Woolen Spinning

 Back in April, I dyed some roving that I was not a huge fan of. I was not much of a fan of the dyed version either: that "kelly green" dye is so bright! I feel like anything I knit with it will make me look like a crossing guard.

Dyed ramboullet roving in a bowl to dry

But I didn't want to waste it. It was my first time dyeing roving. Well, what do you do with fiber you don't like very much? Experiment and practice new techniques!

And this roving is getting that treatment twice. First, dyeing practice, then a new spinning technique: long draw.

For those of you who don't know, long draw is a technique where you pull the fiber, one-handed, away from the orifice of the wheel. In short draw, where your second hand is pinching the fiber so that there is no twist in the drafting area. In long draw, the twist goes into the drafting area. But the twist will travel to the thin parts of the fiber, so pulling on it will only draft the thicker parts (this won't work with long stapled fiber, or if the fibers are aligned - like with top). In short draw, you smooth the wool with your second hand, but in long draw you let it stay "fuzzy". This will create a woolen yarn - airy, fuzzy, and warm, with poor stitch definition.

Now, of course, the spinning I'm doing can't be a "true" woolen prep if I am not using rolags from my hand carders. But this kind of narrow roving is pretty similar, and the fibers are certainly not aligned like with top. I do think that it would be easier with rolags though: this fiber was really "sticky" and hard to draft, so I couldn't do a pure long draw either - I kept needing to tug on the roving with my second hand to free it. It probably doesn't help that my wheel has very little "pull", even after tightening it quite a bit.

My final tally was over 600 yards of long draw singles, and I was definitely getting the hang of the technique by the end. So, as a practice yarn, it was a success. How did it come out as a yarn for knitting though?

300 yards 2-ply woolen ramboullet yarn

It could be a lot worse. 

Looking at the singles, there were several parts of the color that I really liked, and it might have come out better if I had left out the yellow dye. The yellow just made the neon problem in the green worse.

Singles on the bobbin

When I was about to ply, some of the color was so nice that I was tempted to just do an n-ply to preserve the color progression. But the yarn was pretty uneven, which would only be exacerbated by an n-ply. And I was hoping that the uglier parts of the color progression would be tamed by the prettier colors.

2 full bobbins, ready for plying

I don't know how successful that was. It is so hard to tell in the skein. I guess I'll have to wait until I knit it to see if I like the finished product.

Blending colors at the beginning of plying

The end of the second bobbin of plying