Jillian’s Spinning: Spinning Variegated Top in a Progression

I’m on a deadline and playing with fiber is one of my favorite ways to procrastinate. Come look at what I played with this weekend.

I love variegated top and I love playing with the colors in variegated top. This weekend I took a variegated top from Abstract Fiber (50% Merino/ 50% Silk) and made it into a progressive colorway. Instead of the color pattern being ABCABCABC I took it apart and make it AAACCCBBB. Sometimes I do this as a gradient (dark to light) sometimes I just do it in an order I like.

I took this lovely stuff with a repeating color pattern.

Abstract Fiber Vineyard colorway

Split it in two and divided one half by color.

Divided fiber, yes, those are scissors.

Yes, I did cut the top with scissors. I can get cleaner breaks between colors and it goes faster with scissors. The spinning police did not come and take my wheels.

I arranged the colors in the order I wanted them that day.

Color train

Sometimes if there is a color I don’t like I just take it out. I do that all of the time with Noro yarns, there is a turquoise in Noro that I just don’t like (shhhh). That grass green kind of bugs me in this colorway, I didn’t take it out completely, but I took out half.

Then I spun. I spun low twist singles and felted them. I practiced spinning from the fold with fibers of very different staple lengths with the cut up colors. The intact half I just spun sliding longdraw.

Here’s what I got:

Regular (top left and right yarn cake) and color progression (bottom left and left yarn cake) yarn.

I like them both and I really like them together. My brain is cranking on an idea that will show both to their advantage in knitting, Hmmmmm.