Injured

Unfortunately, there will be even less progress on my projects to report than usual: I've managed to injure my shoulder, and I'm resting it from knitting and spinning for 2 weeks.

First off, I don't know how I injured my shoulder. But my spindling form couldn't have helped. I have been trying to avoid lifting my elbow above my shoulder and stick to "butterflying" the singles: winding them onto my thumb and forefinger by twisting my wrist back and forth. But oftentimes I am lazy. I think, "it's only a few inches," or "I should give the spindle another spin," and I just lift it up. There's a good chance that this is what is causing the pain and immobility in my shoulder. But if not, it could, so I really do need to work on my form.

So, despite wanting to finish my shawl, and having a lot of free time on my commute, I'm stuck longingly staring at pictures of homemade yarn. If you spin, I hope that my mistakes can help you to avoid them. And this update will be a bunch of small things that I haven't gotten around to reporting yet.

First, some purchases:

Rainbow masham wool braids from Edgewood Garden Studio

I was just too tempted not to buy these rainbow mini-braids from Edgewood Garden Studio. Each is two ounces, and they are perfect for playing around with different ways of doing color combinations. The wool is masham, which is an interesting cross-breed of teeswater and swaledale. The wool is not as soft as many, but it seems to have a lot of luster. Unfortunately, when the braids arrived, they were very compacted (probably from the dyeing process), and I am worried that they will be difficult to spin. They might just need a little predrafting, or they might need a lot of predrafting. Either way, it's not ideal.

My second purchase was a swift.

Peg swift

I have already tried it out, and it makes balling yarn soooooo much easier. No more tiring myself out moving my arms around the chair or over my head. Storing it is the only problem, since it is a bit bulky.

Yarn swift in action

Along with my purchases, I had been feeling like it had been too long since I had processed any fiber. With one spinning project and one knitting project, I wanted to card something. I can't do it on my commute (needs too much room, too messy, etc) but it is a nice project for evenings and weekends. A chance to get back into the feeling of raw wool.

Ryeland rolags

Before I hurt my shoulder I was making rolags out of the ryeland wool I bought at the Maryland Alpaca Festival. It cards wonderfully, and it has a nice, soft, grayish brown color. Some of the locks are more brown, some are more silver, but I am just mixing them all. I have heard that the wool is incredibly stretchy and springy, and so far that seems to be true. I don't know when I might have a chance to spin it, but I think I will use the wheel to make sock yarn.

One lock of the ryeland wool

This week I have been going a little bit crazy with no spinning or knitting. So I started to organize my fiber stash and realized that I have half a pound of white rambouillet roving. I also have a lot of other white wool, and I'm not particularly fond of the rambouillet, so I decided to try dyeing it.

Rambouillet roving, pre-dyeing

While I have dyed wool before, I always did locks. This time I decided to do the roving in different colors. I spread it out on a tray covered in plastic wrap, then got it very wet. Then I poured dye on top and poked it until it soaked it up - Navy blue, kelly green, and yellow. I then baked it in the oven for an hour. I'm still waiting for it to dry, so I don't know if it felted yet.

Rambouillet roving, dyed

I am really not liking the dyes that I got at the alpaca festival. They are really bright and ugly. Oh well, maybe it will look fine spun up.

Maybe.

Gradients

I'm not usually up on the latest trends, but I hear that gradient yarns are "in" right now. I've made a couple of gradient yarns recently, but it seems more like a coincidence than anything planned on my part. Or maybe I am just seeing gradient roving and top at the fairs, so I jump on a trend unknowingly.

Anyhow, for those who don't know, a gradient yarn is one that shifts gradually from one color to another (to another?), creating gradual changes. Unlike ordinary variegated yarns, which have generally short repeats of the same few colors, a gradient yarn has either much longer repeats, or no repeats at all.

I am not an expert on dyeing, but I suspect it has a lot to do with how and when the fiber is dyed. Ordinary variegated yarns are dyed in the skein, making the parts that line up the same color, and causing repeats. Gradient yarns are either made up of several mini-skeins that are each dyed with different mixtures of two colors (or going from dark to light of the same color), or they are dyed in the wool and spun as a gradient. Because I have never dyed yarn, I will be talking exclusively about the last process.

First, an old project that I have mentioned before:

Single-ply gradient in the skein

I loved the colors on the luxury top that I bought, so I spun it up for a shawl.

Silk-BFL blend, gradient braid

As you can see, the fiber was dyed by painting it various colors in the braid (it's not actually a braid - there is only one strand). This creates a continuous movement of color from one to the next. Moreover, if there are any strong divisions, the process of spinning will generally muddy it, as fiber is drafted from both colors for a little while.

As a spinner, there are a few different ways to maintain that gradient. The first, and easiest, is to keep the strand as a single, which is what I did with this project.

Wingspan Shawl, using single-ply gradient yarn

However, if you want to do a multi-ply yarn, you have a problem. If you do the regular thing and spin from one end to the other of the braid over two or three bobbins, then ply them together, you will mix the colors, getting a barber-pole effect. Not necessarily bad, but often not what you are looking for.

Not from a gradient, but the result of a mixed-color batt plied in the regular way

You can (though I haven't tried it), split your braid of roving or top lengthwise, then spin it separately. If the singles are not exactly even, there will be some barber-poling at the edges of the colors, but it should look like a continuous gradient. Unfortunately, this technique requires planning ahead, which I almost never do.

The third way to do it is to Navajo-Ply. This technique involves making a loose crochet chain stitch with the single and spinning it to get a three-ply yarn that preserves the colors of the singles. The main drawback is that if you have uneven singles, Navajo-plying will tend to enhance them, rather than balance them out like regular plying. This is the technique that I used on my most recently finished spinning project.

For this project, I used roving from The Yarn Mission which I mentioned in another post.

Braided Roving

You can tell that this was dyed before it was braided, and the colors repeat a bit. The roving was probably laid in a zig-zag-like way and painted.

The fun thing about spinning roving like this is that you can see the gradient emerging on your bobbin, but you know that you won't see the entire color progression stretched out until you knit it (or if you make a yarn cake. But I don't have the equipment or the desire for that). I took some pictures as it appeared over time, but this doesn't really do it justice.

I quite enjoy Navajo-Plying, and it goes pretty fast. My 110 grams of fiber made 140 yards of aran to bulky-weight yarn. I haven't yet knit anything, but I am thinking a scarf for my husband. You know I will be sure to post pictures whenever it gets made.

N-Plyed skein on the niddy-noddy

Another view of the finished skein