Sunday, March 26, 2006

Not so bad after all

Remember my 'indecision time' post? I just wasn't sure that the yarns I was plying together looked all that great. I finally plyed enough for a smallish hank, washed it and let it dry. Here's the final result:
150yds of 'not so bad'

Not so bad after all, eh? It's definately grown on me, and I think I like it enough to finish plying the rest of the singles.

As an interesting aside, I noticed that my spinning has gotten much thinner lately. When I first started getting a consistent singles on Ellie , they were pretty thick. Once plyed, the resulting yarn was a light aran weight or heavy worsted. 4oz of BFL produced approximately 450yds of yarn.

This last batch of singles is more of a laceweight, and once plyed it's about sportweight. The hank above is about 2/3 of an ounce/156yds. There are 7.5oz more to ply, so I'm going to have A LOT of this yarn.

I think my singles have gotten thinner because I've changed the way I predraft fiber. Previously I would sit down, predraft half an ounce or so of fiber, spin it, predraft another half ounce, spin more, etc.. Now I will predraft up to four ounces all in one batch, put them in a basket and just pull from the basket as I'm spinning:

getting a head start

The strips of fiber are thinner so my singles tend to be thinner. Plus I noticed the color repeats are much longer because the strips are longer. I'm thinking that after this batch of yarn is plyed up, it might be fun to try funky, thick singles.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

oh excellent yarnography shot there! lovely work btw.

Anonymous said...

Your spinning is Fab! Your predrafting technique is the same as mine. Don't you love the little swirly poufs? They're so yummy like that.
I was just looking over your blog. Your pictures are fantastic!

Carole Knits said...

All that pre-drafting. Yikes. But once it's done then you can spin, spin, spin.

rania said...

wow, thats really pretty! great colors!

Emily Scott Banks said...

WOW. That handspun is truly gorgeous. All my favorie colors. One simply cannot purchase yarn that looks like that. I am going to *have* to learn how to spin. Really lovely work.