Knit Sisters

Well, despite my protestations about “getting out of the fiber’s way” and all that, I have bent the butterscotch and pink wools to my will just a bit.

 

I did make a 2-ply yarn out of them, but then I thought how cool it would be if I took things one step further and made a cabled yarn.  Here’s a detail:

 

A cabled yarn, for those who may not know, is made by taking two 2-ply yarns and plying them back together in the opposite direction.  You could conceivably take two 3-ply yarns and ply them, two 4-ply yarns, etc., as well as doing other nutty things like plying a 2-ply with another single, a 2-ply with a 3-ply, and on and on.  These yarns, according to Diane Varney in Spinning Designer Yarns, fall under the broad heading of crepe yarns.

The advantages to cabled yarns, in addition to having almost limitless yarn design possibilities for the handspinner, are that they are very strong, they pill less when knitted and worn (because more of those little fiber ends are locked into the yarn), and they show stitch and cable work beautifully.  Disadvantage?  They take more time to execute for the handspinner and they eat up your yardage.  (Although, of course, you are getting a thicker yarn.  You pays your money and you takes your choice.)

For example, this yarn has been through my hot little hands four times.  Once, to spin the singles.  Twice, to ply into a 2-ply.  Thrice, to ply into a cable.  Four times, to take off the bobbin and wind onto the niddy-noddy.  You can see how this can get time-consuming.  But it sure is pretty, no?

In the midst of all this mad plying, I took a little break to comb some more of that lime green superwash.  Except it’s not really lime green to start with.

 

Isn’t that ugly roving?  Gold and khaki.  Yum.  And yet, when you put it through the combs, it morphs into something quite lovely.  Amazing.  Those folks at Brown Sheep really know their stuff.  (This is a superwash mill end from Brown Sheep, in case I didn’t already say.)

And, hey!  Remember my plan involving Ziploc bags and wool?  Here’s proof that I am, indeed, moving forward with that:

 

A very large Ziploc bag full of 4 1/2 pounds of washed wool.  This is a natural grey/brown Romney fleece that I bought last year (in the grease) and just finished washing recently.  Don’t ask me what the plan is for this–I don’t yet know.  But, man, I love those natural grey/brown/black fleeces.

Lorinda, you asked what we’re reading.  I listen to lots of books on tape and CD from Recorded Books.  Right now I’m listening to Monk’s Hood, a Brother Cadfael mystery by Ellis Peters.  I’m reading Sharpe’s Tiger, by Bernard Cornwell, a prolific author of historical novels whom I recently discovered.  In general, I like to read historical novels and mysteries, with the occasional guilty pleasure of a romance thrown in.  Oh, and I do like a well-written fantasy or sci fi now and again.

 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 26th, 2006 at 1:40 pm and is filed under Spinning. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.