun with the fibers side by side) and fluff the fibers just slightly horizontally, to help them grab each other.

Now to start spinning!

 

How much fiber do you buy when you’re shopping for dyed fiber? Socks (4oz), Shawl (8oz) or Sweater (poundage)?